Blended Learning

In our last lesson we discussed about Blended Learning and despite having been working in this way for most of my career, I did not know what the expression meant until recently. Blended learning is a combination of online and in-person delivery of lessons that can be presented in different forms. Using blended learning as a teaching and learning approach does not mean that technology is the center of your teaching, but rather an alternative educational program for your teaching. I reckon that blended learning is a good way of offering new possibilities to those students who for different personal reasons may not attend their ordinary lessons at school. In our case, we use Moodle platform and Edmodo as a complement of what we do in our lessons. These sites are used to give extra-homework, reading,and some other ideas that help students to clarify doubts or have a better and a deeper understanding of a topic in question. What is more, both provide feedback between the teacher and the students. Another positive aspect is that we do not need to go to the institution to hand in a practical work or look for material since we can do it all from our homes! For these reasons, I believe that “blended learning” would be a good tool to be incorporated or at least to bear in mind for your future teaching.
Here is a short video in which a teacher explains the importance of implementing Blended Learning in the classroom.

How to plan using a Web 2.0 resource

Hi everyone! It has been a long time and I am here to let you know what our last practical work was about. In one of our last lessons, we were asked to plan a “didactic sequence” using at least one WEB 2.0 tool. To begin with, I would like to define what a web 2.0 resource is and according to dictionary.com it is “a second generation in the development of the World Wide Web, conceived as a combination of concepts, trends, and technologies that focus on user collaboration, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking”.

My group was supposed to teach present continuous and clothes, so we planned our lesson using Voki, which allows users to create customized talking characters. The purpose was to ask our students to imagine their Vokis were celebrities walking down a red carpet and make their virtual characters say what they were wearing. Then, we would share our Vokis on Edmodo or Facebook.

Reflecting upon this practical work, I may say that we did not make as much use of Web 2.0 tools as we could have done. In fact, in most of our activities we used flashcards to elicit vocabulary and play games. To learn and practise the present progressive, we printed worksheets. The only technological tools we used were an old fashion video on YouTube and Voki. We concluded that we could have made the lesson a lot more modern and technological. Nevertheless, if we have into consideration the reality of our Santafesinian schools, we wonder if we would be able to carry out even a simple activity since most of our public schools do not provide with a computer lab or if they do, they do not have internet connection. Therefore, it is advisable to know if the school where you work in count with the appropriate tools before making your lesson plans.

Shakespeare Games

For all shakespearean lovers, here are some interesting games related to Shakespeare's masterpieces.These games can only be used once your students have finished reading the books, otherwise it would be impossible for your learners to play the games.This kind of activity is the perfect one to revise some concepts related to his plays. 

Hope you enjoy it!

http://www.modernlibrary.com/shakespeare/shakespeare-games/

Useful advice for presentations in the classroom

I was surfing the web the other day when I came across a series of talks in YouTube. I found one of them particularly interesting because I believe it summarizes a couple of concepts that we are acquainted with in ‘Profesorado’.

Roberto Rosler, an Argentinian neurosurgeon, speaks about teaching and learning, digital natives and immigrants, and he gives very useful advice about making a Power Point presentation.

It is a little bit long, but I assure you that you won’t notice that because it’s very funny and highly beneficial for teachers who want to get their students’ attention by using technological tools properly.

I share with you the video and I hope you watch it!

What is Voki about?

   As you have already seen in the previous entry,"wordle" is a useful tool to introduce your students to new vocabulary but there is another one which makes your presentations more dynamic and interactive: Voki. Voki is an animation website that allows you to create your own personalised speaking avatar. This Web 2.0 tool can be used in the classroom -provided that you have access to the internet- since it enables teachers and students to record themeselves on the web in their own voices.

If you want to create you own avatar, click here and follow the instructions. It's worth trying!

 When I created my avatar I thought it would be a good idea to make avatars with different accents or languages so as to bring another culture to the classroom.  Being in contact with a different accent from ours could make us aware of inclusion in the educational field. Besides, the presentation of cultural topics would give students the possibility of learning about other countries.

Have at look at my Voki and have a good time trying it yourself!

Creating your own word cloud

Last class we were shown how to work with a word cloud. A word cloud is a visual representation for the text data used to depict tag on the websites, or to visualize free form text. A tag is a single word whose importance lies on the size and the colour.
There are some web pages that are useful for implementing this kind of tool, for example: http://www.tagxedo.com/ and http://www.tagxedo.com/
I will focus on a third option this time: Wordle.
Now, the way in which we can work with it is easy. First, choose a word you think it would be meaningful to work with your learners. Second, find the definition of it in an online dictionary, such as dictionary.reference, copy the meaning and paste it in the box provided by Wordle. Once you have copied the definitions, press "Go" and you will see your word cloud. Once you send your students the image, they can try to "guess" the word you have chosen by connecting all the words they see in the picture.
Another game you can play with your learners is using this tool for them to find the right order of a sentence. In this way, they will be dealing with grammar and vocabulary while they are having a good time.

I would like you to give it a try. If you find the right order of this sentence, please leave a comment with your answer!

The Selfie

On her visit to Argentina, Mathilde Verillaud -English Language Fellow for the US Embassy- came to explain what a selfie is and why we should apply it in the classroom. The meeting took place at Alicana's school and the  "selfie-expert" started her talk by explaining that it was a tool of the new generation which would help students learn about themselves. Besides, it would enable teachers to connect to their students by facilitating this self-discovery process and speaking their visual language. She also shared with us all the materials that her students had produced with her, and at the same time we could appreciate how a "simple selfie activity" would boost students' motivation. Some of the activities mentioned were: higher order ranking questions, gallery walk, description games and the one that I liked the most, 'Every photo tells a story', where the students picked one photo, then wrote about the person in it and passed it to his/her classmate on the left. After that, the students wrote a quote about the person in the photo that had been passed to him/her and passed it to his/her left. Eventually, the students wrote a paragraph about the photo that he or she had in front of them knowing that both quotes were to be included into the narrative.

This photo of Mathilde and me, which you may think is a 'selfie', is actually known as 'usie'. This is the name given to a 'selfie' that includes more than one person (or a 'group selfie').
More information about 'usies' is available for you in this article.
Taking it a little further, please visit this very interesting article about the 'selfie', more specifically the suffix '-fie'.