Final Reflection

Hi, there! I'm posting my final reflection on "Técnicas Informáticas aplicadas a la Enseñanza de Inglés" workshop. But you won't read it...you'll listen to it through the avatar I created using Voki! Here it goes!



I really enjoyed the whole course. I hope you did, too!

Case Study 2.3: Digital Storytelling in Argentina

The coordinator of the English department at Instituto San Francisco de Asís, Vicky Saumell, became convinced that something needed to be changed in the way English was taught at this school. So, knowing that the main problem was the reliance on the coursebooks that drove the English curriculum, she decided to leave them aside and design the curriculum with materials of both her and her student's interests. 

As a result, teachers set up a Wiki to be used as a project repository and to keep a record of which projects were done with which class. It was also used to "provide help for teachers, with advice on implementing project-based learning and integrating technology into the curriculum, as well as links to guides and tutorials for Web 2.0 tools and any other supporting material."

One of the projects Vicky carried out is one of "digital storytelling." 17-year-olds chose a number of famous paintings and wrote a narrative that linked the stories together. Afterwards, using Windows Movie Maker, students created an animated slideshow with a soundtrack they chose to go with the images.

Analysis of this project taking TPCK and the SAMR model into account.

TPCK

Content: practise speaking ans writing skills, work and learn with real things (famous paintings.)

Pedagogy: students wrote a narrative linking together all the paintings they chose and created an animated slideshow collaboratively.

Technology: Windows Movie Maker was used in order to create the animated slideshow.

SAMR

Taking into account that this project and the great change in the curriculum would have been inconceivable without technology use, I believe that the teacher and the school stand at the Redefinition level. 

Another project that Vicky carried out consisted in recreating part of Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" using various tools, being Zimmer Twins one of them. If you click on the following link, you'll be able to see their finished work: http://isfa.wikispaces.com/A+Midsummer+Night%C2%B4s+Dream.

If you want help on how to integrate technology in your classes, visit Vicky Saumell's blog, where you can find a source of ideas for projects we teachers can carry out.

PLN: Personal Learning Networks

A PLN is a network that includes different websites you personally use. It has different purposes, such as:

- sharing your own knowledge, experience or anything you want with people with whom you have common interests and viceversa,

- learning from your peers and applying what you learn in your everyday teaching,

- getting up-to-date with topics you are interested in, among others.

I think that having an own PLN is very useful and the best thing about it, besides the profit I listed above, is that it's always available and you will always get a response.

For the time being, my PLN is made up of a few sites:

- Facebook, where I'm part of a group called "Cursando en el Joaquín V. González" (which accepts all members from the Teacher Training College, no matter what department you belong to) and smaller groups, generally created to keep in touch with my mates from different subjects.

- Diigo, through which I share links I'm interested in and sites I consider useful in My Library. And, 

- Scoop.it, through which I share articles regarding topics I choose (such as Technology in the ELT classroom, Content Curation, etc.) in my own account.

Below, there's an image that represents a PLN.

Feel free to pay a visit to my PLN. Taking into account the benefits it brings, I'm certainly going to expand it!

Have you got one of your own? 

Digital Play

I play games with my students at the end of each class but they don't integrate technology at all. Some of the games I play are "Simon Says," "Hangman," "grammar tic-tac-toe," "memory game" with vocabulary, among others. You see they're very classic and non-technological. 

However, after visiting Graham Stanley's blog, I can say that, after reading and learning about Digital Play, I'm planning to play some of these games because they're fun and my students would love them. I believe that gamifying my lessons would be great because it's a way of learning and children would enjoy a lot and have a good time while learning through games.

Among all the games I've seen, I chose "Alphattack" because I'm teaching the alphabet to some of my students. In this game, bombs fall from the sky and you have to stop them by pressing  the right letter on you keyboard because, if you don't, they destroy your city!

When I started playing, I said to my self "I won't play this game with the children, it's so boring and easy." But...I kept on playing and it actually got harder and harder and I had lots of fun. I really wanted to keep on playing but I had to stop in order to post about it haha

I'll certainly try some of the games in my classes, won't you?

Content Curation

Hi! I've just opened an account on Scoop.it and I really like it already! 
Here's the link to it:
http://www.scoop.it/t/tech-in-the-elt-classroom

Curation has to do with the selection, organization and documentation of things. Scoop.it is one of the tools that we can use in order to archive digital assets. I find it really interesting because apart from "following" topics you're interested in and receiving suggestions from the page itself, you can follow people, including an expert on this: Marisa Constantinides.

I think it's very useful. What do you think?

Speaking Skills

Among many tools that we can use in order to develop speaking skills, I chose three:

- Blabberize: turn any photo you want into a talking photo

- Voxopop: record your voice and add pictures

- Present.me: speak while your presentation's being played.

My mates and I designed three different activities that integrate these tools.

1) Use Blabberize

Target: 1st year, high-school

Level: Intermediate

Aim: improve speaking skills, pronunciation, writing and listening.

Activity: "Virtual Show & Tell"

Students choose an objects that's meaningful for them, take a picture of it and upload it. Then, they write a paragraph (or two) from the point of view of the object including information (such as why they think they're important, describe the relationship with their owner and any other thing they want.) After the teacher checks it and gives feedback, students record themselves and upload it in the platform they're using.

Finally, students are told to explore two productions each and report/comment on one or both productions in class.

2) Use Voxopop

Target: 6th form, primary school.

Level: Intermediate

Aim: improve speaking and writing skills

Activity: "Collaborative Story Writing"

The teacher gives each group of students different titles for them to use as triggers (ideally groups of 5.) Each student in the group is supposed to write a part of the story at home (2 paragraphs tops) and bring it to class for the teacher to check. Once checked, the next student takes it home in order to write his/her part, and so on. Error analysis is possible, too. When the whole story is ready, students record it and add pictures chosen by themselves. Finally, they're asked to explore one or two productions and comment on the good things about it/them.

3) Use Present.me

Target: 5th year, high-school.

Level: upper-intermediate.

Aim: improve speaking skills and deliver a presentation.

Activity: "My future."

Students are asked to prepare a presentation regarding their future course of studies using Present.me. The teacher'll give them guidelines as to what should be included. Then, students either upload the presentations on the platform or share it in class.

Below, you can see an example of activity 1. I created it thinking about my brother. Hope you like it!!

Case Study 1.3: Cross Curricular Story Writing

At Terakki Foundation Schools (Istambul) a year-long project was conducted. This was a cross curricular story writing project which involved three different subjects: English, Art and ICT. The project consisted on creating an "audio-enabled talking book" in order to consolidate new vocabulary that five- and six-year old children learnt.

Firstly, the students had to write a story based on two imaginary characters "Bubble" and "Pebble," during English classes. At the same time, "children were provided with a number of different character models and other assets upon which to design their animatios for the story," during Art classes. 

Afterwards, the narrative was recorded by a few confident students using a 'sound recorder,' and, finally, the book was created and published as an e-book using 'Adobe Creative Suite 5.5.'

Apart from the "talking book," children created a website containing language games, introduced by the story characters "Bubble" and "Pebble."

If we pay attention to the "background" of the project, we can see that TPCK is applied.

CK: All of the teachers aimed to work with common themes.

PK: All the activities that the students performed were "fun-based activities."

TK: The whole of the project succeeded because of the use of different types of softwares.

When it comes to the SAMR model, we can say that the teachers are clearly in the last level of the model, that is, the Redefinition level. This is to say that the teachers were looking at new tasks that have been previously inconceivable without the technology.

If you click on the following link, you'll be able to read "Bubble and Pebble" e-book:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bubble-and-pebble-story/id444909635?mt=8

If you want to have a look at "Bubble and Pebble" interactive games, click on the ff. link:

www.bubbleandpebble.com

In my opinion, this project is absolutely great because you're making chihldren learn in an interactive and different way, achieving different goals (and lots of them, by the way.)

For me, writing a story is a bit boring but if I was told that my story will be "transformed" into an e-book that can actually be read and heard by everybody, I would be more than happy and encouraged to write it. 

Apart from that, it's very important to know that we can assemble many subjects and, by working together, we can obtain an excelent and gratifying result. By "together" I mean teachers with teachers, children with children and teachers with children. Don't you think? 

Food for thought!