The EduPower of Blended Learning

Brought to you by the EduPower Couple!

Course Highlights 

• Advantages and drawbacks of blending learning with ICT
• Blended learning using a virtual classroom
• Collaborative blogging and teamwork

Course Description

The aim of this series of three live sessions is to go through the advantages and drawbacks of blending learning with ICT; to show a sample of blended learning using a virtual classroom, collaborative blogging and teamwork.

The classes have been designed for teachers who would like to gain confidence when going into blended or e-learning or need to give their virtual teaching a boost.

The topics covered in this series include tips, advice and resources to set up an online classroom, craft blended learning challenges and show real examples of this type of teaching. Core teaching methodology followed is prompting participants with lively relaxed educational pills, keeping up casual conversation and inspiring interaction.

This course is part of the 'Micro Teaching in Pairs on WizIQ' sessions, within the 'Learn to Flip & Blend with Technology' MOOC.

Timetable of Live Sessions:

3 November 2014: Blend, Flip & Boost Your Teaching Up

Live Session Highlights:

Introducing blended learning through flipped classrooms, teamwork and project based learning methodology, all linked together via ICT

17 November 2014: Shape Your Online Classroom & Blend it with Hands-on Projects

Live Session Highlights:

Setting up a virtual classroom using Edu 2.0, combine it with learning challenges, team blogs and collaborative classroom blog

1 December 2014: Flip, Blend and Wrap it all up!

Live Session Highlights:

Surviving through face-to-face lessons, combined with a virtual classroom at Edu 2.0, and through collaborative project blogging challenges

The EduPower Couple! - Collage of co-presenters

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

We are looking forward to sharing with you all. Please come, join us and share!

Halloween Festive Webmix

The Symbaloo Edu team has designed this fun webmix with with everything from costumes to DIY projects, to celebrate the creepy date with your students.

Enjoy it!

Learning to micro teach in pairs

On 20 October 2014, Tauseef Farook and myself were invited to a series of micro-teaching sessions to learn how to deliver a micro-teaching lesson. Tauseef and I had never met before but we were both attending this live session at WizIQ, hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch, from IT4ALL.

The session was part of a series of live lessons in preparation to be able to teach online, in pairs; an e-training initiative starting in November 2014, fostered by IT4ALL at WizIQ. 

It was an amazing experience, as it clearly showed the beauty of virtual professional life. How could you meet other teachers from the other end of the world and get ready to teach with them, apart from online? No other way! That’s the perfect added value of online teaching.


The session started with an overall introduction by the host, and then the attendants were just paired up to practice in breakout rooms for 15 minutes.

During that quarter of an hour, Tauseef and I discovered quite a few things about each other and discussed about challenges and benefits of micro teaching in pairs, as well as resources to acccomplish that type of teaching successfully. That was the proposal. After that time, we were taken back to the main room where the rest of the session was taking place.

And this is how Tauseef and I met, first time ever, and we discovered that both of us are ESL teachers, into ICT, and love our profession. We very quickly decided that one would tip at the chat room while the other would write conclusions on the whiteboard. That was the first outcome of micro-teaching in pairs: agreement!

Now, we are inviting you to have a look at our tips and conclusions, drafted in 15 minutes by two teachers who had not even known of the existence of each other until 20 October 2014. 

Isn’t it awesome? I thought it was fully enjoyable and inspiring!

So, first, the challenges to micro teach in pairs: reaching agreements, having a mind to bring together our different approaches. Finding a common topic to teach. Finding common time together, skipping time zones and so on, to plan, schedule, create, and so forth, and finally, finding a good way to engage and motivate learners in our online paired up lessons.

The benefits of micro teaching in pairs are quite obvious: team work is better, and richer than single teaching. Two minds are bound to produce double work than one. The workload is shared, so it runs more smoothly and we can support each other, putting into the lesson the best skill each one has.

Apart from that we can encourage each other if one might feel down and build the confidence for weak points to get stronger.

As regards resources to get ready for micro teaching in pairs and presenting, Google drive is a good option, to edit and create together, as it does not matter where you are based, you can still work together as if it were real time. That leads us to the design of presentations, tutorials and so forth inside our common Drive. And, finally, offering students real life situations, like the one we have just lived, is a good chance to make them understand the value of that being taught.

Thanks a million for your attention and to Dr. Nellie for the chance of finding each other and enlarging our professional teaching community.

Now, on 24 October, we feel ready to present our conclusions to the world. Come and join us!

Micro Teaching Sessions on WizIQ: Teaching in a Live Virtual Class

STUDENT BLOGGING CHALLENGE 2014 - WEEK 5

Week 5 Challenge is going audiovisual!

This week we are dealing with using images, music and sounds in your posts. If you click on the link above, you are bound to find lots of tips and resources that will help you insert all kinds of pictures, and sounds when blogging.

Besides, you can also follow these lists and find lots of tools to work with images and sounds. I hope you enjoy them!

Badges: Game, Reward, Professional Digital Credentials?

You are invited to join me for the free live class 'Badges: game, reward, professional digital e-credentials?' on October 4 2014, at 16:00 Spanish time.

Check your time around the world.




This free live class is part of the courseware of Moodle MOOC 5, hosted and coordinated by the team from Integrating Technology 4 Active Lifelong Learning from 1 to 31 October 2014, and I will be glad to share with you my experience and viewpoints on issuing and gaining badges at Moodle; connecting with your Mozilla BackPack, accepting your badges, creating a public collection and sharing your digital badges with the world.

Badges, Game, Reward, Professional Digital e-Credentials ?

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

My warmest thanks to Dr. Nellie Deutsch for inviting me to be a Moodle MOOC 5 presenter. I hope you enjoy it and find it interesting. Looking forward to meeting you all there!

Student Blogging Challenge 2014 - Week 3

Tell us about your town and country for Week 3 Activities within Student Blogging Challenge 2014.

If you belong to the groups of students assigned to me, then I'm your Mentor!

Please, check the September 2014 Students entry to see if you are under this heading:



That's me, María, and I am looking forward to finding out a bit more about where you are from, what your town is like, so why not getting in touch through cross-commenting in our blogs? I can also let you know about my own country, Spain.

Get ready and choose one or more activities among those proposed for Week 3. Let me know that you are done by posting a comment in this entry, or leave me a voice message in the blog voice mail, and I will happily get back to you.

You are also welcome to visit my About me page and leave your comments. Or, if you'd rather have a look at new tools and widgets, here you are my list of tools and resources to create quizzes or other types of digital content. Would you like to give it a try? Why not using it for accomplishing one of Week 3 activities? Check it regularly, as it is frequently updated.





If you need help, just let me know, I am here to give you a hand.

All along the week I will be paying a visit to your blog and commenting on your entries too!

Keep the conversation up, comment, share and get engaged. Connected blogging is fun!