2nd session ICT

Hi there!

During this 2nd session, we met our other teacher Aoife, during the first 10 minutes we made a little presentation, after that, we move to the subject content.

Aoife taught us some useful resources and apps to include in our lessons, you can find some examples bellow:

- For classroom management (Class Dojo)

- Songs with actions (GoNoodle & Brain Breaks)

- Storytelling time (The Literacy shed & Book box)

After that, she show us how to apply these resources into a real project, she presented us a real project carried out in her school: We are explorers! where they work on mapa mundis,aventurers and explorers while wotking in an inrerdiciplinar way, in which all subjects where included
During the presentation other interesting apps appeared for instance piccollage, kahoot, geocatching and some very practical apps to create displays like instant displays or twinkl.

Finally we have to create in teams a session which include some of these resources, and later shared with our classmates. We has so much fun!

Thanks for reading!

IWB_Mireia

Here I go again with a new experience! 

This time is about Interactive White Boards (IWB) and I need to say that it was an incredible discovery. I have been seeing IWB in class during this past years but I had never used one. I have one in my class but I have never used it because I didn't know how. Another reason is because we don't have the appropriate program to use it. 

During the class I discovered several ways to use this new toy for me and I really liked it, I couldn't stop thinking about activities that I want to practice with my 3 years old students. Because of that, my activities are related to some of the activities that I have done in class but in a manual way. 

On one hand, you can see the activity called "Peter and the Wolf". If you don't know the story, each character has one instrument during the argument, and I wanted them to relate everything between them. Because I did not know how to create the perfect template, the one you can see can be related with the arrow that you can draw on the IWB.

On the other hand, you can see the activity called "What can you see?". As you can see, there is a picture under the grey curtain and the idea is to ask the students what they can see on the mysterious part. However, instead of removing the curtain, the main objective for this activity is to draw on top of the curtain.

I actually applied both activities and it was an interesting experience. In the first activity I thought that relating was going to be difficult for them. However it had the opposite reaction because they related the pictures and each sound.

The second activity was an excellent idea. Apart from them loving it, they had the perfect excuse to create in a different place rather than a paper. I introduced this activity in hour philosophy hour and they did it in groups of five to talk about the mysterious picture in order to draw it.  

Here is the link to the file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0XjKFxt21t2YS1ONUdyT0tYTEU&authuser=0

IWB experience

I’ve never used an IWB before until last week in our ICT session. I don’t have an IWB at home and I haven’t started working as a teacher yet so I didn’t had the opportunity to work with this technology.

After the first contact with an IWB I can say that I really liked the experience because it was not difficult to use it and because I think that it is a very useful tool that offers some advantages when teaching and affects learning in several ways.

First of all, digital boards can promote and increase students’ motivation and enthusiasm for learning and, consequently, raise the level of students’ engagement in classroom and prevent passive learning. Sessions become dynamic and participative and children have an active role, so I imagine that they enjoy it.  

Secondly, IWBs provides visual support that complements teachers’ explanations and help children to understand better the content of the lesson.

IWBs also provide a wide variety of dynamic activities to be done in the classroom. As teachers, we can create many types of activities for our kids and children can draw; write, put images, copy and paste things as many times they want, be creative, add audio files and audio recordings do the exercises the teacher prepares and create their own ones.

Finally, apart from teaching specific content related to a subject or topic, we also educate children to become ICT knowledgeable students.

In the last session I was being working on two different Smart Board activities related to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The first activity is based on remembering so it is for working on Lower Order Thinking Skills. It is an activity for first grade of primary. It consists on matching the words with the correct images so, after having previously introduced clothes vocabulary, children have to relate words and pictures to practice and remember the vocabulary presented.

The second one focusses on creation so promotes higher order thinking skills. This activity is for second or third grade of primary (depending on their level of English) and the topic is “wild animals”. We’ll do it after dealing with wild animals. It is called I spy with my little eye something… and under the title they have a square and a speaking bubble. Inside the square they have to “draw” a wild animal, the one they want (they have to look for an image of this animal and past it inside the square). Then, they have to write a short description of this animal inside the speaking bubble (see in the example) and finally, they also have read out loud and record the description and add it inside the bubble. Once they have created the activity, they will group in peers or in threes and they will play the game. So one child will start reading and listening the description of his classmate and he will try to guess which animal it is. When he thinks that he knows the animal, he will click inside the square and the image will appear so he will be able to check if he was right or not. If he doesn’t know the animal, he can ask his classmate for some more clues. Then, the other child will do the same. The image is an example of the final product. Children have to design all the activity (write the title, draw the square and the speaking bubble, search the image of the animal, past it inside the square and add animation, write the description inside the bubble and record the description.)

here is the link to get to the file

IWB - Interactive whiteboards

Currently most of the classes in the schools have Interactive whiteboards and it is actually a very good tool to use in the teaching-learning process.

The proper use of this tool helps to develop more dynamic and showy lessons and it helps to increase children’s participation. Moreover it can be used with students of all ages and in all the different subjects.

Regarding to my experience I used IWB several times in different schools but my experience was rather poor because I used it as a computer. Therefore I did not use it at all as an interactive tool.

I created two different activities to be used with IWB. The first one is developed with the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0 and it is a memory related to the Trafalgar Square from London.  

It is a LOTS (Lower Order Thinking Skills) activity and it is based on remembering and understanding.

The second one is more complex and it is a HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) activity. It is a creating and analyzing activity and it consists in creating a new Trafalgar Square. There are different images of objects and parts of the real Trafalgar Square and children can make up a new Trafalgar Square putting the images in the white spaces.  

The different pictures are locked and children can move them but not modify them. The pictures have also a recording and every time a person touches the picture there is a sound of the name of the object touched.      

Both activities are created for P5 and it is important to make a previous knowledge and to work on the different vocabulary.  

IWB nowadays

Working with IWB

Nowadays, digital boards cover different aspects in Primary School. Digital boards integrate technology in the classroom, sessions become dynamic and cognitive development increases.

I have been using digital boards for several years almost every day and I can say that children really enjoy it. It is a very useful tool in the class because it provides visual support, music, a timer, Internet, examples… an endless number of resources integrated in one.  However, what I like the most about digital boards is that students have hands on experience so it is not only a tool for the teacher but for the students too.

I have been working on two different Smart Board activities related to Bloom’s taxonomy. One of the activities is based on remembering and understanding skills and the other one focusses on creation, analysis and self-evaluation.

Both of them are adapted to a Primary 1 class. The first one consists in choosing the correct option for the different images that keep appearing on the screen. Having previously introduced vocabulary, students will choose which one is the correct one. This activity includes visual support and self-assessment.

The second one consists in a short and guided presentation of students’ favourite pet. They have the chance to add a photo with their favourite pet and talk about them with a recording. There is a template for all of them and, depending on individual abilities, they will be able to insert  a photo by themselves and to record a short description based on their previous knowledge. 

  

I'm Georgina Rabasa

Hello!

My name is Georgina Rabasa, and I’m 22 years old. But next 24th of may, I will be 23! This is me in one of my travels. I love discovering the world and fortunately I had the opportunity to go to lots of beautiful places, and I will be doing it all life..

I finished my degree in Infant  Education last June and I’m actually working in Llar d’Infants el Trenet, in Terrassa, my city. I have a class with 18 students and they’re so cute and lovely. Every day I wake up so motivated to do lots of things with my pupils and we all enjoy the time we spend together in the class.

I love kids and also I love English, that’s why I’m doing a Master of Learning and Teaching English in Infant and Primary Education. It’s being very useful, it’s helping me to open my mind and be more professional, with more resources and ideas to teach English in a good way.

I always loved new technologies, computers, phones, tablets, and I’m always reading about new products, especially Apple’s technologies. I love all that Apple does, and I’m so satisfied with all their products.

I have to say that I use a lot cloud computing by Google drive and dropbox, I find them so useful and very easy to use. Also, I’m in touch with some internet tools such as Pinterest and twitter. I use a lot Pinterest to find some arts and crafts ideas for the kids, and also for decoration, costumes, songs, activities, etc.

I have a twitter account that, first of all I use it to talk with friends but by the past of the time I started to follow educational newspapers, teachers, and more professional profiles. I do not tweet so much but I check and read almost 3 times per week, and I do it also on Facebook but I use it for a more personal stuff.

I’m not so used with social bookmarking because of my lack of information about it. Now I see lots of advantages about using it. For example, I have lots of links saved in my browser and now with Symbaloo I can have it all classified in a very visual way.

During my degree in Infant Education I was informed about Delicious and I found it interesting, but then I had no need to use it, and nowadays I see it like a way to research about my interests and educational news, ways of teaching, resources, opinions..

Finally, I have to create an account in Linkedin with all my professional information, and be able to meet professionals and share my experience.

I will use more social networks because they’re so positive and rich of information!

See you soon!

About me...

About me...

My name is Alba Sicilia and I am 27 years old. I have always had an interest and passion for Learning and Teaching processes and for English language and culture.

Since I was young I have also had an interest in learning and teaching a second language.  I began to take English classes at an early age in an academy with different teachers. At university, I focussed more on language teaching and the acquisition of a second language and took some courses in methodology and classroom management.

Teaching a foreign language in Primary school is, however, my preferred area of expertise because it includes the development and integration of different language skills and, especially because I enjoy working with children. I have already gained experience in this area, and I am presently employed in Jesuïtes Sarria – Sant Ignasi school English department since September 2010, where I teach English in Primary 1 and 2 and also Primary 6.  I also teach drama in English at the same levels. I am assistant coordinator for European exchanges and travel with groups of children during the school year to partner schools in the UK.

It might be appropriate to mention that I also gained teaching experience in the UK for 1 year. My first work experience was in Essex (London) as a guaranteed supply teacher covering all levels from Nursery to Primary positions. Sometime afterwards, I was recommended as a Reception class teacher in Northbury Primary school in Barking. The knowledge of the British Education has greatly influenced my teaching skills and I look at that period of my life as a turning point in my career and the confirmation of my vocation in the educational field.

        

I actually think technologies help us to find, organise, manage and access different information and all the courses and training I have been taking before, have been very helpful for me. That is why I decided to choose this optional subject.  

I have to say the lack of time truly affects me in this topic. I sincerely would like to spend more time on my laptop investigating new resources, different tools, social networks… for sure it will help me and it will make my day by day easier.

I really enjoy exploring and using technologies so hopefully in a short period of time I will be able to discover more and more.   

During these last days, I have been introducing myself in two different social networks: Twitter and Linkldin. I used to have a Twitter account but I never used it before. However, LinkedIn is certainly new for me. I signed up two weeks ago and I have been uploading my curriculum and I have started following different Educational groups, English teachers, educators around the world and colleagues. I find it very attractive, it gives you an open mind of what we have around regarding our professional life and it keeps you updated.

Moreover, I consider myself a beginner on Symbaloo and FlipBoard. I downloaded the Apps on my Ipad and I have been exploring but I don’t exactly know how they work. I seriously need more time to guide my learning.

So I would like to take benefit of all the tools, resources and social marks regarding my professional life and I would like to show my students how they could take advantage of it.

A little bit of me...

A little bit of me... 

But you already know my face, so I decided to put my friend's pictures. They are the ones that made me believe that Education was my passion; the ones that made me realize that teaching is my life!

My name is Mireia Cuxart and I live in Barcelona. I studied Infant Education with the minor of English in Blanquerna about two years ago. I worked in the US as an assistant in a Spanish Immersion School in the state of Oregon. It was a onetime life experience that I recommend to live. I am currently working in Princess Margaret School as a tutor in P3.

Regarding my ICT skills, I need to confess that I am really bad at them and that’s the reason why I took that class. I thought that I needed to learn some more since new technologies are being used in class. I am only using Facebook as a social network and Drive/Dropbox to organise everything I used to keep in the computer.

I am a beginner but I started using Symballootwo weeks ago and I have it as a home page in my browser. Flipboard is my second discovery and I am using it as much as Pinterest (and that means a lot!).

I have been learning a lot so far, and I would love to keep learning and be able to use new technologies in my class. We have whiteboards and iPads and I really want to take advantage of this in order to let them learn with new technologies.