My learning journey with ICT...

Hello my friends!

Today I’m feeling glad and sad at the same time. “How is it possible?” you may ask… Well, on the one hand, I’m glad to share with you my last ICT challenge; but, on the other hand, I’m sad because this crazy journey with ICT is almost over!

Here you have the last mission: we were asked to create a multimedia presentation in order to describe the learning journey throughout this course.

In order to do it, and among all the tools provided, I used the one called “Capzles”.

Why “Capzles”? Because it is a great free online tool which allows you to create very visual presentations using a timeline template. As it is an online tool, we need to “log in” (as we did in previous challenges with other tools). After that, you are more than ready to create your presentation!

With Capzles it is possible to include your own materials: pictures, videos, music, podcasts and so on. Thanks to that, you can personalise your presentations according to your needs.

The only drawback that it has, from my point of view, is the fact that you cannot insert pictures or videos directly from the web, for example, from YouTube. You have to download it and then, add it.

If you click here or on the picture above, you’ll have all the information about this great web tool.

In this presentation, as you will see, I used many pictures of my previous challenges -that you already know since you have read my blog- to make it clearer and easier to follow. I also added a podcast describing and reflecting about each mission according to the images.
Click here to check out my Capzles, or visit the following link if you prefer: http://www.capzles.com/2212038f-42e0-497c-a0a4-524ab6b9d160

Thanks to this last challenge I could reflect about my learning process throughout this course. We have spent so many time so as to create our artifacts, investigating the new tools, comparing them… that I cannot believe that it is about to finish!

If I look back, I can still remember my first days in this course. I could not imagine that I would be able to create all the artifacts and projects that I did! That’s rewarding. 

Related with that, I have to confess that the challenge I enjoyed the most was the choco-talk. I have never done anything like this before, and it was great! With this task we learnt not only to work in groups, but also to have fun discussing CLIL methodology in a completely different way while developing the ICT skills at the same time! Do you remember our choco-talk? Click here or on the picture if you don’t!

About the tool I liked the most, it was Aurasma (click here to know more about this tool). I have never heard about it before and I was amazed when I discovered it. It is incredible the fact that with this app, a simple picture can be brought back to live! Don’t you think so?

Finally, I would like to say thank you to my teacher, Mª Jesús and to my classmates from #ictclil_urjc as well for having given me the chance of becoming aware of the importance and usefulness of ICT for supporting us, as teachers. I realize the necessity of being always up to date, besides trying to innovate. There are no excuses: our pupils are the future, so we have to be ready and adapt out teaching methodologies to their new e-needs!

And that’s all my friends. I hope you have learnt as much as I did while enjoying my blog. I look forward to hearing from you, so do not hesitate on commenting!

Thank you for reading,

Raquel

Rubric to evaluate my e-project!

Hello blogger friends!

Here is my new challenge: evaluation of my e-project.

As you know, my classmates and I have created an e-project (click here to know more about it) as I told you in the previous posts. For this mission I have to create a rubric of evaluation in order to assess this e-project.

First of all, and after having been investigating different web tools to create the rubric, I finally chose the one called “Quick Rubric”. As it is a web tool, you will need first to create an account by clicking on “log in”, and then, on “I’m a new user”. After that, you fill in the gaps provided using your personal data and that’s all, you are ready to create your evaluation rubric!
Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Quick Rubric provides you with a template of a rubric, so you only have to fill it with the information or criteria that you will use for your evaluation. You can also modify the number and the order of the columns and the rows that you will use, so it is possible to personalise it however you want according to your ideas.

All the options appear directly in the screen, so it is very intuitive: you only have read! 

I have highlighted using different shapes and colours for you to visualize them easier.
Click on the picture to make it bigger. 

  

Furthermore, you can title the rubric and include a description of it in order to clarify what your rubric is about. About the score rating, Quick Rubric allows you to change it and adapt it to your own criteria. Once you finish, save it and you will get an URL to share the rubric. The web tool will send it to the e-mail account that you provided when creating the account. You also have the option to print it directly from the web page.  
Click on the picture to make it bigger.

What is more, if you then decide to change something, you can edit your rubric and share it again. And, of course, everything for free!

Related with that, I have to say that it could be a drawback due to it is not possible to share the rubric online directly from the tool. Furthermore, the number of columns and rows is limited, so you have to take into account the number of elements that you are going to assess if you use this tool.

Despite the disadvantages mentioned above, I recommend you to use it because of its simplicity and intuitive use as you could see. It is a very simple tool which allows you to create evaluation rubrics very quickly and personalising it according to your evaluation criteria and to your own needs.

Just click here to have a look at my rubric of evaluation, or visit the following link: https://www.quickrubric.com/r#/qr/raqueldial/evaluation-of-e-projects2

You are more than welcome to use it in order to evaluate my e-project! Let me know my mark!




To sum up, I would like to share with you that after doing this challenge, I realised the importance of the assessment and even more, the self assessment. When you create a project, an artifact, or simply do a task, you always try to do your best in order to reach a nice outcome. Once we finish, in general, we forget about it and move on to a new thing. However, as a rule, we do not think about it twice; and the fact is that it can always be improved! This way we can be aware of our own mistakes and avoid them in our future projects. Don’t you think so?

Thanks for reading!

Raquel

World book day!

Hi bloggers!

As you know, this Saturday 23 April is the World Book Day. Because of that, our new mission is related with this special day.

For this challenge we were asked to present one of our favourite books creating a collage and then, add a clip to the picture using Aurasma.

To begin with, I used the web tool called Canva to create the poster. You may ask why, and I will tell you that, as you know if you read my previous posts, we made a tutorial explaining how to use this tool, so I put into practice what I knew about it!

Here you have the tutorial if you do not remember it, and also in the following link: http://www.genial.ly/View/Index/5712001b1561e807349c6fa0

Canva is a great tool as it allows you to create nice posters using your own pictures. The main problem of this tool, from my point of view, is that many of the resources provided are not free.  Anyway, it offers many facilities to use and create very visual posters. Here is the process of mine, do you like it?

The next step was to create a clip explaining what sort of books I like, the features that define me as a reader and finally, why the book chosen is my favourite one. In order to do it, I used Movie Maker adding different pictures, respecting, of course the copyright. All the images used are free of it.

Related with Movie Maker, I have to say that I love this tool! It is very intuitive, easy and varied. It allows you to personalised and create your own videos in a few minutes, using many different tools to modify it. It also offers the possibility to add more videos, podcasts, pictures, songs… Thanks to that, you can design your creation however you want! You do not need to follow a template already done as it happens with other tools.

I uploaded the video to the blog for those who may have problems using Aurasma:

Finally, I downloaded Aurasma app to my mobile phone in order to create an account. Do you  know what is it? I have to say that I have never heard about Aurasma before my classmates Álvaro, Neus and Marta created a tutorial about this app. Thanks to them I could learn how it works so as to use it in this new challenge.

You can watch their great tutorial if you click here or in the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1CWdit80hU&feature=youtu.be

After using Aurasma I realised that it is a great tool in the sense that it makes possible to bring back to life a simple picture or image. It is incredible! Using this app you can convert a creation in 3D in a very easy way, and that amazed me.

Here you have my final task, discover more using Aurasma! 

Moreover, the rest of my classmates did also this task and we shared all of them in a collaborative board called “A Wall of Books” in Pinterest. If you want to have a look at them, just click here or visit the following link: https://es.pinterest.com/mjgsm/a-wall-of-books/ Or, if you prefer, click here and see only my pin! 

Sigue el tablero A Wall of Books de Mª Jesús en Pinterest.

And… that’s all for today! Thanks for reading!  

Raquel

A sweet CLIL discussion: our chocotalk!

Hi bloggers!

Today I am so proud of showing you a great summary of our new challenge: a chocotalk. Do you know what is it? After reading this blog you will know it! You can also click here to know everything about chocotalks.

Two weeks ago, the 7^th of April, my classmates and I did a chocotalk about “How CLIL can contribute to having happier bilingual learners”. In order to do that, we worked in groups: I was in the same as in the previous challenges described, with Patricia, Celia, and Natalia.

Each of us had a specific role in this mission:

• Patricia was the speaker in the chocotalk, giving opinions and proposals about the topics that appeared during the talk.
• Natalia was the “content curator”, responsible for writing a summary about the chocotalk, including the most important topics and ideas said in it.
• Celia and I were the “disseminators”. We had to pay attention to the chocotalk and write tweets about it in order to spread the word! We used the hashtags #chococharlas and #ictclil_urjc. So if you want to read something about our chocotalk, have a look at them!

The first thing we did in order to prepare our chocotalk was to find out about it. I have never heard about chocotalks, neither my classmates… So we read in “Tertulias con sabor a chocolate” everything we had to know about this new challenge.

After that, we made a draft about what Patricia (our speaker) would say during the chocotalk: the topics were related with CLIL, motivation, ideas for planning good lessons…

Then, during the chocotalk each of us did our role (the ones explained above). Personally, being a disseminator was quite hard and funny at the same time as I had to pay attention not only to the chocotalk to write tweets about them, but also to other people who were commenting about our chocotalk in order to answer their doubts or questions about it. The fact of seeing that other people (not only our classmates) were also interested in us (in our ideas, projects, proposals…) was rewarding. Thanks to this role, we made the chocotalk more interactive and participative since when there was a question about the topic that the speakers were dealing with, we had to ask it to them.   

Finally, to end up this new mission our team created a great and complete summary of the chocotalk using “Storify”. You can see it if you click here.

I would like to say that I did not know about this tool, Storify. I think it is very useful because it allows you to summarise everything which was said in Twitter and other social networks related to a specific topic (or more than one) in a very visual way. Its easy makes Storify a suitable tool that may be introduced in our classroom, dealing with ICT and learning new web tools.

About the challenge, I believe that it was a very interesting task that involved all the students: the fact of having specific roles ensure full participation, which was great. We all had fun at the same time we learnt new things: the use of new tools and the experience of having participated in a chocotalk!

If you want to watch the complete chocotalk, click hereor on the following video:

Thanks for reading! I am looking forward to hearing from you about this new challenge!

Raquel

Creating a collaborative slideshow that supports learners!

Good afternoon bloggers!

I would like to present you our last group mission. In this case, we created a collaborative slideshow about a CLIL aim related with our common e-project that supports learners. How did we do that? Keep reading!

As you know, Natalia, Celia, Patricia and I created a common CLIL e-project about the body and the senses (click here to refresh the memory).

In our project, pupils have to create a poster about the body and the senses using Canva. For this reason, we decided to create a tutorial for our children in order to explain how to use Canva, because they might need help with it.

We all agreed to use the web tool “Genial.ly” to create our tutorial because is a free online tool which allows you to make original presentations. We would recommend it as it provides lots of images, frames and templates to create them. In addition, Genial.ly allows you to link many other sources such as YouTube or Soundcloud as well as including your own images, which is great. There are many templates available which are attractive and useful depending on the topic you are going to work with. However, we found a drawback the fact that you need Internet connection if you want to change or show your creation, although you can download it. But, in general terms, we believe that it is a great resource to be introduced in our classroom both for teachers and students. For all these reasons we will highly recommend it!

Here you can find our tutorial, and also in the following link: http://www.genial.ly/View/Index/5712001b1561e807349c6fa0

What's more, this is going to be part of the "AporTICs" nationwide collaborative project, which means that our artifact will be posted in their blog! Do you want to know more about the project? Click here or on the picture to get all the information! 

They even gave us an award for having participated! Here it is:

Related with the challenge we were asked for, I would like to say that I found it very interesting and useful. When I do not know how to use a tool, web tool or whatever, I always try to look for tutorials in order to clarify my doubts. So now, it was my turn to create one so as to help others, my pupils in this case. Thanks to that I realised the importance and usefulness of tutorials that we, as teachers, should take into account when introducing new tools to our students. They can even create them! This way we will be dealing with ICT and peer teaching-learning at the same time.

If you have any question, please, contact us! 

Thank you for reading! Do not hesitate to comment my blog.

Raquel

Double mission: planning and recording a video challenge!

Hi friends!

Do you want to see our next challenge? Here it is!

Now we were asked to plan and create a video challenge for our collaborative CLIL e-project.

Again, as in the previous challenge, this was a teamwork, and we worked in the same group as we did before keeping also the same roles: Natalia, Celia, Patricia and I.

The first part of the challenge consisted of creating a storyboard for the video challenge (which was the second part of the mission) to include in our CLIL e-project.

As we were not sure about storyboards, we looked for some examples to clarify the concept. Thanks to that we realised that a storyboard consisted of drawings and notes in frames that represent a scene in our future video challenge. So it was a kind of “draft” for our video.

The next step was to choose the suitable tool for creating the storyboard. Among many possibilities such as Storyboard Generator, Storyboard Template for Google Drive, Storyboard Maker free Android app, we finally chose Storyboard That. You may ask why, right? Well, here I will explain our decision. The first think we liked was the huge range of possibilities that it provides: you can choose many different images, scenes, backgrounds, texts… It offers the option to develop your story in a school (as we did in our storyboard), outdoors, in castle… About the characters used, it is also possible to pesonalise them according to your needs. The only thing that it does not allow you to include sounds, and that would be nice to make the comic more interactive from our point of view. What I want to say is that you can choose, for example, their physical appearance and their face expression, but not the voice. Anyway, thanks to that you have the opportunity to use this app in order to reach many goals, since you can customise the story for your own aims. Furthermore, I find it very interesting to use with our students since it is very visual and original. Moreover, it can also be used for them to create their own stories related with a subject, task… since this web tool is not difficult at all to use. With it, they are dealing with communicative and writing skills in a different way as they are used to do it, practicing ICT at the same time, and that will be motivating!

If you click here you can find our storyboard, and also in the following link: https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboards/93_nat/the-senses


Made with Storyboard That

Once we finished the storyboard, we moved on to the second part of the mission: recording a video challenge based on the storyboard we made.

It was not difficult to start with it as our comic was a kind of “draft” of our video, so we knew more or less the outline of our video. As we did in our storyboard, we recorded the video in a classroom. In order to make it more engaging, we pretended being students carrying our e-project out. Our proposal, as you can see in our video challenge if you click here, is that children create a poster about the body and the senses using the web tool Canva. In the video we also explain the steps they have to follow to reach the final outcome and the way we will assess the task.

In order to record the clip, we used an smartphone, and then we edited it with Movie Maker (you can get it just clicking here). From our point of view, Movie Maker is a great free resource (in Windows) to edit and create your own videos: it offers the possibility to add videos, pictures, music, sounds... Moreover, in our opinion this app is very easy to use because you can see all the features the tool offers at a first sight and it is very intuitive. Another advantage is that you can also use it without Internet connection. However, we consider that the main problem about this tool is that users from other computer systems (as Linux or Mac) may face more problems to use it; since they might not find the chance to download it or they may pay for it as the tool cannot have all the features included in the Windows version.

I would like to say that I often used this tool for some of the lesson I have carried out during my internship in order to present new contents, clarify some ideas… Children love it since the explanations were very neat and visual. I also included videos and images of real examples, and also pictures of the children, making the learning more personalised. Thanks to that children were engaged to the explanation. Movie Maker makes possible to use it in many different ways in your classroom.

There you have our final video, just click here or visit the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vXWjrxl8E0

Moreover, both, our storyboard and the video challenge are going to be part of a nationwide educational collaborative project called The ESL Times (click here to know more about the project), which is very exciting! Our ideas are published in their blog! I believe that it is a great idea to include the use of ICT in our classrooms, making it motivating and meaningful, since all the tasks have a real purpose. Furthermore, ESL gave us an award for having participated in this collaborative project with them!

Thanks for reading!

Raquel

Creating an InfoEduGraphic!

Hello bloggers!

Here I am again with a new challenge: creating an InfoEduGraphic.

In order to design this digital artifact we worked in groups. We had not had the chance of working in groups before in this subject, and I want to say that this was a great idea despite having some difficulties such as the need to get an agreement, arrange our free time to meet... Some of these difficulties were overcome because each member of the group has a role, so as to do the best of us.

The fact of working in groups allows us to share ideas, see different points of view and learn from each other. Thanks to that we also realised the importance of responsibility and respect, which are basic values for our life.

Our teacher made the groups according to the topic of our CLIL e-project, and we (Natalia, Celia, Patricia and I) were allocated in the group called “Natural Science: body” since all of us had a topic related with that. Here we had to find the first arrangement as our CLIL e-projects’ topics were similar, but not the same. Natalia and Celia focused more on the senses; meanwhile Patricia and I dealt with the body parts.

In order to create our common e-project we decided to mix all of them (tasks, topics and outcomes) and finally made the one called “The body and the senses”, in which our third graders will have to connect both the body parts and the senses.

Once we had clear our e-project, it was the time to think about including it in InfoGraphic format. At first, we did not know what that was, so we had to figure it out. Do you know what is it? Infographics are visual representations of information (data, knowledge, contents…). If you want to learn more about them, just click here.

After that, we had to think about how to create a visual and engaging Infographic in order to present our collaborative e-project. The main goal of it is to provide our pupils with a visual support for the main task they have to do, in order to ease the understanding to achieve all the learning outcomes arranged.

Then next step was to create the Infographic. After considering many options, we finally decided to design it with the web tool called Piktochart because we believed that it is a great e-tool which allows us to create engaging InfoGraphics in order to present projects and other kinds of visual presentations. Moreover, it offers many features, backgrounds, icons, pictures and templates to personalise our work as the customization is much nicer and it provides a dynamic experience rather than using traditional resources. Furthermore, it is possible to upload your own images, video, maps and modify them. From our point of view, Piktochart is a great free resource, available online so everybody can use it only by signing up - freely, too. For these reasons, we highly recommend it due to its simplicity and usefulness not only for teachers, but also for students. It is a good way to include ICT skills in school lessons.

What’s more, we had the chance to participate in a nationwide collaborative project thanks to InfoEduGraphics. We sent our collaborative e-project to infoEDUgrafías in order to publish it in their blog. They gave us an award for having participated in this great project! 

If your click here you can find our InfoGraphic about the body and the senses, and also, in the following link: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/12954813-body-and-senses

I hope you like it!

If you have any questions, please, let me know. I will be delighted to help you.

Raquel

My CLIL e-Project Prototype

Hi bloggers!

Here is my new challenge! We are creating a CLIL e-Project, and here you have my prototype. After thinking about a suitable topic for my e-Project, I finally chose “The parts of the body” since it is a topic learnt during the whole Primary Education, and it would be useful for my future as a teacher.

You can find the prototype of my e-Project in the following link in Google Docs, where I explain my unit, objectives, outcomes, resources, tasks…
The link is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ec4TeHa2uwRklMWGZ1NVVMdEk/view?usp=sharing

My outline is based on the template that María Jesús (our teacher) gave to us. I used it in order to avoid missing any part.

In order to do my clip to present my prototype I used the tool called Powtoon. After having a look to the other tools, I finally chose this one because it is very visual and it offers many possibilities. You can add sounds, videos, pictures, and even your own ones! Thanks to that you can create a complete personalised presentation according to your interests. Moreover it is also possible to add characters, making the presentation more interactive, which allows to catch better our attention. Here you have the link to my presentation: https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/e6N3j5Nzw04/?mode=movie#/

Thanks for reading!

Raquel

Evaluating CLIL e-projects

Hello everyone, I'm here again! Now I am talking about evaluating CLIL e-projects. 

After considering the different list of eprojects provided by our teacher, I finally chose the one called “Our Amazing Body” which outcome is to help students find out interesting facts about our body. It is available in http://learningaboutouramazingbody.weebly.com/students.html.

First of all, I would like to say that I finally decided to choose this one because I think it is a good and a different way to increase the knowledge of our body investigating interactively.

Now, about the e-project, it is clearly structured and easy to follow thanks to the table of contents included in the home page. Furthermore, all the parts share the same structure: they all include a title, an introduction and then, examples to facilitate the understanding. All the contents are coherent and licenced.

Moreover, all the information included has a real-world context, which makes possible to promote critical thinking. Thanks to that, children will be motivated since the topic is linked to their interests. They are also motivated since they have to use different multimedia features in order to do their tasks. In addition, the project includes imaginative and original contents in an attractive and engaging way that catches students’ attention.

Related with the tasks, they all include a brief explanation and a real example of the goal answer. To accomplish them, children have to create their own materials or products to do them by using different webtools such as Voki, Cookit or SoundCloud. So, the use of online tools is an extra content included in the project. After that, they have to share their work in the class blog explaining the process they have followed to obtain this outcome, which is promoting collaborative work. Actually, this is what I liked the most of the e-project because all tasks require students to demonstrate what they learn by creating a product that is presented to their classmates.

However, it does not provide any processes to give and receive feedback for the students: there is not evaluation of the tasks. It does not either allow students to make choices about the products they have to create since children have to use the tool that the teacher gives to them. Besides, it does not take into account people with visual disabilities: the size of the letter is too small and light, which makes difficult to read it.

In order to improve this e-project I would include a rubric to evaluate each task. This would be also helpful for children as they will have clearer what they have to do. I would also provide more than one tool (with similar aims) to create the tasks so that children will know more tools and they will have to reflect about which one is better for them. Finally, related with the letters, I would change the colour and the size, and also underline the key words.

You can find my evaluation of the e-project described above here: http://prezi.com/at3n6sig2_fx/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

I used “Prezi” to create it. Some of my classmates had used it in their oral presentations in class, and I really liked it because it is visual and different from the typical “Power Point”. You can include videos, pictures, graphs, music or even documents. Thanks to that you will create attractive and original presentations.

Thanks for reading! 

Raquel