This is not a goodbye post!

Hello everyone!

During these 3 months you have been following my adventure through ICT. We are about to end it, but this is not a goodbye, it is just a see you soon. Our masters degree is going to finish in the following days, however I will continue with the blog and also learning new things about ICT.

I have to confess that at the begining of this trip through ICT I was a little bit scared because of the amount of work we had, but then I have learnt a lot of things just by doing them. Through the activities and the different challenges I have experimented new methodologies and a different way of teaching. I have learnt that children will acquire contents and abilities just by doing things, which is much better when they do it using ICT. Moreover, I see ICT as the perfect tool for teachers to create motivating and challenging activities for the students.

During this academic term, we have been working through different modules with different challenges with our teacher Mará Jesús García (@mjgsm on twitter). I have to thank her all the support given and the patience she had with us in the process of growing as teaching professionals.

To compile all my impressions about the ICT subject and gather together all the artifacts I have created, I decided to create a video. First, I created a slide show using Genially an amazin fre web tool to create beautiful and interactive presentations. Then,  I put some voice on it and transformed into a video using Screencast o-matic which allows you to record 15 minutes free using the trial version. It is really useful and very easy to use. With any screencast program you can record what is happening in your screen into a video. Here is the final product, in which you can see all the challenges I have overcome to become a Project based CLIL teacher:




This is the Interactive presentation created with Genially in which you can click in the different images and artifacts to see them in detail:

Remember that I have also published all this artifacts in my twitter account: @LauraGonGar5

I have always thought of ICT as a crucial tool in the classroom but now I am totally sure that I will be a good CLIL teacher as long as I keep ICT always by my side.

Thank you for being here with me during my adventure exploring ICT.
Hope you liked it!
See you soon!

Evaluating my e-project

Hello everybody!

As you know I am enrolled on a beautiful CLIL e-project which has become collaborative in last days. Obviously it is not a perfect project since the perfect project does not exist. I think that it is really important to always self assess our work because we learn from mistakes and we can always improve things. In order to do that, I decided to design my own rubric. Nevertheless, it is a general rubric for any e-project so everyone is free to use it to evaluate someone's e-project.

There are many kinds of apps to create rubrics online for free. In this case, I have decided to use Quick Rubric because it is so easy to use. If you want to create your own rubric using this web tool, you have to create an account. Once you are logged in, you have to click on "Create a rubric" (orange square in th image below). Then you can start filling the information: a tittle, a description, different criterias or topics you want to assess and the scale of rating you want to use.

Here you have a screenshot of a blank Quick Rubric:

You can simply add a new criteria/topic clicking on "add row" (green) and also a new scale of rating clicking on "add column" (red). Then, if you click on Score, you can change the maximum and the minimun score when rating. You can also click on "No score" in case you do not want to add a cuantitative rating.

Once you are happy with your result you can click on the green box at the bottom of the page to "Save Rubric". Then, when you have saved your rubric, you will have new options at the bottom of the page:

* Click on View/Print Rubric (yellow) if you want to print your rubric or if you want to share it online, because by clicking here you will obtain a public URL to your rubric.
* Click on Copy Rubric if you want to duplicate your rubric.
* Click on Delete Rubric if you are not happy with the result and you want to delete your rubric.


From my point of view, this tool allows you to easily create a rubric by only filling a preset template, which you can adapt to your own needs. However, there are some things that I did not liked it about the app. The first one is that you cannot obtain an embedded code to share it in a more visual way. Also, it would be great if the web could provide you with a share button to directly share in twitter, facebook or wherever you want.

Nevertheless, I think that it is a great tool if you want to create a rubric quickly and easily. I sincerelly recomend it to try it!

So, after this mini tutorial, here you can see the rubric I have created to assess my own e-project. But remember that, as I have said before, you can use it to evaluate any e-project.



Of course, if you want to use it to evaluate my project, just tell me! Leave a comment with the score rating I get! Feedback is always welcomed.

I hope you liked it and it has been useful!

2016 Augmented World Book Day

Hello again everybody!

This time I am crafting a challenge to participate in a new project: celebrate 2016 World Book Day using a pinterest wall called A wall of Books. Here you can see different people from around the world posting different things to celebrate this amazing day. And that is the beauty of this: you can see different ideas from different places, such a perfect way to enrich ourselves, don't you think so?
Moreover, World Book Day is a great day to encourage learners to read and the better way is by creating motivating things and projects for them and this is what I have created this time.

The aim of this post is to tell you what I have created to collaborate in this beautiful project. I have used Aurasma. I don't know if you have heard something about this fantastic app which works with augmented reality. Is as simple as create an image or use one you like and the attach a video or audio to the image.- When you have done that, then everytime your camera catch that image (through the Aurasma App), the app will automatically play your video or audio and it will create an amazing effect. Aurasma allows you to overlay different technologies as 3D, videos and audio clips on an image.

In case you don't know how to use Aurasma, you have here an amazing tutorial made by some of my colleagues at the Masters degree @Nepeuspu, @Alvaro_Gope, @Marta_Gayarre, @Maradominguezgo and @22paau :



For instance,  Take a 20 euros note and use your Aurasma app with it. I promisse that it is soo worthy that you are going to become an Aurasma lover and you are going to look for more amazing Aurasmas. Take into account that you have to download the Aurasma App into your phone to enjoy them.

Of course, here you have my trigger image in which you can discover a lot about me as a reader when you focus on it using the Aurasma app in your phone:



If this image is to big, try to zoom out this web page, if you can not see it propperly you have the image in a smaller size in this tweet I have published. Don't forget to follow me on twitter: @LauraGonGar5. Moreover, In Aurasma you can find me as LauraGonGar5 (click to suscribe to my Aurasma public profile) and you can also find my aurasma as: What type of reader am I? 

These kinds of apps and web tools are changing the way we teach and the way students learn. Concretely Aurasma allows learners to interact with the world around them and we, as teachers, can create diferent images and things for them. This can also change they way we introduce new contents and the way we interact with our students. Since Aurasma is an online tool and also an app for mobile phones and tablets, students can see at home Aurasmas we have created for them, to tell them something, to give them a new activity or challenge or simply to teach them a new content in a new way.

I just love this way of teaching due to the fact that children will learn without realising they are doing so. As they are enjoying what they are "playing" they will learn better and they will be more focused on the task. So, if you are a teacher and you are reading this, you must create an account on Aurasma and start changing the Education from today.

Hope you liked it and you have learnt new things!
And of course... HAPPY 2016 WORLD BOOK DAY! Never stop reading because reading is a way of living new adventures that everyone can afford!

A supportive slideshow can promote autonomous learning!

Hello again!

Just came back to tell you that we have also create an online Slide show to support our learners. This Slideshow has been created to show learners how to use the appropriate tool to create their comic. If you have not read my last post about it click here. 

As we have to support learners, because some of the may be unaware of how to use the tool, we decided to create this to show clearly and easly how to use Pixton. Pixton is and incredible tool for students to create any story and also represent a specific historical period. Pixton is an easy tool to use but it has many different options and could be hard to start working with it, specially for primary students

To create this tutorial we have used Google Slides. Google Slides is an easy tool and it is also collaborative, so everyone is able to participate and can change it if we want to. Since it is an online presentation, children can work on their own at home and it is also an advantage for teachers as we can work coordinated without wasting time. 

Then, we have added voice and tranformed it itno a video to make it more motivating and easy for children using Movenote. This web tool allows you to record your voice at the same time you are moving through the different slides. In this way, you can create a final video artifact. I totally recomend you to use it, it is so easy and it is free!

You can see our slideshow by clicking here or just see our artifact below:

The structure of the slideshow follows the correct order of the different steps to use Pixton. It starts showing how to sign up and create a new account and finishes showing how to complete a comic. To make it more visual, we have done screenshots of the different steps and emphasize it with red arrows and squares. The unique problem we have struggled with has been precisely emphasizing those buttons or elements essential to use Pixton. Google Slides does not allow you to create a red line square; you can just create a filled square. So that, you must create each read line independently and it is difficult to make them perfectly straight.

Despite this, we think that is the prefetc tool to promote autonomous learning,

Moreover, this is also a contribution to a collaborative online project called Aportics. If you want to callaborate with them you just have to email them attaching a tutorial for children on how to use any webtool. For instance, as you saw above, we decided to explain how to use Pixton. If you are interested on this and you wan to participate do not hesitate and take a look at their blog. You will also see amazing tutorials creatd by different people, so you can also learn new thing. 

Here you can see our tutorial published in their blog or follow them on twitter @AporTICs.

Hope you liked it!

History video challenge for the students

Hello everyone!

Today I want to tell you more about our collaborative e-project. Do you remember my post about the Infographic we created for a CLIL History project? If not you can read it here. Day to day we are creating new things so this is the reason of this post.

Related with this, we decided to create a new challenge for our children through a video. As you now, when you want to record a video it is really to plan everything in advance. An easy way to do it is by storyboarding your video, which means planning every scene to have it ready for the recording moment. We have used Story Board That to create this amazing outline. As you can see, we have included the characters, the backgrounds (we will use a croma when recording to add them by video editing) and everything we were going to say.

Story Board That is easy to use and you can create 6 scenes for free where you can add characters, bakgrounds and edit them with a great variety of designs.


Made with Storyboard That

Having made this outline, we were ready to record our video. As you can see we planned to disguise as different people in different times in History, So there we went.

It was really funny and few time consuming because we have planned everything in advance. Recording was easy and we spend like an hour or so to do it (thanks to the storyboard planning) but we had been suffering a lot of problems when editing. 

At the very beggining, we tried Sony Vegas but it doesn't work in my computer, so I decided to download a free trial version of Adobe Premier cc, which is a profesional video editor and this means difficult to use. We have to saw many tutorials till we find out how to use it and how to apply a croma effect. Then, we discovered that the light in the videos recorded was not uniform so neither the green color on the croma key. This can give you a lot of problems when you are editing because you need the green color to be uniform and with now shadows.  

In that point we thought that we would have to record the videos again with a better light and being more careful. Of course, this has occurred because we are not experts and it was the first time we used a croma and also the video editor. 

Then, I tried to find a solution in order to not record again and I find a color effect which eliminates all the green color in the video and mantains red and blue. This worked because it eliminated all the green background, but it also eliminated the green in our faces. Nevertheless we decided to leave it like that because it was not a big problem. So if you are going to use a croma in your videos, take into account these aspects. 

Then, with the video finished, we used iMovie to add music and some effects easily.

However, despite it was difficult to edit the video, we had a great time recording it and it was a really good group experience. 

Here you have our video in which we explain a new challenge to our children. They will have to create a comic about a history period of time. So, if you see us a litlle orange it was because of our mistake using the croma haha. 

* We have included the Bloopers and Outtakes just for fun, but maybe for children we will leave it without them.






Moreover, this has been part of The ESL Times project. If you want to participate like us or just to know more about it click here.

Hope you like it!

InfoEDUgraphics challenge

Hello again!

Today I am going to tell you something about the e-project I mentioned in other posts. Now we are working in groups in order to create a collaborative CLIL e-project about History, so we are creating different activities and challenges for children.

One of our first challenges was to create an infographic in order to collaborate with the InfoEDUgrafías project. This is a good project in which you can participate with your students at any level (Infants, Primary, Secundary, and University) so if you are interested you can follow them on twitter: @infoedugrafias.

Since we wanted to collaborate, we have created an infographic with the purpose of helping our children to create their own timeline. We have designed it with the inspiration of Mario Bros video game due to the fact that we think it will make the information visual and funny for children. with this they will love to learn how to create a timeline and they will be motivated and focus on their task.

At the beginning we tried different kinds of programas, for instance, Canva. but we decided to use Piktochart because it was the more suitable for us. It allows you to use all the space you need for your infographic, also you can use all the icons and images in the app, the backgrounds are amazing and the text edition possibilities too. The best thing is that it is all for free.

Here is the final result:

Hope you like it and find it useful. 

A sweet choco-talk about CLIL!

Hello everybody!

Today I want to share with you the choco-talk we carried out last 7th of April. The oppotunitty to talk live about CLIL was given us by the Chococharlas team.



Chococharlas is a colaborative blog in which any person related with Education and also the society in general can participate with the only requirement of eating chocolate during the project you want to share. If you want to know more, you should follow them on twitter @chococharlas and also their hagstags: #chococharlas and #Tertuliasconsaborachocolate

Regarding the chocotalk, I was the moderator and some of my peers at the Master's degree were the speakers: Álvaro Gómez (@Alvaro_Gope), Rubén Peinado (@rpeinadog), Patricia Madrueño (@patimasie), Neus Fiol (@nepeuspu), Lola Berral (@lolaberralraya), Inmaculada Caballero (@teacher_inma), Guillermo Lagarejos (@GLHmaster) and Celia González (@celiagon92).
Moreover, other classmates were doing an mazing job in twitter before, during and after the live event. They were promoting the event, asking questions to the twitter community and also curating content to offer a good review to that people missing the event.
As you can see we are a great big team and we were connected all the time.

I had an important role since I had to be paying attention to everything that was happening at that very moment (The chocotalk itself, twitter, whatsapp...) just in case anyone wanted to ask something to the speakers but also leading the talk and try to give every person the same speaking time. So there I was with a lot of chocolate supporting me :). Nevertheless, the hard work was made by my peers who amazingly performed a really good role. They did such a great job talking about: social and emotional benefits of CLIL, advantages and disadvantages of CLIL, ICT in the classroom and the e-projects we are all still working on right now. Despite the fact that it was something that we had never done before, I think that we rocked it!

Of course, we have to give credit of our success to Maria Jesús García (@mjgsm), our ICT teacher and the person who taught us how to use Google Hangouts on Air to make the live talk online.

Just in case you missed it, you can see it here since it is published on youtube.



During this live event there was a lot of activity in twitter about our choco talk so the content curators of our History team, Ana Fuerte and Gabriela Márquez, have created a compilation of the tweets of that day using Storify.

Hope you liked it and remember: everything is better with chocolate!

Laura @LauraGonGar5

My e-project prototype

Hello everybody!

As I wanted to create an e-project, I started thinking about the prototype so I make an outline to organise all the ideas I had in mind. I wanted to do my project about History because it is more theoretical than other subjects and there is a need to make it more motivating and interesting for students. As they will learn by doing they will obtain a meaningful learning. 

Here you have my lesson plan document in case you want to take a look. If you have an idea o a comment about something I coul imporve, let me now. Remember that this is just a prototype, so I will extend this as long as I start to grow it and adding information. 

By doing this project I have learnt that making the learning process more meaniful is easy if you include ICT and online artifacts to your classroom. I think that it can be difficult to apply this on a real classroom but only at the beginning. If you state some rules you can adap the class and make the children be accostumed to use this kind of methodology. 

Here is the youtube trailer of my e-project, which I made using Imovie because I wanted to put videos and pictures together with music. Moreover, I chose this tool due to make a short video and because, once you finish the video, it is so easy to publish it on youtube. Besides, I used Piktochart to create some of the images I put on the video.  I really recomend you to try Imovie, it is full of free templates to create a video.

Hope you like my project. If you

e-project evaluation

Hello everyone! I want to share with you an e-project evaluation I did for class. The main goal of this task was to evaluate an e-project in order to learn meaningfully how to make my own e-book or e-project. 

When I was thinking about what to evaluate, I was surfing the net and I found a fantastic project from a last year student in the same Masters: Little Geniuses of Renaissance by Silvia Peña. I have chosen this e-project because I love Arts and I think that they play a crucial role in children development while they are learning.

Here you have my online presentation using prezi. 

Regarding quality content, I have to say that the e-book has coherent contents related with the topic. Besides, there is a section called “The skeleton” in which all the structure of the project is clearly presented in an organized way.

The main content is about Leonardo Da Vinci and his life, which is a good topic for children in order to understand this artist’s works.

Taking into account multimedia features, this e-book includes some which make it attractive and engaging. These multimedia elements provide added value. However, they promote only receptive skills as reading and listening while I think it would be better to make the students produce something using multimedia tools.

In terms of accessibility, I found that the e-book is partially accessible for people with special needs. For instance, the “First mission video” is goes so quickly that I didn’t have time to read and I have to stop it, so this is not appropriate for children and become worst if the students have some sight problem o difficulties. In a different task the author uses some podcasts to ask questions and this would be a problem for children with special hearing needs, whereas it is a good approach for children with visual needs.

Besides, some of the fonts used are not appropriate for student with visual needs, because it can be difficult for them to read them.

Regarding innovation and originality, I think that this e-book includes original content created by the author and the approach to the topic is original, imaginative and engaging. All the tasks and the contents in the e-book are created by the author. It has also some activities which can be innovative for children, because it is a different way to work an art topic.

When it comes to children and their role in this project, it is important to take into account that the project seems to be focus on children development of solving challenges, problems and questions; so that they will be working critical thinking skills. The project is based on a meaningful problem which is to investigate about Leonardo Da Vinci in order to answer the following question: “Who was Leonardo Da Vinci”. The project involves an active, in-depth process over time, in which students generate questions, find and use resources, ask further questions, and develop their own answers.

This e-book allows children to make their own choices about the products they create, how they work, and how they use their time, guided by the teacher. As they have to create a mural with all the information they have found during the whole process, they will have the opportunity to reflect on what and how they have learnt, and on the project’s design and implementation.

Regarding children, in general I liked the project and how they have to work to find information about Leonardo Da Vinci. In fact, there are some aspects that I would like to point out.

I am not really sure about if it represents a real-world learning context for students and if this makes a real impact in them. Of course, it can be good for them to know about this artist, but maybe it is not the best way to confront the topic.

Moreover, I found that there is no opportunity for children to assess themselves and neither to receive feedback of their work.  

The last thing is that this e-project does not require students to demonstrate what they learn by creating a product that is presented or offered to people beyond the classroom. They have to create a mural with all the information and also create a sculpture using a piece of soap. Actually, I considered that it would be better if they would be able to share their work with other people around the world, for instance using a classroom blog or a classroom account in twitter with the teacher help. 

Here you have the Rubric and the Checklist that I have used to evaluate the e-design, just in case you are doing a similar evaluation. 

Hope you liked it and find it useful.

I'm a content curator!

Hello!

I just want to tell you that I just become a content curator. Maybe you know what does it means but maybe not. To be a content curator means organizing information in order to have everything you need ready to use it whenever you want without loosing time searching on the net. There are plenty of web tools to do that, although the most famous ones are: Pinterest, and Symbaloo. The best part is that they are free.

I use Pinterest to arrange lots of materials related with CLIL teaching and also to find materials, resources and DIY projects, which I love! You can use it for many thing at the same time, because you can create as many boards as you want and pin all you find there.

I recently discovered Symbaloo, which allows you to create an online desktop where you can gather webpages and other resources in different tiles. Here you have mine:

In this webmix I have my favorite webpages and links to find resources related with CLIL. I also have my social networks and some free online web tools to create my own materials. As you can see, they are organized in different categories using colours.

In red colour you can see my main and everyday social networks (twitter, blogger, pinterest and my University moodel). Then, in orange I have my favourites pages to improve my academic english. Also, highlighted in green, I have different web pages full of reosurces for Primary classrooms.
At the top on the right, in yellow, I have some useful tools to create my own materials easily and free, of course! Finally, in blue, I have my favourite youtube channels for kids.


Hope you like it.

A bank of common knowledge

Hello again everybody!

Today I want to tell you something about banks of common knowledge. Since we are teachers, it is useful to have a online space in which we can have lots of resources, materials, web pages, etc. ready to use them, just with one click. 

As far as I see it, I think that it is really amazing being able to have a bank of resources shared with other teachers in order to learn from others adn to see different point of views. I think that collaboration between everybody who teachs gives us a top quality knowledge and information and a great variety of materials. 

With this idea, we have created in our class a bank of common knowledge about CLIL in which everyone has posted web pages, web tools, resources, blogs, videos and music among other things. We are using Pinterest, so if you want to take a look, click here. 

Here you have my contribution to this common banks of reosurces:

1. Timeglider.com  is a free web tool to create timelines. --> PIN on Pinterest.

Timeglider: web-based timeline software. Free online web tool to make timelines, which can be useful in CLIL classroom as a visual organizer for some contents, for instance in social science.

2. Pixton  is a web tool in which you can create comics for free. --> PIN on Pinterest.

PIXTON is an amazing free web tool which allows you to create wonderful comics easily. It is a greeat tool to work literacy in CLIL with students and, depending on their grade, they will be able to create their own comic and printed. In that way, they will be learning the language by using it

3. Piktochart is a free online tool that can be used to create infographics --> PIN on Pinterest. 

Piktochart is an amazing free online tool in which you can create infographics to make the information beautiful. This can be used with educational purposes to create really visual and eye catching posters, presentations or visual organizers for children. You can download the image and print it easily

4. Model making of Landscapes to learn science vocabulary while working creativity made by my children in class. They are 2nd graders --> PIN on Pinterest.

Model making to work landscapes. This was made by 2nd graders in my internship class and they learnt all the vocabulary about landscapes by using it. Model making is always a good idea in CLIL and they can also do a show and tell to practice oral skills. Here you have an idea to develop creativity in children while they learn without knowing.

5. Chef of volume: an e-publication by Marta Plaza, last year student on the same master --> PIN on Pinterest. 

CHEF OF VOLUME is an e-publication by Marta Plaza, a last year student of our Master. She created this lesson plan to work out volume with creative activities. I think that this is a good example of how to relate different contents while children learn in a fun way. You can finde this in her web page: sites.google.com/...

6. Manuel Cacicedo blog --> PIN on Pinterest.

Manuel Cacicedo English blog: mcacicedoenglish.... Here you can find lots of materials and reosurces to use in a CLIL classroom. I've followed him for 3 years now and I always find interesting things about english teaching! Hope you like it and you find it useful.

Hope you find it useful! If you know any amazing resource, please leave a comment below o contact me on my social networks! Thank you.

Reasons why I use Creative Commons License.

Hello everyone!

I just decided to put my blog under a Creative Commons license, particulary this one: Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International. You can see now the icon of my license at the end of my blog page. 

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization which helps you to share your knowledge and creative materials with the world taking into account that they have a value so the people who wants to share your creations has to give you some credit. 

First, you have to realize that, for education, sharing information with others is an important fact. Therefore, Creative Commons is aimed to develop the growth of a new education era in which everyone can share content without worries. 

My Creative Commons license allows other people to share the information as long as they do it in the same way. People can share my content by coping and distributing it in any medium or format. Moreover, they can adapt the information by transforming and building upon the material. The aforementioned terms will be permited under the following conditions:

• Give appropriate credit to the author, provide a link to my license and also mention whether they have made changes or not. 

• They are not allowed to use my material with commercial purposes.

• If they made some changes to the material, they have to distribute it under the same license. 

I have decided to have a license in my blog because here I post a lot of images and materials that I made my self and I don't want anyone to use them in a bad way. Actually, I'm not against someone who wants to use my materials, because that is the reason why I post them in this blog, but I want my  materials to be used with a great purpose contributing to education. 

Regarding my students, I will encourage them to share and use online materials as long as they realize that the materials belong to someone else, who has spent time creating them. In this way, reflecting on that, they will learn to value their own and others work. They will have to be aware that their own materials have a value and that they have to protect them in some way under the terms they decided. For that purpose, they can use Creative Commons in order to create a great community in which they will be able to share content respectfully.  

Besides, they will have to be aware that all the online content may be not free to use and that they can have a license that everyone wanting to share has to respect. 

All about me!

I'm Primary English Teacher. Right now, I am studying a Master's in Bilingual Education at Primary Schools at URJC in Madrid. 

When I was 6 years old I started to study musical lesson, particulary Piano lessons untill I was 15 years old. I consider that this kind of Education develop critial and creative thinking in my brain. 

Besides, when I was 15 and also 16, I travelled to USA to spend a month with a host family in order to improve my English. The first year, I went to Columbus, Ohio and the second year I went to Salt Lake City, Utah. This experience made me being what I am now and of course not only my English improved, but also I became more open-minded. 

Then, I decided to study a Degree on Primary Education with an English mention. While I was studying that, I had the opportunitty to spend a month in a english schoool abroad to do my internship, concretely in Coventry, UK. There, I was able to see different techniques and methods and grow my knowledge on the teaching field. 

I also did a part of the internship in a CRA school ( a group of associated rural schools with fewer children per class) and it was really interesting to learn how they work with different learning needs and levels and a lack of resources.

I'm interested in CLIL, ICT, new ideas and teaching methodologies, arts, music and diy projects. I love English learning and teaching. I love colaborative learning, I think that if you share ideas and opinions with others, you are enriching and widen your knowledge. 

If you want to know more about me, I recomend you to take a look at this.

If you want to contact me:

My personal e-mail: g.g.laura@hotmail.com
On skype:  laura gonzalez garcia / caracola_laura

On Twitter: @LauraGonGar5

On Pinterest: @LauraGonGar5

Learning by twittering

Hello again everyone!

This time I want to tell you about Twitter! Surely, you already know a lot of twitter and probably you have a twitter account. Actually here you have mine: @LauraGonGar5 just in case you want to follow me!

If you don't have a Twitter account, I would strongly recomend you to join the Twitter community and start following interesting thing to widen your learning. You should take into account that you will need an eye-catching user name, a good profile picture and some information about you in your bio.

With this post, I want to share all the things you can do with twitter in order to improve your knowledge about everything you want. You just have to follow people or things you are interested in.
For instance, since I am an English and biligüal English primary teacher I want to keep my knowledge updated and maintain a nonstop learning, so I use twitter to follow educational information and some teachers around the world among others.

I not only follow people but also I publish things which I consider interesting for the community. In other words, twitter is a social network which allows you as a teacher to exchange ideas and widen your teaching-learning knowledge.

Currently, I am studying a Master's Degree in Bilingual Education and still learning a lot about CLIL and here you have my own definition of this amazing teaching approach combining content and language learning:

If you are reading this and you are looking forward to learn more about CLIL, you can share publications like mine using the haghstag: #ictclil_urjc . Here the students of the Master's Degree in Bilingual Education (at URJCin Madrid) publish amazing facts about CLIL.

As far as I see it, twitter allows you to learn just wherever you are and whenever you want. Therefore, you are always connected and updated. 

Learn something about me: 3,2,1 Introduction

Hello again!

A 3, 2, 1 Introduction is a way of presenting interesting information about you in 3 steps: tell 3 things that people should know about you, then share 2 of your passions or things you like, and last but not least tell everyone your dream occupation you would have if you weren't what you are right now. 

To produce my 3,2,1 introduction I've used Pixton, which is an interesting web tool to create personalised comics. When I was thinking which tool I was going to use to make my personal introduction, I surfed the web page and I see PIXTON, inmediately caught my attention as it has a very colourful icon. Also, I thougth that it would be a great and original way of producing my own digital identity.

 It is a very useful, original and full of details. You can add your own characters, backgrounds, objects and also edit them in a great variety of size, proportion, colour. It offers you a great amount of pre-designed elements to create your perfect comic. It is also very realistic since you can change everything about your character as facial expression, clothes, hair cut, accesories, gestures and also move parts of the body and all the surrounding elements. Moreover,  Since we are teachers, we can extrapolate this to our field of study putting it into practice in class, in order to develop children's creativity and critical thinking.

It has a lot of advantages as I have described before, but it also have some disadvantages. One thing that it can be changed is that it would be useful to have the possibility to transform the comic in an animated video once you have finished. Also, if you could transform it into a video you would be able to add some music to it to make it more visual and interactive. 

 While I was using this tool, I felt inlove with this amazing tool because it has a lot of detailed things and I love to create things like these. So I would recomend it because it is a easy-to-use web tool, it is free and you can also publish, share and save your comic in many different ways. Moreover it would provide you with an original way to make a personal introduction or tell a story.

My PLE and PLN for CLIL

Hello everybody! I was looking forward to share my PLE and PLN, so here you have it 

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My PLE and PLN en piktochart 

When I started to design this mindmap I thought that I didn't have enough sources of information, but then I realized that we can learn from everything that surround us just by using the right resources and tools.  I have used Piktochart, a free online web tool to create colorful infographics. I totally recomend you to try it because the results are amazing. Nevertheless, at first could be kinda difficult but when you start trying all the posibilities it becomes easy.

Regarding my knowledge about CLIL, I have to say that I have learned all I know from my classes at Salamanca University when I was studying my specialisation in English in the 3rd and 4th years of my degree. During those academic years I had 6 subjects related with CLIL so I learn a lot about this topic. I consider that as crucial knowledge for my future as a bilingual teacher.

After finishing my Primary Education degree there, I moved to Madrid in order to continue learning, so I decided to start a Masters degree in bilingual education in which I am learning a lot of new things about CLIL.
Moreover, not only the classes at the University but also social networks are keeping me on track whit CLIL. For instance, whit twitter you can be up to date on CLIL with a simple click on your phone, tablet or computer wherever and whenever you want it. What is more, you can share with your community all the interesting information you find and your own ideas.

Related with that, to interact whit my peers I also use twitter because it's so easy to use. Furthermore, I also use whatsapp, skype, instagram, google hangouts (similar to skype), google drive, dropbox, facebook. Here we can share information and learn from eachother which I consider a good way to obtain a top quality knowledge.
In the infographic I have shared you can also see what I currently use to improve and keep up my knowledge about CLIL. You probably know the vast majority of them, but I will explain some which I think are interesting for you, just in case you haven't heard about them.
* TEDtalks: is a nonprofit organization to spread ideas using powerful talks. Here you can find a lot of speeches related with Education and Technology among other topics. I recomend you to use it because they are amazing!
* Coursera: it is a webpage in which you can join free online courses about everything you want and they also gave you a diploma when you finish a course.

Hope it was helpful!

Laura

Do you happen to know phonics?

Hello everyone!

I decided to write a new post in which you can see the other blog I owned. It is aimed to phonics and some resources related. Just in case you want to get some inspiration or maybe you are looking for activities to work phonics in the classroom.

http://doyouhappentoknowphonics.blogspot.com.es/

This blog has its origin in when I was doing my Primary Education degree in Salamanca University. I had a subject in which I created lots of materials and activities. Since I think that nowadays learning and sharing ideas online it is the best way of get top quality learning, I decided to create a blog to publish all the thing I did. I hope you can learn things from it and you are free to take them and use it in your class if you think that they can be useful for your students and their necesities.