Voki and American holidays.

I decided to focus on a Web 2.0 tool that I've seen before but I hadn't tried out. Voki allows you to create an animated character which is able to talk about a topic of your preference either by recording yourself and inserting your own voice or by typing what you want the character to say. The first conclusion I have reached regarding Voki is that it can be easily applied to the classroom since it provides plenty of opportunities to learn English as part of a goal-oriented task: the production of a unique character.

While reflecting upon the way I could use it in the classroom, I came up with an interesting idea. I've been teaching a group of twenty fourteen-to-seventeen years-old teenagers who were given a scholarship by the American embassy. What is special about this course is that, unlike other English courses, the learning of the language is given as much importance as the learning of the American culture. The programme places an emphasis on developing certain values related to citizenship as well as the learning of American celebrations and holidays. During the school year, we carried out various cultural activities, such as visiting the chamber of Deputies and attending a talk about 'Disabilities'. In addition, we carried out community service activities like going to the special education school N°2009 Dr. Monte Agudo in our city to play with children and teach them a song in English.

The poster one group prepared for "Memorial Day"

Given the singularity of the teaching situation, it was almost impossible to find appropiate teaching materials that my elementary-level students could do. Most of the available resources were targeted at an intermediate or advanced level of English. At the beginning, I managed to adapt some worksheets that previous teachers have used but, when I felt more confident, I started creating both digital and printed material myself.

When I created my animated character using Voki, I realised that we could have worked with it when learning about some celebrations, for instance Halloween. A motivating task for adolescents could have been to prepare an animated character, such as a witch with a background of a haunted house, with a brief explanation of what the holiday was about. 

I hope I have the chance to plan a similar task for next year students. In the meantime, I prepared my own Voki, saying what we wrote about it for our Pecha Kucha presentation. My Voky about Voki. 

Educaplay: Necessity is the mother of invention.

You may be wondering why I have drawn such a connection between this tool and this proverb. In fact, there needs to be an adjustment of the latter to serve its communicative purpose.
These months since my last post were full of enriching experiences. I've lived unforgettable moments with new people in an attempt to share my passion towards learning a foreign language. Technology has been an essential and irreplaceable tool in this process of building my own teaching practices. It has helped find materials to make lessons interesting; it has inspired games or entertaing actitivites and it has kept me in contact with students in various ways. Therefore, during this year I've realised how important it is to be constantly innovating and bringing new ideas to lessons.
As the title of the entry reads: 'Necessity is the mother of invention'. To my mind, this proverb gives the message that ingenious solutions to challenges come up when you really need them. In other words, when you have set a particular objective that you want to accomplish and this aim becomes a necessity for you, you will do your best to find a way out.
One of my teaching aims has been to transmit the feeling that learning a language is an enjoyable experience. Though, at times, I've felt that I lacked ideas or resources to achieve my aim.

When Farah, Agustín, Brian and I designed our Pecha Kucha, we included Educaplay in our list of the tools we wished to talk about. The 20 seconds we devoted to it appreciated the benefits of using it so that entertainment and learning go hand in hand. At the time, we had little time and I didn't have the chance to create my own account and desing an activity of my own.
As Prensky states in his article 'Digital Natives, Digital Immigrats', an immigrant can be recognised when they call a friend to check the reception of an email, when they print a document to edit it or when they read the manual for a program before using it. Regarding Educaplay, I did my effort not to have the reaction of an immigrant: I decided to give it a try without reading anything about it beforehand.
I succeeded in creating my account, browsing the galleries for learning resources and creating my own activity. I still need to go on exploring the uses and benefits of the site. In my opinion, it has undergone the quality controls so far.

I have a dream: Discrimination and US History

I do have a dream.

While working on a project about discrimination with my teenage students, I wanted to share with them some important events about the U.S. History. The challenge I had was to plan an interesting lesson, not one in which they start to hate learning about the past. Luckily, I remembered a video my classmates in the teaching training programme have shown us about "Dreams". The video was part of the film "Tangled", kind of a version of the old fairy tale Rapunzel. 

I've prepared this worksheet to deal with the topic. The idea is to start by asking them how they feel about learning History. Then, we will discuss whether they have dreams and they will be able to speak about them.

After that, I will show them the video Tangled - I have a dream (lyrics) and ask them what they think this sentence means:

“We’ve got a dream… so our differences ain’t really that extreme”

Finally, I intend to speak about the famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King about equality in the United States. This will be an introduction for the presentation of  their case studies, regarding not only racial discrimination but also gender discrimination, discrimination against women and bullying. 

I will encourage them to find out more about this topic at home. Hopefully, students will remember this key event by laughing at the video and sharing their own dreams and hopes. 

Trace Effects

Today I was first introduced to this video game, TRACE EFFECTS, which aims to help students learn English while having fun. Since I've been really into The Sims, a life-simulator game, I found Trace Effects awesome!

I didn't have the time to discover many details about the game itself, but I do know that the main character, Trace, has come from the future accidentally and wants to go back. The game consists of helping him achieve this objecitve. 

It's especially designed to teach English so it provides tasks to learn and practise the same language points that appear in the game. Another advantage it gives is that it is available to play online. You can find more information in this link http://americanenglish.state.gov/trace-effects. As soon as I try it with students, I'm sure  I'll have more to share. 

I'm back!

I am sorry it's been so long since the last time I updated my blog. I'm really glad to start blogging again. 

I'm very enthusiastic about sharing the materials I produce as well as those different tools I find interesting.

During the time I haven't posted, I've been learning to use new tools to teach English, as the interactive whiteboard. I have also tried out some websites and games that proved to be motivating for learners. I've designed a wide range of activities and tasks, some of which were meant to be part of an assessment process. I will be sharing and writing about all of them soon!