Webinar #CDigital_INTEF

This evening I'll be moderating, sharing viewpoints and impressions about Digital Competence with some well known teachers and educational leaders in Spain at a live event which you can stream view below.

The event is broadcasted in Spanish and belongs to one of the challenges at MOOC #CDigital_INTEF, a free Massive Open Online Course hosted by @educaINTEF which has just started on Monday 27 April, but whose enrolment is still open.

If you are interested in learning more about digital skills, competencies and how to teach them and evaluate them at school, in class and with your students, you are welcome to join us live this evening and at mooc.educalab.es for the next 5 weeks.





What is Digital Competence?
Why should schools train learners to be digitally competent?
Teaching and assessing digital competence in class
How are teachers and learners approaching this competence?
How should digital competence be evaluated?

These are the speakers who will be ready to answer the questions above, as well as any others that you'd like to ask. Check their Twitter handles below and learn more about what they do in Education before meeting them live this evening at 20:00 GMT+1. Check your timezone.

Manuel Area Moreira 
Mercedes Ruiz 
Elisa Piñero
Francisco León

Planning video challenges for CLIL Primary Education in 6 Steps

When planning any kind of e-challenge for learners to rise up to, one must carefully mindmap it and put it forward to them so that they actually know what they are being asked to accomplish, what learning goals are being achieved and what assessment criteria are being taken into account.

This is how the challenge of coming up with educational engaging video clips for CLIL Primary learners has been evisaged at URJC in Madrid, by a bunch of 27 pre-service teachers who are designing digital outcomes of the kind to be incorporated into their own e-publications for their own future CLIL Primary students.

 Step 1. Overview (challenge scenario)

'Imagine that you are selling a movie idea to a director with the hope that he will buy it and take it to the big screen.' 

This is the starting point, the context to trigger off the crafters' imagination (the learners) into setting up a video learning challenge.

 Step 2. Idea (challenge tip)

'Storyboards are the blueprints of any digital video challenge/project/mission/trailer/activity'.

This is the idea to start drafting the challenge.

 Step 3. The challenging question

'Let's create a storyboard and present it to the director'

This is what sets the challenge in motion and makes crafters go for it.

 Step 4. Guiding steps

Now that the crafters have risen to the challenge, it is time to guide them through how to accomplish it:

- Identify what you know about the challenge you are up to, that is, if you know what a storyboard is, and what you don't know about storyboarding, so as to investigate and find out.
- Analyse the challenge scenario, that is in our case, the CLIL e-publications we are designing and are in progress.
- Define the challenge your are facing, that is, how a video challenge can allign and match learning goals and needs within your overall e-publication.
- Design the work plan, that is, team up and discuss about what kind of video challenge you'd like to come up with: characters, background, aims, target audience and so forth.
- Gather and organise information, that is, surf and choose online means for designing the storyboard for your video challenge, investigate about the topic, about the info your are offering in that video challenge, and so forth.
- Develop activity, that is, use the means chosen and go for the design of that storyboard!
- Evaluate, spread the word, share and keep it up!

Step 5. Guiding missions

This is the time for hands-on work, that is, 
- write the storyboard, 
- craft it, 
- evaluate it, 
- improve it, 
- publish it and share it.

 Step 6. Guiding resources

Providing the crafters with curated useful resources for tackling how to plan a video challenge for CLIL Primary Education learners. In this particular challenge, we are mostly working with the Storyboard That free online tool.

And, finally, here you are the digital storyboards the bunch of pre-service teachers have come up with, which are obviously the preface to their actual video challenges, for whose results you should stay tuned and wait!


Meanwhile, all the participants in the #ictclil_urjc Master's Degree 2015 Edition and myself as their middle-lady are looking forward to your feedback about the final storyboards and what you think the evolution into actual video challenges will look like.

6 online tools for designing digital posters

Digital posters and infographics are great means to create and communicate knowledge and information through the web. They are visual products that allow both educators and students to organise concepts, order topics, create schemes, present results, share products, clarify difficult key ideas or help with complex themes, among other purposes.





Nowadays there is a wide range of online tools that make our lives easier and offer us easy ways to design visually engaging posters which we can then use in class, insert in our digital sites, webs, portfolios, blogs, and so forth, or share at social networks.

Here you are a taste of six easy-to-use friendly online options for you to choose those that best match your teaching and learning needs:

Easelly has the ingredients for any teacher or student to be able to design a nice poster or infographic which fulfills visual principles and besides, it allows teaming up so the poster can be created in collaboration. The digital outcome can be downloaded in different formats, including printable .pdf format and the designer is provided with the link and the embed code so as their product can be cross-posted to their own digital blog, site, web, and so forth. Here you are a tutorial with first stpes to start using this tool:

Piktochart might be considered the best known and most popular online tool for designing posters and infographics nowadays. It is easy to use and offers various icons, shapes and templates ready to be included in our design. However, it does not allow real time collaboration and printable oucomes cannot be grabbed. If you decide to go for it, here you are how to start tackling your digital poster with this tool:

Canva is an awesome online tool for designing all kinds of posters, banners, infographics, cards and so on. It includes over a million illustrations, icons and templates to choose from, although our own pics are also welcome.
As with the afore mentioned tools, you must sign up and then log in to start using it, and then decide what type of digital outcome you are designing with the tool, as from that decision, the tool will provide you with the right sizes, layouts, templates and so on, so as to adapt your creations to your specific goals and needs. For further help with this tool, view the clip below:

Smore  is a visual friendly online tool for creating posters and flyers to which you can add text, videos, images and whose outcomes can be linked and embedded at any web site or blog. However, the basic free version is currently restricted to 5 free designs,so once you are done with those five, you will have to upgrade to the Premium version if you would like to keep on designing more creations.

Tackk is similar to Smore as regards aims, as it is a friendly tool for designing digital posters in an easy quick way. Besides, at the moment it allows unlimited designs without having to upgrade and the templates, layouts, wallpapers, backgrounds and other creative options are quite an asset.

Mural.ly is a drag and drop online tool that allows you to easily include links and images onto the poster you are designing. The interface is neat and friendly as regards including multimedia content; on top of that, collaborative edition of ongoing posters is available, so it is undoubtedly added value for this tool when applied in education, since it fosters team work. If you are thinking of starting with it, do not miss the clip below:

Student Blogging Challenge 2015 - Week 7

Connecting 2015 #ictclil_urjc and 2015 Student Blogging Challenge is landing on week 7, which is Game Week, a real fun mission all about visiting other blogs

Please check the Student Blogging Challenge 2015 main page and surf the activities your mentees should be accomplishing.

Help them with comment starters, encourage them to connect and comment and play the Count Out Three Game, you won't regret it!

And I do recommend you to read this range of clues to take into account when commenting about fellow bloggers' posts and entries. I think they are bound to be useful both for your mentorship and your own blogging activity.

Illustration from Clue: a space

Student Blogging 2015 Challenge - Week 6

Connecting 2015 #ictclil_urjc and 2015 Student Blogging Challenge is landing on week 6. The activities for this mission are about working and then playing.

Please check the Student Blogging Challenge 2015 main page and surf the activities your mentees should be accomplishing.

Read the flipboard magazine to visit bloggers who are writing great posts and are then leaving comments on Miss W’s challenge posts. Students with Edublogs free blogs can’t have posts flipped into the magazine, so they are being mentioned on each week’s posts instead.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

A potential cover 4 #twima2

As you are bound to have guessed by now, the ictclil_urjc bunch of pre-service teachers attending the Master's Degree Module for The use of ICT & Digital Resources in Primary Bilingual Ed. URJC. 2015 Edition, are connecting with collaborative projects worldwide, and one of them is our much appreciated #twima2.

Stage 1 is finished and we are now diving deeply into Stage 2 to build multimedia artifacts while interpreting other collaborators' dreams.

On top of that, the collaborative iBook we are all helping to produce and publish is so far, 25 chapters and 630 pages of brilliant dreams written/illustrated by over 90 classes worldwide, and it needs a cover, doesn't it?

Well, our talented @MartaLFabero28 has come up with a sweet potential cover for #twima2 which we are proudly presenting right now:

Everybody in class and myself are keeping our fingers crossed for Marta's cover to be singled out as the final one.

Good luck, Marta!

CLIL e-Publications for Bilingual Primary Education

After facing challenges, going on learning missions, sorting out new teaching scenarios brought up by a tornado blowing textbooks away, and 3 months of amazing hands-on work at the Master's Degree Module for The use of ICT & Digital Resources in Primary Bilingual URJC - 2015 Edition, now it is time to proudly introduce the CLIL showcases this bunch of 26 pre-service e-teachers have just designed and opened up to the world, their e-publications for Primary Bilingual kids:

This is just the visual tip of a full schedule of missions that they have had to craft in order to reach this turning point, which will soon be hopefully extended into an open challenging engaging digital publication for Primary Education learners and teachers.

To land on this creative stage after the tornado, the pre-service teachers, now turned into e-authors, have climbed up quite a wide variety of stepping stones. They have:

• brainstormed together about how to rise to the challenge of teaching with no paper textbooks; 

• surfed other ebooks, designed by other teachers worldwide who have already made the decision of designing their own digital teaching materials,  and evaluated them;

• learned about the importance of licencing, citing and attributing;

• improved their digital literacy by attending the Spring Blog Festival 2015 live sessions, where over a dozen educational leaders inspired them to go ahead in their ordeal;

• started curating their own resources, ideas and tips so as to gather information, ready to include if necessary when publishing their digital outcomes;

• gone collaborative and taken part in worldwide educational projects: #twima2 has given them the chance to dream internationally. #stubc15 has opened the door towards blogging and becoming international blogging mentors. @infoEDUgrafias has taught them how to draft visual outlines of their e-publications, which later evolved into mindmaps.

Of course, their outcomes are in progress, but I wanted to share their work with you all, as I think their effort is worth it and they all deserve your staying tuned for upcoming episodes, as there are more challenges knocking on their doors which will sooner than later be real, and that make, from my viewpoint, nice evidence that innovating is a must when educating.

Meanwhile, suscribe to #ictclil_urjc and don't miss it!

Mindmapping CLIL e-publications

Mindmapping CLIL e-publications for Bilingual Primary Education

Mapping out ideas and presentations online and on pieces of papers, notebooks and so forth are good ways to visualise an ebook or any other kind of project up to the end.

This board gathers the collection of mindmaps a group of 27 pre-service teachers at URJC in Madrid have designed as outlines of their open e-publications for CLIL teaching in Primary Education.

Suscribe to their Twitter list and stay tuned for #ictclil_urjc news and outcomes!


Follow Mª Jesús's board Mindmapping CLIL e-publications for Bilingual Primary Education on Pinterest.

Infographics 4 CLIL e-Publications

Before designing any kind of ebook, it should be outlined and drafted. Building an infographic is a visual way to draft a skeleton.

This board gathers the educational infographics designed by the pre-service CLIL Primary teachers at #ictclil_urjc 2015 Edition, to be turned into CLIL e-publications for Primary Teaching.


Follow Mª Jesús's board Infographics 4 CLIL e-Publications on Pinterest.

Student Blogging Challenge - Week 5 Mission

Connecting 2015 #ictclil_urjc and 2015 Student Blogging Challenge is landing on week 5. The activities for this mission will go on until 19 April and t heir topic is Favourites.

Please check the Student Blogging Challenge 2015 main page and surf the activities your mentees should be accomplishing.

Please get in touch with me if:

• you have been allocated blogs where you can't leave a comment,
• your mentees are not replying to any of your comments  especially when you have asked a question,
• your mentees have written no posts at all relating to the challenge,
• your mentees still have the basic Hello World post.