Final reflection II

Vocaroo Voice Message

Final Reflection on this course

I'd liked the way we worked on this subject for we were able to discover and learn thing on our own.  I know it is not easy to incoorporate technology in our classes and in fact I'm not used to it, but I'm willing to go on learning and integrate technology in my lessons as much as I can and I believe this course was just the begginning of my learning process. I'm happy to have taken this subject because I discovered a whole new range of webtools and applications that I didn't think they existed.

Case Study 2.3: Digital storytelling

This experience of digital storytelling took place at colegio San Francisco de Asis in Buenos Aires. The coordinator, Vicky Saumell,  realized that teachers relied too much on coursebooks and this had a detrimental effect on students' motivation and put a lot of pressure on teachers to finish the book. She reached an agreement with the teachers and finally they all decided to abandon coursebooks and started designing their own curriculum and materials. The school would adopt a project-based curriculum that reflected students' interest and needs.
Students were engaged in digital storytelling projects. For example, some learners recreated parts of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. for example some of them made an animated cartoon version using movie making software. Other learners created  an animated slideshow of different works of art and they recorded a soundtrack to go with the story.
If we take int account the SAMR model, I believe that this schools has implemented technology at the level of redefinition given that students were able to perform tasks that they wouln't have been able to perform before. As regards the TPCK model, which establishes the types of knowledge involved when including technology in the classroom, this case studiy shows that before implementing tecnology in the classroom, it is of utmost importance to evaluate 3 aspects: technology, pedagogy and content and whether it is possible to use technology in a certain context.

My personal learning network (PNL)

Regarding my Personal Learning Network, I must admit that is a little bit limited. I only use Facebook in order to keep myself posted on institutional issues. I'm a member of several groups on Facebook such Proferores de Ingles de la Republica Argentina and other groups related to ELT. I addition to this I'm a member of several groups created by JVG students for students of different subjects. The purpose of these groups is to share academic information and give support to those members who need it. 

Personal Learning Networks are absolutely essential for a teacher for someone who wants to teach must always be ready to learn and even though mine is very limited I feel it is my duty to make it more solid. For the time being, I'm trying to get used to curation sites such as Diigo or Scoop it and I think I will mange to do so. 

Gamifying the classroom

First I'd like to say that I absolutely agree with what Graham Stanley claims about games and language learning: games make learning fun and capture student's attention; they encourage language production, for students love to talk about games. And what is more important for teachers, they can be easily adapted for teaching purposes. I had never thought of gamifying lessons since I'm not a gamer myself but I believe it is a good idea to include games in the classroom.
The one that I tried and I especially liked was Dark Visions. I believe this game can be used with teenagers and adult students; it may be engaging the fact that students this age may be familiar with this type of horror stories that take place in a Gothic mansion and in which there is mistery to solve.
This game is particularly useful if you have to teach how to give instructions. The procedure is as follows: I would show students the trailer of this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAjXMM-jVFI . After students watch this trailer, I would engage them in conversation by asking what they could see there, if they had any idea what  this game is about or if they had ever read any book or watched any movie similar to this game. After this "pre-gaming stage", students will play the game. While playing the game, they can write down instructions on what to do and how to go on with the game. Then they can get in pairs and play the game together, this time following his/ her partner instructions. After playing the game in pairs, students discuss what they thought of the game adn write a review of it. Here is the link to the game, I hope ypu like it!
http://www.tenthplay.com/dark-visions/

Speaking Skills

Vocaroo Voice Message

Another webtool that I especially liked was Blabberize for I believe that it can be fun for students to have talking pictures and to share them with the class.

Content Curation

I've just opened my account in Scoop.it, therefore I'll be writing on Content Curation. Marisa Constantinides defines Content Curation as "the selection, preservation,  maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets" and the purpose of curation is to organize material in a tematic way, so that they are easily accesible. An important, and perhaps the most important feature of digital curation,  is sharing. This is actually what you can do in Curation sites such as Diigo, Delicious or Scoop it.
Marisa Constantinides argues that  "curation is the new content creation". This is true in the sense that in order to compile information, you need to use Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS)  Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) such as those in Bloom's taxonomy.

Blipfoto

Here is the link to Blipfoto: http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/3618351

Webtools: Blipfoto

The webtool I tried was Blipfoto. Of all the tools, this is the one I like most because it's a tool that I would use in my everyday life even if it is not for teaching purposes. In addition to this, it meets the criteria proposed by Nick Peachey. The requirements that I particularly value is that is free of charge, which in my case, determines whether I would use a webtool or not. The other advantage is that is easy to use,  easy to learn,  accessible and has the possibility of developing communication: Students can post their photos and write a brief summary of what the picture is about, when it was taken, where it was taken, etc. An objection though, is that students need to register and remember a password to use it, which may act as a deterrent for some students

Second Twister

And here goes my second Twister:

First Twister

Hello, here goes my first Twister:

Case Study 3 in relation to TPCK and SAMR model

In this case study, five and six year old children from Turkey worked on a year long, cross curricular story writing project. Students would consolidate all the vocabulary they learned  by creating an audio enabled  book based on two imaginary characters. This book would be published, therefore they would be able to share it with their families, their friends and the world. Students were partly able to carry out this ambitious project owing to the fact that they had institutional support: it was a cross curricular project and other teacher  such as practitioners from the art and ICT departments were involved. If we take into account the TPCK model, which describes the competences a teacher should have in order to use technology to enhance learning, the English teacher in charge of carrying out this project had the technological, pedadgogical and content knowledge for this task and knew how to combine them. As regards technology, this teacher had knowledge of technological tools tha enabled students to create this book: the used audio recorders on the computers and created the book using Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 to publish it as and e-book. Another key area of this model is pedagogy. In this respect, it can be said that this teacher had both generic pedagogical knowledge and pedgogical content knowledge, that is knowledge of the pedagogy of foreign languages. This can be seen in the fact that he used to teach English through fun based activities, which are motivating for children this age. It is worth mentioning that the use of technology in this Case Study was not a purpose in itself , it was a mean to an end;  the purpose of this project was to consolidate students learning.

The  use of technology in this project can also be discussed in terms of the SARM model.The SARM model provides a useful framework to help teacher integrate technology in education at different levels. this model identifies four levels at which technology can be used:

• Substitution: Technology is used as a substitute with no functional change.
• Augmentation: Again technology acts as a substitute, but there are some functional improvements.
• Modification: Technology allows for a significant task design.
• Redefinition: tech allows the creation of new tasks, previously unthinkable. 

In this case, I believe that technology has redefined teaching and learning; the teacher played a facilitator role given that she provided the framework to achieve this goal. As regards students, they were able perform a task that they had never done before. On the whole, I believe this project was motivating for students and in some way, because of the nature of the project, for the  teacher since she had  had to redefine her  roles; instead of being the center of the class and the source of knowlege, she had to help students organize their work and make this experience memorable. 

Diigo Account

Here is the link to my account in Diggo. Feel free to explore it.https://www.diigo.com/profile/lorenavictoria

How I integrate technology in my lessons

First I'd like to say that I worked as a teacher for five years, between 2007 and 2012. I'm not currently but when I did, I didn't use technology very often. Taking into consideration the stages provided by the SAMR Model, I think that my use of technology would be placed at the level of Substitution, but moving to Augmentation stage. As an example of substitution, I sent students workseets to print or they sent their writings by email. Then, I started using  Google docs to correct their writings and Dopbox to share files with them. However, I'm ready and willing to move on to the next stage, that is Modification.

What I've learned so far...

During the first week of this course, I've learned many things. First I became familiar with the idea of avatars. Before this, I thougth that Avatar was just a movie, now that I know what an avatar is the title of the movie makes more sense. I think that avatars may provide students with a virtual identity that makes them feel more protected so as to express themselves. Second, I've learned how to create a blog and how to use a blog. I had joined the blogs of some of the courses I took here at the Joaquin, but I was only able to read it, the teacher was the author of them and in some cases, students were not even able to write comments. Now that I have to use the blog for this course, I'm sort of "forced" to learn and to explore how to do things. Third, I became familiar with the notion of MOOCs  and visited Coursera's webpage in order to see some of the courses available. I'm really enthusiastic about some of them. I'm especially interested in taking one called Student Thinking at Core, which starts on January 27th.

My avatar and how to use avatars in class

This is my avatar, I chose a cat, because I love cats and I have one. I liked the experience of creating the avatar, I had never done this before and was fun to do it. Regarding how to use avatars for teaching purposes, I believe they can contribute to create confidence when students have to express themselves in English. Students who are not confident may feel exposed with their real profile photo. But with a picture of an avatar, they may feel more protected and more willing to express themselves. For example, instead of making students talk about what their like and dislike, they can make their avatar talk about it and share it in a virtual classroom.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lorena and I will be posting my reflections on the use of technology for teaching purposes. I hope you like it!.