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!

Great memories

Thanks!!!

"I'm hating it"

I won't deny I used the ungrammatical "I'm hating it" phrase on purpose. I wanted to draw a comparision between McDonald's commercial and my experience as regards HotPotatoes. 

The first aspect I found annoying was that it lacks practicality. First of all, you need to download the application. Then you can start producing, for instance, a quiz. Its format is not clear and you won't get to see the final product until you publish it. In addition, I was hard to find the button where you change the colour of the quiz. It does not allow you to personalise it much. As you have to pay "fairly cheap" according to the producers, if you want to publish your work, you need to create a demo account. 

When you see what you have done, you cannot but feel depressed. 

Either I was bad at using it or the tool's aim is to make users' lives miserable. I hope it is the first alternative.

This is link to the quiz I created using Hot Potatoes. It serves the purpose of giving a context to the isolated sentences the book provides in the listening task. 

CorelDRAW for Leaflets and more...

In this post, I was eager to share something about a new tool I'm learning to use. To be honest, I was relunctant to learn how to use Corel at first, since my brother and sister helped me by editing the content and images I provided them with, and it really saved time. That happened until my sister told me she would not help any more. She thought I ought to learn to do it myself. My brother, who still was willing to help, had a term exam at university. And the fun was over. 

Luckily, I am now proud to say that I was able to do it on my own! This is my first production: Cards for a Memory game. Students were supposed to find the two parts of the sentences. We are dealing with occupations and the first conditional. 

My last task is still in the process of being improved. I designed a new leaflet advertising a course on VideoGames and an article about The Sims, which is the only computer game I enjoy. I'm using them tomorrow for my fourth week at school. Here it is: Game Designer and The Sims

For my lesson on Wednesday I had thought about using these materials. I believe I may be using them next week, but it would be nice to get some feedback from you: Music Teacher and "Count on me" Song.

Even though, I'm glad I am using new tools, I still think there is long way to go until I produce something more appealing to the eye. 

Time for Popplet in the fifth course

Last week lessons were very nice. I really enjoyed them and, apparently, the wordle served its purpose! So this week, I'm giving Popplet a try.

As I mentioned in the previous post, occupations is the topic we are working. This Wednesday, students will be watching the video : Being a nurse and analysing it. At the end of the lesson they will be able to complete a leaflet advertising the job. Before watching the video, the popplet will help them predict some issues that are present in it. Here it is: Popplet

Other materials I need to design these days are leaflets, but I still don't feel my production is good enough. My brother helped me out with the leaflet for the acting profession. I'd like to share mine so that you have a great time laughing at it, and, luckily, you may give me some advices in how to improve it. Become an actor!

Wordle at Secondary School

Tomorrow I'm starting my teaching practices at Secondary School. The unit of work we will be dealing with is about occupations. Their final task is to produce a leaflet to order to advertise a particular course or profession. This task is related to the concerns students in the fifth course have, as most of them are undergoing the process of choosing what they want to do next year.

As part of the requierements, the teacher asked me to use the set of notes they already have. So I decided to work with an article: The price of fame

While working and analysing the article, I prepared some Tasks in which they have to brainstorm occupations they know and they reasons why somebody may choose to study or work as a particular profession. In addition, they will do a pre-reading task with the wordle, predicting which paragraphs and photo is connected with the word cloud they have below. Later on, they will read the article and check their predictions.

In my next post, I will be able to say whether this kind of task was appropriate and motivating for these students. Fingers crossed!

When you feel the third conditional

At times you have the feeling something could have been better. It can happen while organising an event, or when you have not said the right words to the right person. It can be when you bought the wrong item, or made copies of notes that you didn't need. It may also happen when you do a practical work on material design. And there the third conditonal comes on the scene. 

However, what's good about any learning process is that you always have the chance to try again, to do your best, you surpass yourself... Here is a new version of the popplet!

New Popplet

The elephant and his friends + Error analysis + Pecha Kucha + Wordle

At the institute where I work, the lessons taught in August were devoted to the topic of animals and their abilites. Since we were preparing for the Open House at the end of that month, the story "The elephant and his friends" was recorded and practise by learners so that during the special lesson they were able to acted it out while listening to their own voices. 

The recording process was quite a challenge for the nine-to-twelve year-old children. Even though they have heard the story a considerable number of times and they knew the vocabulary, many errors were present in  the recording. 

The elephant and his friends (adapted version)

"The elephant and his friends" became more relevant when, as part of our Phonetics IV, we were supposed to present a Pecha Kucha dealing with a topic we liked. While we discussed our possibilities regarding the topic, we tought it would be interesting to analyse the errors young learners have produced while recording the story. Of course, we could make use of the bibliography we had for the subject, which enabled us to identify those errors which should be high priority as well as those which were low priority or even optional attention. 

I had in mind again the story in our subject ECO material design when I wanted to try a tool for generating "word clouds" . We have been working with Web 2.0 tools, Wordle being a case in point. When I first learnt about it, it occured to me that, though it was eye-catching, there was no real purpose for using it. However, I have been reflecting upon the advantages of it and the fact that there is a certain logic behind this cloud generator, probably different from the one I am used to. Now, I believe it may provide a good pre-reading task so that learners start predicting what the text will be about. As well, it gives teachers a clear idea of those words which appear more often, consequently, it may make easier the decision of using a particular material , as we can see clearly whether that vocabulary is the one we want to concentrate on. 

Surveys

Some time ago I carried out a survey on the topic of education. The question I proposed was: Which of the following factors do you think influence education in our country the most? Four alternatives were available: 1. Educational policies; 2. Teachers' practices; 3. Students' attitudes and 4. Culture in general.

To be honest, I thought the outcome would reflect my own answer to this issue (culture in general) and the aim of the survey was to try out the new tool. However, the results were totally different from what I expected. The answers showed that 50% of the people who participated think that teachers' practices influence education the most.

These days, while reflecting on what the survey revealed, I am considering that such a complex topic could be better adressed in another way (for instance, a post) so that I have the chance to read not only the opinions but also the reason why they chose a particular option. Nevertheless, people willing to participate might not have time to devote to this task.

Brian's post on videogames made me think about the possible reactions educators may have towards the use of these tools. As we are in our last year at the teacher training programme, it would be interesting to know what our classmates' opinions are as regards this topic.

The new survey about videogames is going to be in the blog for a week. I look forward to your answers. Thank you!

England: the "what" Presentations: the "How"

Working on our second practical work was a really enriching experience, for both the tools and the content. The practical work involved preparing a presentation, either Power Point or Prezi, in the context of a lesson. As well, we were given different topics. Alejandra and I had to work with the topic: "Travelling", which allowed us to focus on any specific item we liked. We eventually came out with the idea of a journey to England. 

You may have a look at the Prezi Presentation and the audio files 1 , 2 and 3, which we have prepared and recorded, meant to accompanied the presentation. In addition, I attach the lesson plan we made up, having in mind a group of teenagers with an intermediate level of English and working with a task-based methodology.

One interesting experience I'd like to share is that, while looking for information to write the script for the listening task, I came across the British Parliament website: http://www.parliament.uk/. Since I was looking for some characteristics of Westminster, it was marvellous to look at the online tours of the palace, in the "Visiting" section. As well, I found they provide educators with resources to help students become responsible citizens by learning more about how the legislative branch works. In the "Education" section, teachers have the chance to download lesson plans, handouts and supporting materias; this power point presentation is an illustration of the resources the website provides. There are also a wide variety of games with educational purposes, such as this one: Create my UK. 

Our old companion Power Point and the unknown guy Prezi

While reading Santiago's blog, particularly his comment on the Power Point we worked on in Literature II last year, I remembered my best work with this tool. To be honest, I acknowledge it is not so impressive, but I recall the time it took and my special concern on making it look eye-catching. Feel free to judge it. The importance of being Earnest - Act II

Last friday, I met with Alejandra in order to think of our lesson about travelling. We have chosen to develop our presentation with Prezi, just to give it a try. At the beginning, I felt puzzled about it. Luckily, Ale is more of a digital native than I am. Even though we spent more than four hours - a long period of time - it was really enriching for two main reasons: we used Prezi successfully for the first time ever and we could give the Presentation our personal touch (for instance, the listening task will be the description of a journey around England, visiting places where Harry Potter's scenes were filmed and The Beatles's hometown.)

This Tutorial I found in Youtube was of interest. Have a look at it, if you feel like doing so:

The history of technology

I would like to share this video. As the title reads, it is about Technology in Education. After watching it, the first thing that came to my mind was whether we can really think of this kind of classroom in our days. Can we think a of a classroom with all these resources available for each learner?

Being a material designer

In my primary teaching practice, I design the materials for each lesson. I found this task really time-consuming but I came to appreciate its many benefits.

As a teacher, it is essential to bear in mind what students already know and try to relate it with the new language they are to learn; in order to help subsumption take place. When you design your own material, you reflect this relation. Since the boys and girls I am teaching have already dealt with places where you can buy food and they are learning some new food vocabulary, this Clasification Task would help them relate the knowledge they have and what they are learning.

In addition, while designing your own materials, you show your understanding not only of the learning process in general but also of the way your students learn according to their age. In Piaget's theory, pupils in the primary classroom are thought to be in the concrete stage. Consequently, they will find it difficult to deal with abstract concepts. While using Flashcards, they have access to concrete objects.

As part of a task-based methodology, in our first lesson young learners were presented with Tasks related to Top Chef, a radio programme. Their final task is to produce a similar programme in groups of four. In the process, they have written ridiculous recipes. While checking their productions, I saw that the organisation of the recipe is not clear for them (name, ingredients and their quantities and cooking instructions) so I decided to make it more explicit by designing both the Empanadas Recipe and the Flan Recipe.

I am still thinking of more practical ways of designing the materials for the lessons. So far, I have used Internet to download images, Paint and Microsoft Office Picture Manager to alter them, Audacity to record a listening, Microsoft Power Point in the presentations I have downloaded from BusyTeacher.org (just as a source of information), and Microsoft Word and Excel to organise materials, eventually exporting them to a pdf format. I hope I go on learning new tools to make my designing more efficient.

Pecha Kucha

During our Material Design lessons, some comments about Pecha Kucha aroused my curiosity. At first I misunderstood that it was a software in order to work with presentations, similar to Power Point and Prezi, but it was not. Even though it turned out to be a simple presentation format -showing 20 images, each for 20 seconds-, while exploring its official website (Pecha Kucha) I realised how challenging it was.

The most relevant aspect of this format is the time constraint, which involves being very concise. Consequently, Pecha Kucha is highly likely to require much preparation time and rehearsal. Other characteristics to be taken into account regarding Pecha Kucha are the organasation of the information and the selection of pictures/words to be displayed. As in any case in which you want to convey a particular message to an audience, it is an intellectually demanding task.

At the website, I could see many presentations recorded during Pecha Kucha nights. I enjoyed one of them whose title was eye-catching:   "Changing the World - One Smile at a time" A moving experience which I believe it's worthy the 6.40 minutes it takes.

busyteacher.org

While analysing web pages which provide resources for teachers in our Material Design lessons, it occured to me that it was interesting to have a look at one of the tools I use on a regular basis: http://busyteacher.org.

When it comes to the main advantage of BusyTeacher I can say that it's packed with lots of materials. They've been uploaded by different teachers from all over the world and you also have the chance of sharing your own tasks or teaching ideas with others. (I've uploaded my first materials to the page and they've approved and published it! - Cake Recipe )

As well, the page is organised in clear categories such as vocabulary and grammar, and has brief descriptions of each material. There is also a "search" at the top of the page which is really useful. 

As regards the drawbacks of the site, there used to be no preview of the materials published, making any search more time-consuming. Fortunately, the site has been updated recently and now there is a quick view, and you don't need to download each file.

Last Friday I was looking for some verbs and vocabulary related to cooking in BusyTeacher and I came across a power point I really like. I've downloaded it and I'd love to share it with you: Cooking file (Here's also the link to the web page Cooking on BusyTeacher so that you can see the description that accompanies the file)

All in all, I strongly recommend this site because it fosters cooperation among teachers. 

Audacity

As part of the fourth workshop of my course, I'm teaching at the primary classroom at a local school in Santa Fe, Argentina. Taking into account the characteristics of the sixth grade I've just started teaching and the topic I was assigned, I decided the pupils and I will be engage in a project of producing a radio programme about cooking. In order to present them with their final task, three friends from the teacher education programme and I worked on the recording of our own radio programme. 

We achieve our aim by using Audacity, an audio editor. It's amazing how much time we saved by making use of this tool, as it allowed us to mix audio. For instance, if one of us made a mistake, we didn't need to start the whole programme again, but just cut that part out of the file. 

I'm sharing with you our final product. Hope you enjoy it!

"TOP CHEF" by Agustín Echeverría, Farah Schneider, Brian Holzinger and Emiliana Antoniazzi.