REFLECTION ABOUT THE SUBJECT

I would dare to say that this subject has been the most practical and pragmatic I ever had. I thought that due to the fact that we have been born in the XXI century there wouldn’t be too many innovative tools or website to discover, but I was wrong.

The first thing this subject taught me is that we never know enough we have to be updated and we should put in practise all the useful things we get to know, because it is also very important to develop digital competences in order to use or apply the technologies from a didactic or educative approach. When we were introduce the different digital competences (safety, problem solving, information searching…), that as teachers, we are supposed to dominate I feel very bad with myself because I realised I have too much to work on.

I think this subject is very ambitious. We have been being tested all the time, doing jobs (in group and individually), we have had to confront complex online tools we have never heard about … But this subject has been scheduled is the best period of the teacher training degree: our second internship. Along the internship we have been able to put in practise what we have been taught in class. We have been able to used new technologies with children in a real context and this has make realised about two essential and basic thing that we should always take into account: THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES CAN MAKE OUR LIFES EASIER, BUT WE CHOOSE HOW TO IMPLEMENT THEM. Besides I would like to highlight that technologies can always do what we want and too many technical or “human” inconvenient can appear or pop up.

Despite of having been stressed and too many inconvenient drove me mad I have to admit the task that shew me the most important of the subject was the telecollaboration: WE HAVE TO BE FEXIBLE AND ALWAYS DO OUR BEST, NOT GIVING UP.

The telecollaboration also made me realised how relevant is to know other people work in order to compare it with our and get an enriching feedback that can improve our techniques or bank or resources. 

In this subject we have had to design and carry out to many presentations in English using  new technologies ( IWB, wikis, other program to design presentations like Prezi…) I can firmly say that my English communication skills have experimented a big improvement, and the most important, currently interact and explain myself in English has become something NATURAL to me. Now I am more self-confident we I have to speak in English in public and I owe this to this subject.

To sum up, I want to say that my skills and technological knowledge has suffered a big improvement since the beginning of the semester, but there are still too many things we don’t know and it is a pity not to discover them in class at the university. It seems that the big challenge starts after finishing this subject: KEEP BEING UPDATED AND NEVER LOSE THE CURIOSITY.

WEEK 8: "KAHOOT AND WEBNODE"

Sometimes cross my mind the idea that technologies apart us from working closely and together, but this subject has shown me that all depends on how you implement the technologies in class.

I have never thought that it could exist online tools like KAHOOT. Sometimes is hard to catch pupils’ attention and keep them motivated, but this tool success these at all. What I like the most of KAHOOT is that it is really easy to manage, the students could design answers for their classmates, and of the top of that , due to the fact that Kahoot’s question always must include illustrations this help the students to memorise faster vocabulary or concepts. This tool makes possible a healthy competition in class measuring the time of response of each kid, being scored according to these one. (Good methodology to improve chilren’s reflexes and decision skills/strategies).

I can assure that I will use this amazing tool in my professional future.It is obvious that I love Kahoot although it would be better if it were possible to design other formats of question.

Nevertheless I can’t forget to comment WEBNODE, an amazing page in which we can create a professional appealing website really fast and easily thank to their templates and pre-designed models of websites (which are classified according to aim creating the page: business, date planning…) I have to admit that I already known a similar page called JIMDO, which I think is more complete in respect of compatibility of link, embed codes or htlm codes.

 

To sum up, this last week demonstrates that there are still hundreds of innovative online tools and websites to discover, and know we are conscious of their existence as future teachers is our duty to keep being updated and do continuous research: WE CAN’T LOST THE CURIOSITY!

ASSESSMENT OF THE TASK: RUBRIC

 In respect of the task asseesment we have designed the following rubric:

The items to evaluate (vertical column) are the aims or skills the activities of the task want to prove. Each acitivy is very complex to evaluate due to too many variables can be taken into account.

That's why although we have chosen numerical vaules (horizontal column) to asses each item, we have decided to define descriptors in each numerical vaulue in order to evaluate the children in a easier way ( clues to observe if the are totally or partially able to complete the actitivy's main goal). 

Of course we will have to take also account that some activities have a bigger weight in the final mark, when we put in practise this rubric.

ACT 1 (20%)+ACT 2 (10%)+ACT 3 (30%)+ACT 4 (30%)+ACT 5 (10%)

TAKS: REVIEW UNIVERSE CONTENTS

Due to the fact that in CLIL we have designed a project about the space or universe for 2^nd grade of Primary School (meetingwalle.pbworks.com) , we think it would be interesting to design a task to review the contents of this topic in a higher grade.

Me and my group we have created a task composed by 5 activities for 4^th grade of Primary.

LET’S JOG OUR MIND: UNIVERSE

1.       TALKING TO WALL·E

The student will be given a group of words related to the universe topic (astronaut, star, pollution…) By themselves, they will have to create flashcards (image-word) in Quizlet, having to associate each word with the proper illustration. The students will play with their flashcards in the quizlet’s different games.

Afterwards, the children will carry out a telecollaboration with Wall·E by Skype in which their friends Wall·E will make some questions and the students will have to answer these ones just showing their flashcards (we would print them).

  

2.       RIDDLES

We will propose the students to solve two riddles designed with Educaplay, in order to test if they still remember the two movements the Earth carries out (rotation and translation).

The riddle in Educaplay are based in showing (partially) an image that defines or illustrate the concept to guess. The children can click on show clue to be given some tips and see more parts of the illustration.

3.       FILLING THE GAPS

Now that the students have already review the most meaningful vocabulary about the space, it is time to test if they understand it and know how to use it depending on the context ( in this case the information given by the text).

They will have to choose the right words to complete Wall·e’s letter.

4.       LET’S TALK

We will show the children a video in which all the planet appear, but there is one problem….the video is mute! How are we going to improve this video?

The children will be assigned a planet and using Podomatic will have to record themselves talking (briefly) about the mains characteristics of their planet (they are supposed to know it, but just to refresh their mind we can let them do some research on internet). Then, using the recording we will complete our video. 

This is the video the children would have to complete:

5.       DO  YOU REMEMBER HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE PLANET?

Just to finish the task and be conscious of children’s previous knowledge and their social citizenship competence, we will propose them to do a simple matching exercise of Educaplay in which they will have to identify green habits.