Digital Posters in the ESL classroom

Using digital posters when teaching esl has many benefits:

-Give confidence: as students create them they feel motivated and proud of their productions. They feel confident enough to talk about them.

-Encourage communication: posters are a way of showing what they learnt. They want to communicate what they wrote.

-Foster students´ autonomy and creativity: they are free to make their own decisions about the information they´re going to include. They have a leading role and aren´t restricted to their teacher´s choices.


-Adapt to different learning styles: they are involved in their own learning. They interact with their classmates and benefit from cooperative and collaborative work. The enviornment estimulates them because it isn´t  just a written text.

-Minimize grammar mistakes: language is specific. Complex structures aren´t used.

Amazing presentations using Powtoon

Always create opportunities to show students all they learn. We as teachers should allow them to be their own authors and develop their confidence and creativity. There are many applications to create videos, digital posters, ebooks and much more. Today, I`m going to show you an example using the online application PowToon .

Tutorial:

Students creating;

Presentation:

Classroom rules around Technology

Technology enhances learning and motivate students. However, teachers should set certain rules to avoid its bad use. As Michael Bujela says there should be orientation on interpersonal intelligence to educate students about classroom rules regarding technology use and misuse. They need to know and reflect about their use from the beginning so as to avoid unfortunate situations. Its use should be productive. Rules are crucial to focus on the objectives. They should be discussed and written. Then they should be placed in a visible place as a warning. ICT is used to support and help them to achieve specific objectives not just to have fun and do what we can do at home. 

These are the basic rules teachers should set:

-Do not turn on computers when teachers are giving instructions
-Do not touch other students´ computers.
-Do not modify computers.
-Do not use mobiles except if you are asked for an activity. 
-Do not enter online games or social networks. 
-Respect all equipment. 
-Use the programs and applications you are asked.
-No open food or drink are permitted
-Make silence.

Where to search for free common images, video, text or music

If you are looking for free resources to use in your classes you should go to  https://creativecommons.org/ . You will see a section that says Find CC material where enter what you are searching for and will be redirected to Creative Commons search. You can specify the use and there are many searching engines according to categories:
Media:Europeana, SpinXpress and Wikimedia Commons. Images:Flickr,Google Images, Open Clip Art Library,Pixabay.
Music: Jamendo, ccMixer.

Buncee webinar

Buncee for schools

What is Buncee?

My Buncee presentation

This is presentation created with Buncee for the Earth Day.

Word Clouds with Tagul

Using word clouds is very useful in education. You can use them for brainstorming or brainstorming so as to activate prior knowledge in a motivating way or identity key concepts or words. As the website saysTagul is an online word cloud generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word cloud art with ease. Professional quality results can be achieved in no time at all, even for users with no prior knowledge of graphic design. When I tried this word cloud generator I was surprised because of the unlimitied possibilities. What I consider more attractive is that you can give shapes to clouds and use them to convey message. This is a tutorial of Tagul by Cindy Kendall:
             
                    

Deliver unforgettable lessons

The key to succeed in teaching is to innovate, make students feel to free to create and surprise themselves with results. As I always say what it is predictable is boring and consequently short term learning. Every lesson should be special. Teachers are magic fairies who have the power to motivate students. They can make their lessons memorable. Time may pass by but students won´t forget them. Today, I´m going to write about one of my magic lessons whose aim was to reinforce vocabulary using word clouds.

Level:Starter.

Year:5

Context: It is a public school in Capitan Bermudez. Students are ten years old. They are just starting to learn ESL. Most of them don´t have any extrinsic motivation and find hard to concentrate.

Aim: Reinforce vocabulary  related to days, months and numbers (1-20)

   

Resources: Cards, netbooks.

Lesson:

Warm up: 

I show students cards with vocabulary: days of the week, months of the year and numbers (1-20). Then, I asked them about their favourite ones.

Writing:

1.Students are grouped in teams.

2.The teacher gives a netbook to each team. Then she gives the instructions:

A.Turn it on.

B.Enter Wordle.

C.Click on create.

D.Write the vocabulary. Use your notes.

E.Radomize. Change fonts, layouts and colours.

F:Save.

Conclusion: Students were really surprised when saw the word clouds they created. They wanted to learn more vocabulary to create and discover new possibilities.

Some clouds made by students

Tutorial for Wordle

Tutorial de Wordle from Maria Josè Giavedoni

My Goals For This Year

Retelling stories in the ESL classroom.

Reading shouldn´t be a boring and passive activity. On the contrary, it should be fun and active. The process should be creative in a way that students insert in the story itself and they feel part of it.If teachers provide these conditions, learning will be meaningful. Maybe many of you think how I can achieve it and I will tell you that IT plays an important role. As you probably know  if you see concrete display beyond paper,  students will be motivated and excited (they will do their best). The big question is how to retell stories meaningfully. Well, I will provide you an example with the story Rio. I assigned two o three scenes per student and they took their time to draw and write them.They felt free and full art was displayed. Then, they rehearsed and recorded them in my mobile phone. Once all work was done, I took pictures of the scenes to make an e-book and I uploaded all audio in Soundcloud so that all scenes could be heard one after the other.It was an unforgettable experience. This is a video about it:

Brazil and Argentina have started with their contributions in the Padlet for Link To the World

Today students from Brazil and Argentina have embarked on their amazing journey to connect global through a common passion:FOOTBALL. These are their posts:

Created with Padlet

Prezi: a great presentation tool

This is one of the tools we are going to use to insert in our Padlets for Football Worldcup.I`ve chosen it because you can create a cinematic and engaging experiences. I leave you some tutorials so that we get familiar with it.

References:https://www.youtube.com/user/PreziVideoChannel/featured

Football World Cup

As I`ve already told you Football World Cup is about to come and there will be many interesting activities to work in Link To The World. Today I`m going to present you one which is a Padlet which I called Football World Cup Teams. Students are going to post about their national teams.It could be infografics with stats, videos and why not chants. Maybe you or your students don`t know how to use Padlet, so I will post a tutorial by Richard Byrne to introduce you this amazing collaborative tool.


This is our padlet Football World Cup Teams.Join us and work with your students:

References:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCylhHbAUoqgdN-XQpJPobOg

Created with Padlet

Write a textbook for your students

As a member of  The 30 Goals Challenge I was inspired by the goal proposed by Bulton Burns:Share A Page Of Your Future Textbook. I totally agree with what he said about the importance of presenting students motivating material created by yourself .You as a teacher are the one who knows what your students need to reinforce and the areas you have covered. Many resources that we find fell apart in real classroom use.It demands you more time to modify them than to design ours.Besides, your activities can be more communicative because you know about your students interests and you will meet their needs.You can create more motivating activities adding cliparts and attractive designs which will encourage your students to practise more.Undoubtedly, they will benefit because their learning will be meanignful.
These are some of the pages of my future textbook:

My future textbook from Maria Josè Giavedoni

Getting ready for Football World Cup in Link To The World

We are getting ready in our international community with many interesting activities to work together.We`re going to use technology to create infographics and videos.We`re going to use not only pcs, but also mobiles and tablets so that access to applications will be possible for all.There will be collaborative tools such as Padlets to work all together and profit from each other.It`s going be very interesting because there are many countries participating and we`re going to learn about football and culture worldwide. Have a look at it and join us if like it.I sure you WILL !!!

https://plus.google.com/communities/102242336148220737279/stream/f4d6a468-9fc8-4dd8-b3d3-bf412fa439d3

Xtranormal:all about characters and text

References:https://www.youtube.com/user/cng

                  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtpETBYCSiIh-4wUA8PwTA