ICT Teaching Resources | Class report

Dear classmates, 

I'm Anna Alcázar and I would like to share with you the class report of our last ICT lesson.

How can we take advantage of ICT resources in order to improve language skills?

Last lesson with Aoife Garry was pursuing an answer to this question. However, before going further with listening, speaking, reading and writing, we had a moment to reflect about the role of the teacher and ICT and, after watching a video about the 21st century skills (known as the 4 C's of Education), we led to the conclusion that there are skills such as High Order Skills of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Evaluation, Creation and Analysis) that can not be learned just by checking information. Consequently, the teacher should take advantage of ICT resources in order to teach processing skills and avoid a transmissionist approach.

Show Me, this is what you are looking for!

Hi everybody!

I’m Marta. In this post I would like to share with you a useful educational tool, called ShowMe, that allow users to record their voice as well as write text, draw or add some pictures or videos in order to explain some content. This app is available in Ipad and can be used by anybody who want to, no matter the age. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard is an easy and effective tool for step-by-step audiovisual presenting and sharing. The visual/auditory combination of a ShowMe is engaging to watch as well as create. This app is also useful to help children organize the information in a sensible order as well as develop good presentation skills in a collaborative context. In addition, children can share their projects with the educational community and take advantage of other user’s explanations.

How to use ShowMe? Here you have a presentation that explains it in detail.

What is ShowMe? from ShowMe App

Features (taken from the Apple website)

• Voice-record
• Multiple brush colors
• Enter text
• Pause and erase
• Import pictures from your photo library, built-in camera, or web image search
• Import documents as pictures from dropbox, or google drive
• Create video from any document
• Unlimited lesson length
• Free to upload and share your recordings with friends
• Easy embedding for sharing anywhere
• Manage students with groups

ACTIVITY

Target audience: 5th grade

Placement in curriculum: Science (CLIL)

School course: Second semester

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: This activity offers an opportunity to enhance both lower- and higher-order thinking skills.

Lower order thinking skills.

• Level III: Applying (using the knowledge in a variety of ways): This activity provides an opportunity to apply, use and practice the content vocabulary in meaningful context:  a short speech (presentation)

Higher order thinking skills.

• Level VI: Creating (create new products or points of view). The activity gives the students the opportunity to create a piece of oral presentation about how the respiratory system works.

Aims:

• To be able to use ShowMe app.
• To be able to identify and summarize the main contents related to the respiratory system.
• To be able to work in cooperative groups.

Competences involved:

• Linguistic and audio-visual: because pupils have to create a presentation while drawing and explaining different concepts. In this case, drawings are useful to improve the comprehension.
• Information handling and digital competence: in order to do the task, they have to interact and know the app to use it.
• Autonomy, initiative and decision taking: because they are creating a tool that enables their classmates to watch a video-presentation done by themselves. If they are able to do it properly, it means children have understood the concept and are able to explain something in their own words.
• Social and civic: because children have to work in pairs and listen to their partner’s suggestion. This is not about one child doing everything but it involves reaching an agreement about what they want to show.
• Knowledge and interaction with the world: this activity will be about the respiratory system and how it works so the majority of the concepts go around scientific

Grouping: This activity will be carried out in pairs (explained in the procedure).

Procedure of the activity:

First of all, I will explain to students how ShowMe app works and the elements they can find in the toolbar.  

In pairs, students will summarize and present, by using ShowMe, the main contents related to the respiratory system through a recording of about one minute. Each pair will be in charge of a different topic (parts of the circulatory system, how it works, common diseases, healthy habits to take care of it, curiosities, etc.).

First, both students of the pair will identify and write in a draft the information that they want to share through the presentation. When they finish, the teacher will check their rough draft and will give them a feedback (weaknesses and improvements).

Then, they will record the presentation, including the advices from the teacher. Each member of the pair will be responsible for recording one part of the presentation.

Finally, each pair will present their presentation to their other groups of the class, so they will review the circulatory system contents.

An example of recording could be the following:

Materials required

• Ipads (one per pair).
• Paper and pen if they want to do a draft before recording the presentation.

Class management

Following the tips that I have learnt in the ICT lessons, I would ask students to set Ipad aside when they didn’t need them to avoid classroom management problems. When I am giving them the instructions of the activity, I would say “Ipads facing at me”, so I could make sure that they pay attention to what I am saying and don’t get distracted. Moreover, I would assign some students to be Experts TIC, responsibles for giving support to me or to their classmates if in case we need some help.

When they are doing the recording in pairs, the teacher will walk around the classroom, checking that students are doing the task proposed and observing their needs in order to help them whenever it is necessary. We believe that it is always important for the teacher to have used the app before and have tried to create a game to foresee the problems that can arise.

In case that students would need a quiet atmosphere to record their presentation, they will have the opportunity to go to another classroom just to record it and then come back to the main classroom.

Added value through ICT

• Visual support, engaging tool.
• It involves a challenge (summarizing contents, identifying the key ideas, cooperating,…)
• ShowMe it’s ideal for reviewing content, assessing children and make them connect all the topics learnt through the unit in a more motivational way (not only making them memorise it and write it down.)
• Develop digital competence as well as linguistic and audiovisual.
• The recordings can be shared with each other and they can open it in any device.
• The recordings remain always kept and available to review, use or edit them.

Trouble-shooting

• One possible problem could be that, perhaps, student’s speech in the video is not clear or understandable enough. For that, I will let it clear beforehand that they have to speak loud and pronunciation.
• Another problem foreseen could be that students spend too much time recording their presentation, doing and redoing it again and again. To avoid that, I will limit the time that they can spend making the presentation (30 minutes maxim).

4 skills involved

Reading: Children will be able to read some keywords that will appear in the presentation.	Listening: Children need to listen actively the presentations made by their classmates.
Writing: Children will write and draw the main contents to support their speech.	Speaking: Children need to explain the key concepts fluently and taking into account the pronunciation.

Assessment:

The teacher will assess if the aims of the activity are fulfilled taking into account the following assessment criteria:

0) needs improvement; 1) fair; 2) good; 3) excellent

To be able to use ShowMe app
	0	1	2	3
Is he/she able to record his/her voice explaining the content?
Is he/she able to draw?
Is he/she able to erase his/her drawings?
Is he/she able to change the colour of the digital pencil?
Is he /she able to paste images in the presentation?
Is he/she able to enlarge and reduce the images?
Is he/she able to delete an image?
Is he/she able to share with the rest of the class his/her ShowMe record?
Is he/she able to save his/her ShowMe record?
To be able to summarize and present the key contents of the lesson
Is he/she able to identify the keywords of his/her topic?
Is he/she able to summarize the information?
Is he/she able to summarize the contents using appropriate grammar structures?
Is he/she able to express his/her ideas in a clear way?
Is he/she able to listen actively to the other group’s presentations?
To be able to work in cooperative groups
Is he/she able to listen actively to his/her partner’s ideas?
Is he/she able to respect his/her turn to record his/her part of the presentation? (each member of the pair records on part of the presentation).

Use Shadow Puppet to record the year...

Let’s create our own presentation!!

Hello again partners! As you know I am Míriam Porras and I am going to talk about SHADOW PUPPET!

Shadow Puppet is an app that allows you to create custom videos combining photos and video clip with your voice and songs. You can easily create videos to tell a story, explain an idea or send a personalized message drawing on the screen, adding emoji stickers, the zoom and pan. In addition, using Shadow Puppet you are combining art, literacy and technology into one great piece of work, because it is a useful tool to create an amazing and creativity stories.

In addition, you don’t have to pay for using it. You only have to download the app for you iPhone and your iPad and enjoy!!!

Apart from this, once your Puppet is created, you can share it with your peers by email, message, copying your link or using different social networks like Twitter, Youtube or Facebook.

Here you will find some links that could be interesting to know more about how Shadow Puppet works.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/18/shadow-puppet-app/

http://get-puppet.co/#home-alternate

STRENGTHENS	WEAKNESSES
Ideas galore are included in app, with more resources available online.	Editing is possible but it is a bit trickier than creating.
Students can use their own images or pull images from several impressive online resource.
Pupils can deepen their understanding across content areas creating presentations and showcasing their knowledge.
A video tutorial walks students through the creation process.
Videos can be up to 30 minutes long and can include up to 100 images.

Regarding the activity, first of all, I will show them how it works the app and all the possibilities it offers. Then, I will present them the activity. After explaining and presenting and example of how to use the app, I would divide the class into different groups to allow them to explore the app. Then, each group is in charge of one session of additional language classroom and they have to summary what happens during the class creating like a little story that helps students in future sessions to remember what they did. Although to use a blog to write what happens in class, it is a new way to create more creative and designed a presentation about the session they have chosen.

Timing:

It would use as many sessions as groups there are in the classroom. Of course, we will ask them to present a summary of each project we will carry out. So, we will allow them a session for the chosen group to create their presentation (60 minutes).

Aims:

Ø  To use English for communication.

Ø  To work cooperatively.

Ø  To use new vocabulary in a creative story/summary.

Ø  To describe a project using the digital and the written skills.

Ø  To engage in simple and basic oral conversations. 

Classroom management:

We are going to divide the class into different groups (4 students). Each group will be responsible of one of the projects we are going to carry out during the year in English.

Multiple intelligences

In relation to multiple intelligence, they have to create the story using the content they have acquired in the project. To create a Shadow Puppet you have to use photographs, so pupils need to develop the Visual and Spatial. In addition, pupils would work on different groups using the Interpersonal intelligence. Moreover, students have to use the Linguistic Intelligence to record the story and to present the result in front of their peers.

Language skills and competences

The activity is thought to work on the four skills:

RECEPTIVE	PRODUCTIVE
Listening: The pupils will listen the explanations of their teacher and their classmates during the presentation. Reading: They will have to read the worksheet/self-assessment to complete the marks.	Speaking: They will have to speak with their peers to create the presentation and to cooperate to present it in front of the class. They also have to record their voices to create the Shadow Puppet. Writing: They could plan and write the presentation before do it in the app.

Concerning competences, they are the following:

Ø  Linguistic and audio-visual, because pupils have to create the story using language and photographs.

Ø  Information handling and digital competence, in order to do the task, they have to interact and know the app to use it.

Ø  Learning to learn: They would have to manage and regulate their own learning taking into account different opinions.

Ø  Autonomy, initiative and decision taking, because they have to assess their peers using a self-assessment.

Ø  Social and civic, because we are going to work cooperatively in groups.

Ø  Cultural and artistic, because they have to create a visual and creative presentation.

Ø  Knowledge and interaction with the world, because pupils have to create a presentation about a project that they have worked on the classroom.

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy

 Regarding Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, they have to use the following lower and higher order thinking skills:

Lower order thinking skills

•     Level I – Remembering the vocabulary and the content we have presented to do the presentation. 
•         Level II – Understanding the vocabulary and the concepts we have worked on the project to do the presentation and to understand how they have to use the app.
•           Level III – Applying the knowledge they have acquired to create the presentation.

Higher order thinking skills

•        Level VI: Creating their presentations to make visible the project we have been working.

Content topic and target users

The story/summary they have to create has relation to the project we are working in the classroom. Thus, they will be able to use it to create their presentations. You can use this approach with any topic and content.

As I said before, Shadow Puppet is easy to use. For that reason, I consider that this activity could be done in the first cycle of Primary (1^st and 2^nd Grade). Always it depends on the level of your students.

Assessment

With the aim to assess pupils, we would use self-evaluation. I strongly believe that it is essential to make them a part of their evaluation. It is a valuable way that they could understand what are their strong points and what they need to improve them. Then, they will have to assess the presentation of the group regarding content and creativity. We will give them a grid with different item to point 0-5 where 5 it is the highest mark).

Added value through ICT

·      It is a creative must have for elementary classrooms. It is a different way to present the information because the format is more attractive.

·      It is a motivated activity because they are doing presentations about a project they have involved actively and using technologies.

I hope you enjoy the activity!

See you soon,

Míriam Porras