Session 1: 11/02/2016

Session 1: 

Work management, professional development and social media

Today has been the first session of ICT subject. After explaining how the course will work and what we will do during the semester, the teacher has made us a questionnaire in order to know our  previous knowledge about the subject through Kahoot, a program that allows you to ask questions online to all students in the class.

After this, we have commented the importance of file management through cloud computing, having secure access to all of our applications from any device connected to the network: smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop… and we have explined also quickly, because many already knew, tips editing on a google docs document: direct search of words, images, insert references, quotes, make comments…

In order to know our previous knowledge about the topic of this session (personal learning environment tools) we have made a questionnaire through this link, google docs questionnaire:

http://goo.gl/forms/AsM0VBBXoT

Then, the teacher has divided us in four groups with the aim of working different tools and resources and after that, present it to the class through a Google Docs Presentation. Each group member will have a role:

Organiser: Organises the work. Keeps people on task and on time.
ICT manager: Creates the presentation. Solves technical problems.
Speaker: Only person who asks questions to the teacher. Presents the group.
Team facillitator: Moderates discussions.

Finally the groups have presented the following tools, explaining to us how they work, how to use ...


- Group 1: Social Bookmarking: DIIGO. It’s a social network where you can save links you find interesting and share it with your mates.

- Group 2: Social Networks: Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin. Very popular and they can be very useful as teaching resources. Twitter is a microblogging service where you can opine, and share your opinion and those of others, about actuality topics; Pinterest is a visual discovery tool that we can use to find ideas for all. Linkedin is a social network where we can share our CV.

- Group 3: Organize, read and share. RSS. Feedly: Feedly is a tool that we can use for organize, read and share the content of our favourites sites and acces them all in one place.

- Group 4: RSS and content curation: Flipboard: Flipboard is our personal magazine where the content is filtered by ourself. It’s a simple place to keep up with your world.

After the presentations, which have helped us to learn more resources and more tools, we have evaluated the presentations of our partners in a constructive way.

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.

All Over the World with Passion, Love and Joy !

My name is María Sánchez Lerena.  I am an English Primary Education teacher. I like to learn about effective and innovative pedagogies, and I believe lifelong learning is one of the keys for professional fulfillment. Following this philosophy, this year I am obtaining the Blanquerna Master´s Degree “Teaching and Learning of the English Language for Kindergarten and Primary”. This Master´s is both challenging and demanding but at the same time enlightening and rich. Therefore, I feel very passionate about it, because it is giving me countless resources to be a better professional and maneuver myself around in the educational field.

On a more personal level I have a passion for travel, explore and cultural exchange. As a result, I have lived in Canada and Norway; and traveled around India, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Mexico, USA, Europe and all over Spain. My next stop will be Minnesota, where next year I will be working as an assistant teacher in a Spanish Immersion School. Furthermore, I am a nature lover, spending most of my free time either in the beach or the mountains. I profoundly enjoy and admire all the artistic disciplines. I adore cooking, reading, writing, painting, sculpting, doing arts and crafts, and I am addicted to sports.

After mentioning my passion for life and educational work, I must say that they both come together. As I see it, my knowledge and love for the English language has allowed me to discover and develop most of my passions in life. This awareness has motivated me to teach English as a way to open countless experiences provided by a fascinating and multicultural world.

One of the reasons why I chose this optional module is that I have always wanted to learn about ICT but unfortunately my Degree's ICT subject was rather poor.  Hence, my experience using most of these tools, is fairly recent and very exciting.  I started hearing about social bookmarking a couple of months ago. However, I did not have the time to start using it until the previous class session. Since then I have been exploring both Symbaloo and Delicious and I have also signed up for Diigo. I do not know if Pinterest is a social bookmark but I have also started to use it not long ago.  I find these tools brilliant. Not only do they help you save time by not having to look for the same resources several times, but they also help you save disk space and keep resources tidier. I am using Symbaloo to organize and access my high-frequency websites and to look for Webmixes that might interest me. Thanks to the possibility of tagging websites, I am using Delicious to classify and tidy specific resources and information that I encounter in a different way. And I am using Pinterest to look for inspiration and information in a more visual way.

In regard to social networks, I created my Twitter and LinkedIn account a couple of years ago. But I have not used them too much since. I used to think that Facebook and Twitter were almost the same. However, the last class made me see that Twitter can be very useful when it is professionally oriented. Now I am following classmates, teachers, educational platforms and influential educators; and they are helping me to be updated and in the loop. I used to use LinkedIn, but I stopped because of the free version limitations. Nevertheless, I want to open myself to unexpected national and international work opportunities. So I will try again and see if there is a way to overcome these limitations.

I know that we are not supposed to talk about RSS. But I wanted to comment that I am really enjoying Feedly and Flipboard. Usually I read a lot of articles on my computer and mobile phone. The problem was that I did not have a fast and convenient way to automatically follow blogs, find articles by topic and store the ones that I like. I am using Feedly to follow the updates of different blogs and websites, and Flipboard to find articles in a more visual way and create my own clippings magazines by topics.

To sum it all up, I love teaching, I love life and I love these tools! They make technological daily life easier, richer and more organized. They help you be updated about innovations and events. They give you national and international projection. And they are fun!

Something to know about me!

Hello!!!

My name is Ariadna Montilla and I am 22 years old. I studied Infant Education at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (uic) and in the last course of my degree I did the minor of English. In fact, I already started to study education thinking on being an English teacher, I've always enjoyed learning this language (in the sense I really like it, you know the activities we did some years ago at school did not stand out for being motivating and engaging...). However, I decided to learn that language on my own and start building my path in relation to it. That's me, I like challenges in my life. Both the personal and professional ones, I like to push myself to the limit and I really enjoy the process of achieving something (which is not always easy but this does not mean impossible!)

I consider I am an active person; as a first impression I can look fairly relaxed and quite but I always need to have something to do (useful of course ;)). I really love swimming, it helps me forget about everything (all these things I always want to do and look forward them). I love going to the beach, feel the unique and unmistakable breeze of the Mediterranean Sea but I also enjoy going to the mountains and sense the peacefully atmosphere you cannot find in another place.

As regards the ICT world, I have to say that I’ve always loved using and innovating with different tools. I like to explore them and know how to make the best of these resources. I really like to create collages and compositions with pictures or texts and reflect on them my style and personality, let’s call it digital crafts!   

Some years ago I had a teacher at the University, who told us about Delicious, she gave us some tips about this social bookmarking and I created an account. I found it interesting but I’ve given up using it as I didn’t truly explore it properly. Now, it’s not too long since I’ve discovered Symbaloo and what I really like about this social bookmarking is its simple, visual and easy block’s organisation. I similarly like Flipboard for its attractive and catchy appearance, especially in tablets and smartphones, but I need to examine it a little bit more. Even that fact, I can say I find it useful and completely customized. Apart from that you’re surely going to find plenty of resources and interesting articles in that social network.   

And to conclude, Twitter... It’s some days since I got back my account. I started using it, following, exploring and YES! I am definitely getting hooked on it!

This is all about me and my relationship with ICT! So...

My best xx

Myself

Hello everybody!!!

My name is Laura García and I am from Rubí a city near Barcelona. I am 23 years old and I am an Early Childhood Education teacher.

I finished the degree almost two years ago in the Faculty Blanquerna, in Ramon Llull University and last year I was working in Dublin as au pair. It was a really good experience that I would recommend to live at least once in a life. This experience allowed me to put into practice the knowledge I learned in my degree with the children that I was looking after and to improve my knowledge of the English language. I also did an online course at the Faculty of Administration and Information (CMIT) in Ireland on Child Psychology FETAC Level 6.

Currently I am working in Departament d’Ensanyament as English teacher and I am studying the Masters in Teaching and Learning of English in Primary Education and Childhood Education which I believe will complement my knowledge and my experience, providing great value to my career.

Regarding to ICT I should say I am not very good at it but I am pushing myself in order to improve in this area. Using new technologies in schools is a reality and because of that I decided to do this optional subject.

Since two weeks ago I am using Symbaloo and I think it is a very clear and easy tool to use on day-to-day. Using social bookmarking lets you share internet links with other people and also the possibility of discovering new internet pages. In this way as teachers it becomes a great tool to be used in the class since it allows you keep interesting internet addresses and the chance to access to them from any device with internet. Nowadays I am also using Flipboard and I have to admit that I am hooked, I have it on my phone and it lets me to be kept up with all the latest news.

Well girls now it is your time, looking forward to know more about you.

Laura 

This is me, Andrea

Hello everybody!

Here I go, breaking the ice and launching this blog!

My name is Andrea Malagarriga Perea and I’m 22 years old (my birthday is next week!!!). I’m an early childhood teacher and I love languages, especially English!

I finished my degree in Blanquerna last June. I'm currently doing a Master on Learning and Teaching English in Infant and Primary Education while I’m working in Escola Lurdes.

So as to introduce myself and let you to know me a little more, I can say that my philosophy of life is to live with joy and passion, loving those around you. I love teaching learning. Always active, smiling with initiative and eager to continue training as a teacher. I try to bring thrill, enthusiasm and freshness to everything I do. I am a bookworm, travelling opens my mind and dancing gives me wings.

Regarding to all the ICT world, I must admit that I love it! I think I’m a fairly intuitive person, I love to discover new things, apps or tools and I could spend hours on front on the screen just browsing around. But then, I not always find the time to use everything I find.

When it comes to using social bookmarking, I do use it. The one that I use most is Delicious, I like the way you can look for your bookmarks with the tags classification. However, what happened to me was that when I started using Delicious some years ago I used some tags and then, after a while without using it, I haven’t been coherent with all of them.

I also use Symbaloo, but in this case, I prefer to use Symbaloo for looking for different Webmixs on the topics I’m interested in.

Another tool that I really love is Pinterest, I’m not sure if it is considered a social bookmarking, but you can find a huge number of interesting links and organise them as you see fit.

And finally, as regards social networks for professional use, I’ve just started to use Twitter. I And I’ve been totally smitten!! You have everything and all the news in your phone constantly updating. Now, Linkedin is my unfinished business.

I hope to keep learning about work and class management with ICT!

Cheers!