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

Pinterest and CLIL...

Good morning blogger-friends! 

I would like to share with you the board I created using Pinterest where I clasified materials and resources that I found interesting for my future projects using CLIL methodology. 

Thanks to that, I can have my useful resources well organised as well as easy to find! Isn't it a good idea?

Feel free to follow me and my board if you feel like it! You will find a wide range of materials and ideas to use with your students. 

See you!

Pinterest...

Hello bloggers! 

Have you ever heard about "Pinterest"? It is a great free social network where you can find many resources about whatever you can imagine! Not only about education or materials for the classroom, but also recipes, health and more things. It's very interesting, isn't it? 

My next challenge had to do with that. Me and my classmates (with our teacher too) share a bank of common knowledge in Pinterest. Our teacher created a common board using Pinterest, in which each of us posted six resources that we found useful for our career. We had to take into account that all these resources were free and without copyright. As you can see, that is also related with the previous post! 
What I liked the most about that it is that thanks to that, we gather all our ideas in a same place which is useful for us as teachers, not only now to increase our ideas, but also to carry them in our future with our own students. According to what I said about the copyright, this activity also made me aware of the importance that it has, and the necessity of checking the licence of all materials we share! Sometimes we do not realise the importance it has, but every work has an owner, and we should respect that as we want them to respect our work. 

These are the resources that I chose. You only have to click on the title to see them: 

1) Mixtures and solutions.

Learning about mixtures and solutions using easy experiments, because the best way to learn something is by doing it!

2) Projects.

Working with projects in Science about animals in danger! It is a great idea to link both Arts&Crafts with Science while learning at the same time. By: Raquel Diez Alonso.

3) CLIL resources. 

Free resources, information and examples of CLIL approach to carry out with our students.

4) Halloween.

Halloween time… here is an example of learning about culture and art at the same time! By: Raquel Diez Alonso.

5) Breakfast learningtime. 

Breakfast-learning time! With this idea we can learn about fractions in a funny and visual way while having breakfast. This webiste (Pircs4Learning) provides a safe and free digital library for education where you can find many pictures, photos, videos or projects to carry out with your students.

6) Fruit SolarSystem. 

Model making: solar system made up of fruit. This way we can reach a meaningful learning using such a funny, visual and healthy idea. Moreover, it can be linked to Science and the healthy diet or the food pyramid. By: Raquel Diez Alonso.

7) Water cycle.

Nice blog with CLIL resources where you can find many ideas, activities and tips to create a suitable CLIL lesson in your classroom to teach the water cycle.

I hope these resources are useful for you.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creative Commons Licence...

Hi everyone!

Here is another challenge... Now we learnt about licences, their importance and relevance.

The licence I have chosen for my blog is called “Atribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International”. With this type of licence people can share the materials from my e-portfolio as well as they can copy and redistribute them in any medium or format. They are also allowed to adapt the materials, which mean that they can remix, transform and build upon the material.

But they have to take into account that:

• If they make any changes, they have to indicate it and retain an indication of previous modifications. That means “Attribution”.
• Moreover, they cannot use the material for commercial purposes. That means “NonCommercial”.
• Finally, if they remix, transform or build upon the material from my e-portfolio, they must share my contributions under the same licence as mine. This is the meaning of “ShareAlike”.

So now, at the bottom of  my blog you can see the following picture, showing that I am using this licence: 

All the terms and conditions of it are available in: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

You can also create your own licence with the conditions you think that are more suitable for you. Just click here: http://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en

This challenge made me think about the importance of that and also, become aware of the necessity to talk about that to our students and how to motivate them to take that into account. I have to say that in my opinion, sharing resources or materials is a great idea to learn from each other and to improve ourselves. Because of that, I believe that our students have to learn about the importance of copyright in order to find suitable materials for their projects or works, not only for the school, but also for their future. They should realise that some pictures or resources that they can find in different sources require permission to be used. In order to do that, I would suggest creating a project to deal with this topic and to make them aware that we must respect the work of other people as we want them to do the same with ours. For this reason we should encourage them to always tell the source where they found the information.

Thanks for reading! 

My PLE and PLN for CLIL...

Hello blogger friends!

Here we go with the third challenge: my PLE and PLN for CLIL.

I have to say that the first time I heard about CLIL was during my University Degree in Primary Education at León. I did the English mention and I had three subjects in which we studied it: main concepts, principles, methodology, how to use it, practical sessions… Then, I had the opportunity to learn more about it and to apply it during my placement in the schools. The first one was in Ireland, and they used this methodology. The second time I was in a MEC British Council school, and they do also use CLIL. Thanks to that I could see the theory I had learnt in a practical way. Then, I went further when I started this Master in Bilingualism, where I have learnt more about strategies, resources, activities… and see more examples of the use of this great methodology.

Both my PLE and my PLN are linked to each other, as you can see in my diagram:

https://www.novamind.com/cloud/doc/8363?nm_referrer=32595

Apart from that, I use more tools in order to learn more and find out new things about CLIL:

1)      To organise information:

- Dropbox: it is a tool to keep information in a very easy way. It offers the possibility of saving pictures, projects, tasks, videos… and to have them always with you even if you have not your computer.

- Google Drive: it offers almost the same things mentioned before in Dropbox, but also it allows to share a project with a group of people and to modify it in a real time.

2)      To share and communicate:

- Twitter, Facebook and Blogger: I often use them to share information and thoughts about CLIL, as well as to see other points of view and new ideas. They give you the possibility to follow many pages related with that.

- Gmail and Outlook: both of them are used to share my projects, tasks, lessons… with other people.

- WhatsApp and Skype: they are very useful to share opinions, ideas or to solve doubts related to CLIL immediately.

- Pinterest: it offers a great variety of displays, ideas and models which can be used in a CLIL lesson.

- Moodle URJC: it allows to share projects or tasks about CLIL with our classmates as well as to have a look to their projects at the same time.

3)      To learn more and look for information:

- Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox: both of them are useful to find information about CLIL, to solve doubts related with that, to search pictures or resources linked with it. 

- Word Reference: I use it in order to clarify my doubts when I do not know some words or expressions about CLIL explanations.

- YouTube: here it is possible to find so many songs, explanations… related with CLIL.

- BBC: it offers a huge range of resources to plan a CLIL lesson.

4)      To create new things:

- StoryJumper: I discovered it recently, and I use it to create stories.

- Paint: it is useful to create simple pictures, diagrams or to modify some other elements.

- Movie Maker: to create videos.

- Microsoft Office: I use it to create the activities or lessons with CLIL methodology.

- NovaMind: it offers the opportunity to create mind maps. It is very useful to arrange information.

In order to create my PLE and my PLN, I had a look at all the tools that our teacher suggested to us. There were great ones such as Coogle, Popplet or Easel.ly. Among all of them, I finally decided to make it using NovaMind because it is quite easy to understand and the outcomes are very attractive. It offers the opportunity to create your own mind map since the very first moment, so you do not have to choose a template and then modify it according to the theme. You can change the colours, the style, or insert different elements such as images, texts and adornments according to the aim of your diagram (if it is for children, for you, for other student…).

Thank you for your attention!

Learning by Twittering...

Hi bloggers!

My second challenge is related with CLIL. Do you know anything about this approach? During all my studies I have learnt many things about CLIL. You can find some in my Twitter @raqueldial. 

 

Here is an example:
https://twitter.com/raqueldial/status/699718229686616064

 

Thanks for reading me!