First contact with IWB

Last session was my first technical contact with the IWB. I had the chance to use it in some expositions in the university, but I only touched the screen to pass the slide, so I had no idea about all that you can do with IWB.

In the kindergarten that I’m actually working they don’t have this resource because of the age, we only have TV. But after the last session I can imagine different activities to do with the very little ones.

Before the last session I didn’t know how to use it and all the different kind of activities you are able to do. I think that SMART notebook gives you lots of facilities to allow you to create lots of different activities for different levels of teaching, and different ways of learning, thinking.. I was very shocked about how easy it can be to create a good, creative and complete activity.

I created different types of activities related to the animals, depending of Blooms Taxonomy. One of them is related to the Low Order Thinking Skills (LOTS), and the other is related with the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

LOTS activities:

The first one it will be perfect for P3 students. They will have to find the pair of the other animal. So in these activities they will do two pairs of animals. It can be done by many ways and for different ages, for example doing pairs with the animals and their habitat.

Another activity can be the following one. They have to relate the picture of the animal with their characteristic, in this case the tiger is a wild animal, and the dog is a pet animal. This activity can be addressed for a 4^th grade students.

A more complicated but it’s also a “LOTS” activity consist on classify the different animal images depending if they live in the savannah or in the sea.

HOTS activity:

Now it’s the turn for my HOTS activity. It’s addressed for a 4^th grade students, because this activity involves more complicated different aspects. They have two different backgrounds: the savannah and the sea. And then in the savannah background it is a shell (an element from the sea) and in the sea there is a stone (an element that can be found in the savannah). They have to transform the shell and the stone to an animal that lives in each background, so they have to transform the shell into an animal that lives in the savannah and the stone into a sea animal. It involves a lot the creativity, but under the image and the drawing they will have to describe the animal that they imagine.

It’s a bit complicated activity but that’s why I have done an example, to guide the students how they have to do the activity and give them some ideas and inspiration.

I opened a folder in my dropbox with a pdf and the following document that contains all the activities. Feel free to download it doing click here.

Hope you like it, and better if I inspired you to do more activities!

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!

Working with IWB

This is the notebook we worked with in class.

Click here to access the express version http://express.smarttech.com

Click here to download a free trial version

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.

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!