This is not a goodbye post...

Hello Everyone

Today I want to tell you my experiences through this ICT learning Journey.

When I started this learning journal I had no idea how much work I had ahead of me and how much my digital competence was going to improve. I'm not going to lie to you it has been hard, there have been tasks that I thought would never end and moments in which I was overwhelm. But, once finished everything and, now that I see everything in perspective, it has been worth it all. I have learnt to use many tools that I didn't even know and I've discovered great resources to use with my students.
In this subject I've learnt the importance of privacy on the Internet, as well as to respect the work of others, always using content whose license allows us to use it and also, the importance of get licenses for the materials we create.
I've learnt to use wonderful online tools for many purposes that I'll definitely use in the future in my class as Pixton, Canva, Creately, Toontastic and, of course, Genially my favourite tool which I'm sure I'll use a lot of now on.
I've also become more active in social networks such as Twitter or Youtube to which I have uploaded four videos that compared to none which I had before creating the blog is quite a lot.
I discovered the wonderful world of content curation and although I used Pinterest before I know now that I was not using it properly.
Another discovery I've made is the large amount of resources for free online training for teachers that are on the Internet, I had never heard about Aprende INTEF before I started this journey. Crazy, right? I didn't even know what was a webinar.
Finally, I've learnt to create projects like the audio project or the video project that I made. I think that from now on I'll use the flip classroom a lot.

Oh, one more thing, I've also learned to embed all kinds of links! I didn't know what embed a link was and now I'm a master in embedding.

Here you can see my artifact in which I reflect everything I've learnt during these three months. I've made a presentation in Genially which as you know is a tool that I love and I recorded it while I was commenting it with Screencast o-matic. Then I edited it with "Movie Maker" to add the music:

And here you have the genially slideshow:

P.S. Thank you to my teacher, María Jesús ,because even though the feedback comments have driven me crazy with all the changes I had to do sometimes I've learn a lot in this subject and from that feedback comments.

I hope you enjoyed my posts and ... see you soon !!

#twima8 - The World is My Audience!

Have you ever been part of an international project? Now, I can say the I have. In this post I'm going to talk about #Twima8 an educational collaborative project worldwide! Twima8 is a project in which teachers and students from all over the world collaborate sharing their story. We all have a story in our lives: a moment that has makes us the way we are, an experience, a memory ... And, sometimes, listening to the stories of others can open our minds, give us ideas or even makes us feel happy or sad... That's why Twima8 seems like a fantastic idea to me. It's a way to share our stories through technology with very different people, with a different culture. 

 
  

This project is carried out with the online tool Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a platform where students share ideas and learn together. This is done through videos. Students record themselves and  upload it to the platform which is very intuitive and easy to use. In order to use it, the teacher has to create a grid for her classroom or community and add a topic to spark the discussion. The students can respond with short videos and all the students can see the videos and engage. The teacher can moderate videos, provide custom feedback, set privacy rules... Also in the webpage you can find a student guide and a teacher guide for all the doubts you might have, wich is very handy!. I had never worked with this platform but I find it very useful because you can do school announcements, discussions, daily reflections... You can work with your students in multiple ways! I really liked the idea of ​​creating an international collaborative project and I think it would be a good idea to work on our classrooms too because our students can listen to stories about people just like them but from other countries, from another culture.

Here you have the story I've shared in #twima8. I hope you like it.



I hope you enjoy this post and that you are now motivated to use Flipgrid in your class  and to join Twima8 project and spread the word on Twitter with #Twima8 like I did.

Hi, I've just share my experience living abroad in #twima8 and I want to encourage you to share your story too! https://t.co/Qe6VPgY2WD #ictclil_urjc

— Patricia Portela (@patriciaportg) 28 de abril de 2018

See you in my next post!

Our Video Project! Part II

Hello Everyone!
Do you remember my last post when I talked you about our video project? So here I am to talk you about it again. I did this project with my amazing group "Girl Power", it was fantastic working with them because everyone followed their role and that way we shared the responsibility. Also, we really enjoy the creation process!.
We have created a video about the importance of women across the history called "The importance of women across the history".

In order to created it we visited the "Future Classroom Lab" of the Ministry of Education where we recorded in a Chroma our scenes. It was fun but at the same time it was a little bit stressful because we were the last group in doing it and we were running out of time... We were very stressed as you can see...

For  the edition of this video we have "Movie Maker" a computer program that allows you to cut the video, put  images in the chroma background, add music, letters.....

Here you have our video:

I think this video will be really useful in class because with a video we catch our students eye and they learn while having fun. They will play more attention to a video about the women through history than to the teacher talking about this. Also this video is really useful because we can work lots of subjects: arts (Frida kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Coco Channel), Science (Marie Curie, Grace Hopper), History (Cleopantra, Joan of Arch)and values (Malala Yousafzai, Teresa of Calcuta, Naomi Parker). With this video we can ask our students to make a timeline , to investigate the women's right history, to analyse if there's still a differences between men and women in our society... And we also want our students to know that men are women are equal and they should have the same possibilities.

The objectives of this video project are:

• To know the importance of women through history.

• To know some important women in history such as: Cleopatre, Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo, Naomi Parker, Joan of Arc, Grace Hopper, Marilyn Monroy, Teresa de Calcuta, Coco Channel and Malala Yousafzai.

• To know what this women accomplish and why this accomplishments were important.
• To understand that women and men are equals.

• To get to know the life of this women.

Our Video Project! Part I

Today I'm going to talk you about a video project I've created with my group "girlpower", is good to be working in teams sometimes! We are really excited about it and we want to show it to you.The main aim of this video project is that our students know some of the most important women in the history and the importance of the women's contributions, struggles, and triumphs throughout history.

Goals:

• To explain a content in a funny visual way that our students enjoy

• To know the importance of women through history.

• To know some important women in history such as: Cleopatre, Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo, Naomi Parker, Joan of Arc, Grace Hopper, Marilyn Monroy, Teresa de Calcuta, Coco Channel and Malala Yousafzai.

• To know what this women accomplish and why this accomplishments were important

• To get to know the life of this women.

Future purpose of the outcome:

• To explain women's history 

• To see the rights that women had through the different centuries

• To know different women in our society in different historical period and from different areas (scientific, writer, painter, singer, queen, politician and among others).

Before we recorded the video we created a Draft in order to organise everything: decide the characters and their dialogues, who will develop  each role, the scenes, the costumes...
To create this draft we used Google Docs where we created a collaborative document. 



In the next post I will talk you about the recording process and show you the video we made so keep in tune.

Learning in a webinar about online training and digital competence

Hello  everyone!


The other day I attended to a webinar. Do you know what a webinar is?
"A webinar is a live web-based video conference that uses the internet to connect the individual hosting the webinar to an audience–the viewers and listeners of the webinar from all over the world."

The webinar I attended to was called "Mobile Learning and Digital Competence for Education", carried out by Maria Jesús García San Martín. In this webinar I learnt about the different online training courses for teachers  that you can find in the website "AprendeINTEF" and about the Digital Competence Portfolio for Teachers that is a service for the acknowledge and improvement of the Digital Teaching Competence through self- assessment and update recording of teaching,learning and training experiences. The portfolio is completed throughout the professional life itself is not something that is done in a short time.This portfolio has four parts:

• The Biography where you can describe your digital competence.

• The Self assessment which allows you to self-asses your level in the five areas of the Common Digital Competence Framework,  (Information and data literacy; Communication and collaboration; Digital content creation; Safety and Problem Solving)

• The Dossier where you can organise and label the evidence that supports the digital competence of your biography. It allows us to use a project or something done in class as an evidence of digital competence.

• The Passport shows the level of the digital competence achieved. In your passport you have an overall perspective of all the evidences that endorse this level according to the dossier.

In the web previously mention Educa INTEF there are some free online training resources to improve the digital competences:

• EduPills: EduPills is an app that allows us to improve our digital competence in a short period of time (5-7 minutes). This app is oriented to be use with mobile phones or tablets in a fast and easy  way (for example while waiting at the doctor's office). In the app you can find the pills organised into four categories: communicate and collaborate, digital creation, information, problem solving. You can also evaluate the pill and see other pills related to that pill. 

• Nooc: Nano learning experiences focused on reaching a goal in approximately 3 hours (takes more time that the EduPills) They are open for 10 days but you can still do it after this 10 days because the materials remain available. This resource is more focused on learning with and from others

• Mooc: Courses of open, massive and online training oriented to web content dissemination and collaborative learning. This courses last around 4-5 weeks and do not certify teacher training hours. There is a variety of topics (entrepreneurship, eTwinning, expanded education ...)

• Spooc:Online courses at your own pace. It allows you to manage your learning autonomously. They also allow you to participate in educational communities.

Before starting 2018 I had never heard about Aprende INTEF and I think it is a pity because it is an excellent resource. The resources you have in Aprende INTEF allows you to improve your competence in an autonomous way ( All the  "double o" courses are focused on an autonomous learning) and at your own pace. What I like the most about this courses is this second part because, in my case, this year I'm quite busy with the master so I can only do things that doesn't take me much time, and once I finish I can start with activities that take longer. I also like that this courses are free courses and you can do it even if you are not a teacher in a school yet. I think that having a good level of digital competence in the classroom is a must have nowadays and Educa Intef has the necessary tools to improve and certify this competence.

What about you?, did you know Aprende INTEF? If the answer is no, I encourage you to try it.
See you in my next post!

Using Podcast in our lessons!

Hello everyone!

Today I'm going to talk you about podcasting a great activity we can develop in our lessons.  With podcast our students can improve their digital competences, their listening and speaking skills and all of that while they are developing the content of the subjects. Amazing, right?

I wanted to work with podcasting in my class and I decided to use this tool to work poetry. Poetry is really important for our students, it helps them express themselves, develop cognitive and communicative skills.... In order to work with all of this I created a project in which my students are going to learn about poetry. I want them to read and listen to poetry, to work their intonation, to know some popular poetry and authors and to create and record their own poetry. To develop all the details of this project I have created a doc in Google Docs so you can get  a better idea of what the project is going to be about.



Once I created my  project it was time to record myself. To record I have used Audacity a free tool which allows you to record and edit your audios, is really easy to use, I'm sure you won't have any problem. The only inconvenience is that you have to download the program, you  can't use it online. After recording myself I uploaded this audio to SoundCloud which is a online platform where you can upload and share your audios.
By clicking on this button you can access to my channel:

 This is my "Welcome to your new class" audio for my students:


With SoundCloud you  can also create playlists. Here you have my playlist for this project:



I must say that I had never worked with audio projects in my class I didn't even heard about it before I started this topic. I was a little overwhelmed before I started this project because I didn't know where to start or what should I do. As I said the first thing you have to do is plan everything (Google Docs as I said is a really useful tool for that) and then you use some tools like Audacity and SoundCloud to do the rest. Take your time to plan and record because audio projects are a really good tool but it takes time, as I said is difficult at the beginning but once you have done one project the second one is going to be much easier.
I'm sure that in the future I will use lots of audio projects in my class because is a tool that I think my students are really going to enjoy. The students can be engage on creating new records and upload, they feel like they are taking part in their own learning, this way the students feel really proud of their work. And another thing I liked is that you can use audio projects for lots of things, I have seen that my classmates have created audio projects for mindfulness, book races, Irish poems, reading... It is an amazing idea to use this resource in our class!

I hope you liked this post and learn as much as I did. See you in my net post.

Infografics, a really goo resource for our CLIL Lessons.

Hello Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about infographics. Infographics are a way of presenting infomation in a visual way. It's very useful in the classroom because it's something that catches the children's eye.

In this post you will see the infographic that I've created that is about tips for healthy eating. This is a very important information to promote healthy diet and prevent childhood obesity so I thought an infograpic would be the perfect way to present it. You can also print it in large size and put it in class so they can see it more often.

To create this infographic I've used Canva. Canva is a graphic-design tool website where you can create visual materials such as invitations, resumes, posters, ads, cards ... For all the options previously mentioned , you have many templates that you can use and modify according to your preferences, or you can also create a new one from a scratch. This is what I did because I wanted to learn how to use this tool.

Once you start creating your design there are a lot of features that you can use. There is a wide variety of photos, grids, frames, shapes, lines, illustrations and icons that you can use. Some of this elements are free but you can also see that there are a few ones that you have to pay for. One of the things that I liked the most is the large number of text fonts that it has. You have many options to create, you can choose between a great variety of font, style and color. They also have a wide variety of free backgrounds that you can use for your creations.

For me, it was the first time I created an infographic and the first time I used Canva but I will definitely continue using it because I think it is very useful and it has lots of creation options. I really liked using this tool and I encourage you all to use it and create your own materials for your CLIL lessons.

Healthy Eating Tips by Patricia Portela

See you in my next post!

Let's talk about mindmaps!

Hello Everyone!

In this new post I'm going to talk about mindmaps. I love creating mindmaps because it's a tool that allows you to organize ideas and in where you can have a large amount of information really well organized so you can see find what to look for in a few seconds and it's also really good to conect information.

Today I bring you this mindmap that I've created about  the  "China" project I made for the 2nd grade of Early Childhood Education. In this mindap we can see the content, the aims, the phases and the activites of the project in a really clear way. I have used colors to make it easier to distinguish the information and I'm very happy with the result because I can see all the aspects I care about the project in a clear way.
I've made  this mindmap with Creately, which is a great online tool for diaframming and collaboration. Creately allows you to create diagrams like flowcharts, venn diagrams, family trees, infographics, site maps... and share it with its community.
For each of these diagrams it has a variety of templates very original which is very useful.
It's a really easy to use tool in which we have a great variety of shapes and arrows that can be modified according to our needs by changing the color, the text font.... You also have the option to import images if necessary.
I think that the most difficult thing about creating my mindap was organizing my ideas because the use of the tool at a basic level is pretty easy, but I want to continue using it to improve my skills.
Here you can see my mindmap.

I hope you liked this post!!

Online tools to create comics!

Hello everyone!

In this post I will talk about the tools to create comics that we can find online. Comics are a very good resource to use in our classroom. There are several ways of using comics in the classroom: the teacher can create a comic for the students in order to present something, the students can create it to express themselves or to work on a content previously explained....

In this case, I've created a comic in which we can see a problem that a lot of  students face in every subject, such as the fear of public speaking. In this comic we can also find some advices to overcome this fear. This comic could be print and placed in the classroom so that the students could see it and it could help them.

Before starting to work with this topic in class I did not know anything about the tools that we can find online to create a comic such as  Creaza or StoryboardThat

I've decided to use Pixton to create my comic. Pixton is a  tool is easy to use because is very intuitive. You have icons that indicate you what to do in a really simple way, like for adding a new character you  have the icon of a face, or for adding a new background you have the icon of a landscape. In Pixton you can create your own comic from a scratch but you can also
use their templates. They have a lot of templates and, if you are using Pixton as a teacher, is really useful because you can find this templates well organised in lesson plans like English, Computer, History.... You can also decide to use a pre set background which you can modify by  adding or deleting item, making the item bigger or smaller.... It lets you give text and speech bubbles to characters which you can also modify according to you preferences changing the font, the size the color... It also has the option of adding images, audios or links if you want, which I think is really useful.
But, the two things that really caught my eye is that you have a lot of pre set expressions, poses and characters and that you can add your students to the comic.

So as I said is really easy to use Pixton and you can make a lot of different stories.
There's something although I didn't like and is that you have a trial period to use it and, after that, I think you have to pay for some of the features but since I have used it with my trial period  I don't know how much and for which ones.

I would definitely use this tool with my students because as I just said is really easy to use so I think they will be able to create really good stories expressing their feelings.

So, here you have my comic and I hope this entry will help you.

See you in my next post!

Genially: A great tool to create slideshows!

Hello everyone!
In this post I'm going to talk about online support slideshow tools for presenting content in class.

Before I started working on this topic in class I knew some slideshow tools like Prezi  and Powtoon which are really useful when creating a presentation in a creative way.

However, I must admit that because of this topic I've discovered a fantastic tool:Genially. Genially is a really good tool to create our own CLIL materials and present the subject content to our students in a funny way. It’s a tool to create presentations with animations, different templates and stickers. It has a wide variety of functions so you can create slide shows, video presentations, presentations of teaching materials, interactive images, games, quizzes, posters, maps, invitations, infographics and even CV! and the good thing about this is that there are pre-designed templates that you can easily work on.
Another thing I really liked and which I think is very useful is that, while you create the presentation on the website, you have a window where you can search and add images directly from Pixabay (The bank of images I talked you about a couple of post ago). It's great! Also in the presentations you can add videos and music. I’m sure my students are going to love these presentations.
I have to admit that I haven’t been able to discover completely the tool yet because it has a lot of features and functions but I hope to do it little by the little because it is a very interesting tool.
Here you can see the first presentation I’ve made with Genially. It’s a presentation of the plants for second graders with slides for presenting the content, I also add a slide for activate the previous knowledge and another one with a small activity as a review.
To make it I used a genially template which I modified. I know I still have a lot to improve since it's my first presentation but, of course, it will not be my last.
I hope you liked it! See you in the next post!

Content Curation Tools

Hello Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about content curation. I have to admit that, before we start working with this topic in class,  I didn’t know what content curation was. As I worked in this topic I discovered the content curation and how useful it is when selecting and organizing content, projects, activities to be done in the class or web pages. This is a way to access  the content you want in just one click without having to spend a lot of time looking for it again or thinking about how you did find it.

I've been looking at some content curation tools and I decided to use Pinterest because I have previously worked with it. As I just said, I already knew Pinterest but when I started working with it again I realized that I wasn't using it correctly since I only used it as a tool for looking for activities when I needed new ideas for the class. This is the reason why I decided to create a new account in order to organize all the resources regarding education that can be useful for my class.

In this new account that I created, I've organized different activities, crafts and resources on boards which I think could be good for working with my students. Also the advantage of these boards is that everything is well organized. The boards that I've created for now are: Music, Math, Social Science Models, Project Based  Learning and Literacy. I could say that this is my start on Pinterest but I plan to create more specific boards,  for more subjects and for different courses.

Here you have other content curation tools that I've discovered with this topic and which I found very interesting:

- Pearltrees 
- Symbaloo
- Listly
- Scoop.it

I hope you all liked it and you've learned as much as I did with this topic. See you in my next post!

CLIL Lesson: The Continents!

Hello Everyone!


Today I'm going to talk about a bank of images you can use in order to create you own CLIL lesson. Before I start this topic I thought that you could take and use all the images on the internet as if they were yours but now I know that you have plenty of bank images where you can find and use pictures and you can also create your own images, create a license and share it with the educational community.

I have used one of this bank of images (Pixbay) to get images that I could use in the CLIL lesson I have created for my students. This lesson is "The Continents" and the images are the following ones:

Picture by:  Clker-Free-Vector-Images CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: OpenClipart-Vectors CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: Dsndrn-Videolar CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: OpenClipart-Vectors CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: OpenClipart-Vectors CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: OpenClipart-Vectors CC0 Creative Commons

Picture by: Felix_Broennimann CC0 Creative Commons

I would use this images to help my students learn in a more visual way how the continents were created, what are the continents and some physical characteristics of them. I would also use this images to create activities in where they have to guess what is the continent of every image. Finally, they will have to create a model of The Earth using the images provided to draw the shape of the continent.

I hope this post help you! See you in my next post!

Meet my avatar!

Goals:

- To know how to use TOONTASTIC app (avatar generator).

- To create an avatar with its own story.
- To know different types of avatar generator.
- To acquire digital competence.
- To share what I have learn with others.
- To protect your privacy on the internet.




Before I choose the app I used to create my avatar I tried other avatar generators such as Bitmoji (https://www.bitmoji.com/), Doppleme (http://doppelme.com/), Portrait Avatar Maker (http://avatarmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml) and Avatarmaker.com (http://avatarmaker.com/).  I decided not to use this websites because it only allows me to create statics images and I wanted to create something with sound, movement and nicer background. Although I didn’t use it I think this websites can be really helpful if you want your students to create an avatar for a specific activity in a short period of time. After trying this webpages I downloaded Voki and Gabsee because there were apps that allows you to record sounds and in which the avatar has movement.

VOKI (http://www.voki.com/): If you have the premium version this app is really useful but I wouldn’t use it in a class without the premium account because the options are very limited and then every student would have the same avatar, which is kind of bored for them. Also you can’t export your avatar for free.

GABSEE : Is a good app in which you can use your face as the face of the avatar and use what you are seen at that moment as the background for it  with the smartphone or tablet’s camera. This is very interesting for the kids because they can see themselves reflected in the app. You can also choose your mood depending on how you are feeling. The main thing I don’t like about this app is that the mouth of the avatar does not move as you speak, so you can’t use it to pretend that your avatar is speaking.

Finally, I decided to use TOONTASTIC which is an app to create avatar and stories.
TOONTASTIC’S is a great app with great features such as:

- When you start using the app you have three options:

a. Short story (three parts): beginning, middle, end.
b. Classic story (five parts): setup, conflict, challenge, climax, resolution.
c. Science report (five parts): question, hypothesis, experiment, result, and conclusion.

You can also erase the parts of the story that you are not going to use.

- It gives a little explanation before every part (“ the beginning where you introduce the characters and the setting of your story”)

- You can use between 1 and 7 avatars in every part of the story.

- You have plenty of created avatar (mostly related to the backgrounds) that can spin, move their hands, move their mouth like if they were talking and move like if  they were walking. You use this avatar as they are, edit it or draw your own avatar and then make it 3 D.

- You can choose interactive backgrounds that move things depending on what you touch. You only have 9 already created background but you can draw your own if you want to.

- Once you have chosen your avatar and the background you can start recorded but you need to talk it doesn’t have a text reader.

- When you are recoding you can make the character bigger or smaller depending on what you want and you can also zoom in or out the background.

- When you have recorded the video with the avatar and the background you can add background music to the audio according to the mood of your avatar. There is a lot of background music you can use.

- Once you have created the story you can recorded on a video adding a name to the video and the name of the person who create it. It also includes the name of the characters that appear in the story.

- It is possible to export the video you create to different apps or download it.

I really liked this app because I think is very useful. It allows you to create a story with an avatar sound and a background, is really easy to use and it have plenty of created material for free as I said in the features of the app. You can make really good and complete stories in a few steps. I think I would use it in the class if I wanted the children to create a story for their avatar which I think is really important. I also think that is really interesting to use this app in science class as a way of recording results on an experiment. There were also thing I didn’t like about this app:

- The avatar doesn’t pretend to talk when you talk, you have to press the avatar when you want it to do it and if you stop pressing then the avatar will stop moving its mouth. You can’t also make the avatar move at the same time it is talking.

- You can’t touch many thing at the same time, there is not a function when you can keep something press while you do something else.

- There is not a text reader in the app you if you want to use a neutral voice, as I did, you have to make it with another device. I used google translate to read the text I created my mobile phone while I recorded the story with the IPad.

- There is not website for the app online you need and smartphone or a tablet if you want to use this app.

In conclusion, I really liked this app and I would definitely use it in my class if I had enough resources because in most of schools you don’t have a tablet for every student, they only have computers, this is what I think is the main inconvenient.

Objective of this blog.

The objective of this blog is to post all the resources we use in the ICT class with a little review. I want my blog to be a website you can use to find ICT resources with its features, positive and negative aspects and how you can use this in your classroom. So, Welcome to my blog! I hope you enjoy it.