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.
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