321 Introductions. #ictclil_urjc - 2015 Edition

Check the brand new collection of 321 intros by the students at the Master's Degree Module for The use of ICT & Digital Resources in Primary Bilingual URJC - 2015 Edition:
 

Once upon a time, a tiny story about CLIL

It is time to spend a while sharing what future CLIL teachers have ahead for us and our Primary kids.

Fortunately for me I teach potential Primary Bilingual educators twice a week, and I guess that allows me to envisage if CLIL methodology in the classrooms is going to be just a name again in coming years, and if we are actually taking the right steps to have real innovative Content and Language Integrated Learning Teachers in the classrooms, and how we are going to actually accomplish that in the adequate way, that is, how we are training CLIL teachers, and if that training is turning them into innovative enthusiastic educators, who will be absolutely convinced that integrating Content, Language, ICT, PBL and lots of Pills of Enthusiasm are the igredients to cook a classroom of bilingual students who will be ready to manage their lives in the real world, in two languages.

From my viewpoint, that type of training is the only successful one as well as the kind of training which will plant a seed of change in CLIL lessons, and so, that is part of what I try to transmit my groups of future Primary Bilingual educators every year. 

It is a challenging but very rewarding job, especially when, after four lessons, you come up with awesome outcomes, such as the video clip @MartaLFabero28, one of my students at the #ictclil_urjc 2015 edition, has just recorded.

This was the mission for Marta, as for the rest of her peers, in order to jump into digital literacy and social networking: their first tweet for #ictclil_urjc with one aim: learning by twittering.

How to achieve the goal? Writing a tiny story about what CLIL means for teaching and learning that allows the reader's imagination to run with it. They should start their tweet using #ictclil_urjc, that was the only condition.

And what did Marta do? She took a step ahead and summarised her own aspirations and opinions on CLIL teaching in an awesome clip she recorded with VideoScribe and that she later tweeted.

But before actually going live, Marta carried out wonderful preliminary work, which I observed dumbfoundedly in class.

In a nutshell, this was her step-by-step procedure:

1. She gave her tweet a thought or two,
2. reflected on the tiny story,
3. came up with an idea,
4. scribbled the clip in a piece of paper,
5. drafted her ideas,

6. recorded the clip including her drawing with Inkscape,

7. uploaded it to YouTube and spread the news on Twitter.

On top of that, she kept on with her own impressions and reflections when describing her upload at her YouTube Channel. 

Wouldn't you say it is a round solid job? Well, I would.

Isn't she just on the right track to become a good innovative teacher, digitally proficient, ready to teach CLIL in a modern way? I do think Marta is a promising young girl, full of enthusiasm, good ideas and excellent skills to craft loads of wonderful challenges like the digital artifact she has just produced, and who will do an awfully good job with future twenty first century citizens.

I just hope she can find her teaching place in Spain, and we do not lose all that talent for other countries or schools abroad where this kind of competencies are better valued than here.

Thanks a bunch, Marta, for your incredible effort, and also for making my day.

Keep rocking it!

Storyboarding

A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.













This list includes tools and tips to create storyboards for the classroom:

InfoEduGraphics

What is InfoEDUgraphics?

It is a brand new collaborative project set up by teachers for teachers and learners worldwide to design meaningful educational infographics at all levels.

Why taking part in InfoEDUgraphics?

Infographics are a neat means to deliver information and concepts in an engaging visual way. They foster digital skills, as well as enabling learners to organise information and making learning more effective.

But in order to design meaningful infographics, a wide range of strategies are needed, and this project intends to reach that challenge: having teachers and learners come up with these digital visual outcomes that prove their good use of strategies to filter and summarise info in such a way that it actually conveys the message.

Are you up to the challenge?

If you are, then you are ready to join the project with your learners. Just fill in the form, think of a topic and the target audience, set up your learning teams, draft your infographic, shape your skeleton, and design your motivating innovative means of communication: the infoEDUgraphic.

Find it all about the project at its site and blog; apply and grab your badge. Then, be creative and have fun!

The infoEDUgraphics team are looking forward to posting your awesome outomes and spreading the word for you all.

Interactive and augmented images

A list of tools and tips to bring your images to life, augment their reality and provide them with more meaning.

Be someone's champion

When you feel you are a champion for at least one learner, that is the best reward for a teacher.

Nothing makes a teacher feel happier and prouder than getting the sense of having fostered teaching skills among learners and that those delivered skills have actually helped learners turn into teachers themselves.

With this experience I am sharing with you all here, I would like to try and put foward how I felt like a champion for Billy J. Ramos, one of my former University students in Madrid, who is now a Primary Bilingual Teacher, although, after all, if you come to think about it, it was him who was my champion!

But let me explain, and so Goal 2, Be Someone's Champion, within The 30 Goals For Teachers 2015 is also accomplished.

Everything started in 2014, when I met my #ictclil_urjc bunch of future Primary Bilingual Teachers at University King Juan Carlos in Madrid, and they accepted a package of various challenging projects.

Billy and his team went for the Book-ME Library project and crafted a sweet virtual library of books and stories for young readers, which soon connected with several Primary teachers in Spain who were also to become champions for them, as they twinned and presented their own young learners with the Book-Me Library original storybooks, in the timeline of an econnected story, ending up with awesome enriching peer to peer feedback and spreading the word at virtual conferences and live sessions.

The school year went by and they flew off to their actual classroom and real teaching, but there was one who came back to me, stood out and was ready for the championship, and that was Billy J. Ramos, now an inspiring teacher himself, ready to present and co-present in live sessions, to spread the word, to create his own virtual classes and courses, to support others.

And so there I was, happily viewing how he grew up as a connected teacher and with new proposals to do my best at accompanying him to stardom.

This is why we started The EduPower of Blended Learning live sessions at WizIQ, a series of three virtual classes Billy and I delivered in pairs between november and december 2014, whose aim was 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 live classes were 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 the series included 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 was prompting participants with lively relaxed educational pills, keeping up casual conversation and inspiring interaction.

There you are the recordings of the series in case you feel like viewing them. They might help you realize why I am so proud of Billy and why I feel he is my champion, rather than me being his:

Blend, Flip & Boost Your Teaching Online - Live Session Highlights: Introducing blended learning through flipped classrooms, teamwork and project based learning methodology, all linked together via ICT.

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.

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.

Looking forward to reading your feedback. I'm sure you are bound to agree with me that Billy is a teaching star, with a brilliant career. And, if he has been able to accomplish all this in less than a year, who knows what else might he be offering us this edition?

Stay tuned!

My best wishes, Billy.
A proud thankful teacher.

Support a Movement

I will never get tired of saying that e-connections are essential to be an up-to-date connected teacher who can bring learners close to the global world we are living in nowadays.

Aligning with the aforesaid statement, which I also show at my Twitter bio, is Goal 1 of The 30 Goals For Teachers 2015, Support a Movement.

Professional networks of inspiring educators, ready to work in collaboration, share their ideas and findings, and willing to innovate together are the best movement to support, as well as the most nurturing environment for one's own learners to find the right path in search of becoming globally connected citizens. 

Being part of a virtual community of persons worldwide is an asset for one's teaching life, and not only from a professional viewpoint, but also from a personal one, as when one feels part of connected movements, one establishes personal links too; above all, one establishes strong personal links, yes, above all; emotional rewarding relationships that help you stay focused and keep going when education goes rough, and sometimes it does go rough, doesn't it?

That's why I am proud to be part of a wide range of collaborative movements worldwide, to support and be supported by their members, to stay connected, to learn and be inspired by their awesome ideas, tips, pieces of advice and, especially, by their warmth, proximity, energy and generosity even though they are actually based at the other end of the world.

And sometimes, one wonders: 'How come that I can find it so smooth to cooperate with somebody in San Antonio, Texas, or in Toronto, Canada, or in Greece, or in Argentina, Hawaii, Venezuela, or Abu Dabi, to name but a few?'

Well, that is the beauty of networked educational movements, and I can't find any other reasonable explanation for it. It just clicks and you know those movements are your movements too. It is mutual and it works!

So, why not join any, or all the movements I support and become an e-connected teacher/learner/individual as well? You are bound to love them all. Support your Movement now!

30 Goals for Teachers! Cycle 6: Inspire Forward

The 30 Goals Challenge is back to inspire teachers and learners worldwide all along its sixth cycle in 2015.

Lead by stunning Shelly Terrell, this new cycle takes a step forward and encourages us all to accomplish 1 to 30 goals and use those accomplishments to inspire other teachers and students.















Find it all about this inspiring project at The 30 Goals Challenge and join the movement!

Collaborative Brainstorming

Collaborative brainstorming to analyse the teaching scenario after our textbooks have been flown away by a tornado and to come up with tips and ideas for the new teaching/learning situation. #ictclil_urjc - 2015 Edition

Created with Padlet

If you'd like to contribute, please ask for your password!

Teachers, We've Had a Problem

Ready for a new challenge?

This school year, the students from URJC at the #ictclil_urjc 2015 Edition of the Master's Degree Module on The Use of ICT and Digital Resources in Primary Bilingual Education are facing a brand new mission: 'Teachers, We've Had a Problem'.


Click on the story below, find out what that problem is and feel free to contribute with tips and ideas to overcome this issue:

Where have our textbooks gone?

Join The World Is My Audience 2

After the success of The World is My Audience in 2014, we are ready to jump into The World is My Audience 2 - Dreams around the world.

#twima, The World Is My Audience, was a first attempt at gathering the world's classrooms for a collaborative poetry project.  It was a huge success, not in numbers of downloads (yet), but in the impact it had on teachers and students making connections with classrooms worldwide.

#twima2 is the follow-up project.  Again, the goal is to collaborate with the world's classrooms on a writing project. And those of us at #ictclil_urjc Master's Degree Module in Madrid, are in charge of dreaming stories and making the interactive media for those stories.

So, follow the steps to dream and connect with the world!

The stages we at URJC will be connecting #twima2 and #ictclil_urjc together are:

Stage 1. 3 to 23 March 2015

Discuss dreams with your peers. The dreams you write about could be personal dreams, actual night dreams, dreams for the world, dreams of your culture or dreams that relate to academic areas you currently are part of.

Place these written dreams in this shared Google document. Do not forget the title of your dream and your full name at the end of your written dream, for authorship.

These written dreams may include artwork or photos you create.  Please make sure you use your own artwork and photos, so that we avoid any copyright issues. If you choose photos from the Internet, please make sure they are acceptable and copyright free.

Stage 2. 2 April to 2 May 2015

Once the dreams by the world’s classrooms are submitted, we will be passed the written work and you will part of the worldwide team who will take those written dreams and turn them into multimedia for the iBook. This media could be videos, photos, widgets and much, much more.  The sky is truly the limit. We will be using iBooks Author to increase the interactivity and ease of transferring work to the iBook.

TWIMA2

Follow the project site: www.thetwimaproject.weebly.com. 

Like its Facebook page: facebook.com/twima. 

Stay tuned at Twitter: #twima2

Useful tips to give elearning a human touch

eLearning is undoubtedly the way to bring learning close to individuals interested in being taught anywhere, any time, and about all kinds of fields one can imagine.

However, sometimes we might make the mistake of leaving elearners to their own devices and forget about the fact that they are real human individuals, real learners who need to feel that there is somebody behind the learning portal.

Courtesy of eLearning Infographics, here you are a list of tips to humanise your eLearning initiatives and, of course, your eTeaching.


Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

3, 2, 1, Who am I?

3,2,1 Intro for #ictclil_urjc 2015 Edition
Created at Animoto

Tools and strategies to avoid infoxication

A list of resources, links, tools and tips to filter information on the Internet as well as organising it so as to avoid infoxication.



Heading Image by Clint Hamada. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0