8 Reasons Why Open Badges Are Awesome

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Crear y editar un proyecto audiovisual con herramientas en línea

Reto audiovisual digital

How to be effective when studying

How to be Effective when Studying – Best Study Apps, Tools, Tips & Techniques by Open Colleges

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.


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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!

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!

Recording of the free webinar 'E-connection are essential'

Last 21 September 2014 the Fall Blog Festival webathon, hosted by IT4ALL at WizIQ, took place for 12 hours non-stop.
I had the honour to be presenting 'E-connections are essential' then, and today I am humbly sharing the recording of that live session with all of you, hoping you find it interesting.



I would also like to invite you to view the whole series of recordings that IT4ALL have generously gathered together in this YouTube Playlist, so that you have the chance to revisit or visit for the first time, if you could not attend live, the blog festival event that showcased bloggers, their work, and valuable tips when blogging for reflective practice, work with students, business and other purposes.




Thank you very much to all that attended the live session, and to the hosters for their kind invitation, their warmth, availability and generosity throughout the whole festival.

European Day of Languages 2014

26 September is bringing celebration back to Europe, as usual for the last 13 years, since the Council of Europe launched this initiative back in 2001.

So, join in, celebrate the Day along with 800 Europeans from all over the state members and say hello!

Pick up your camera, move your learning, and take part in the awesome 2014 photo competition. The European Day of Languages Photo Contest 2014 is intended to illustrate language learning in action in different environments. The competition is open to persons of all ages living in all Council of Europe member states and observer states.

Do not miss this wonderful chance to interact with language learners across Europe. There is a wide range of fun events to be part of. Let's celebrate together!

Download the flyer.

Visit the EDL site.

October is round the corner, and so is Moodle MOOC 5

 Moodle MOOC 5 starts on October 1, 2014 on WizIQ. The theme of the current MOOC is collaborative learning, reflective practice, connecting online for instruction and learning. 

The MOOC focuses on connecting online for collaborative learning and teaching through Moodle, Second Life, Mahara, Google Drive Docs, and Google Apps, Mobile Devices, Virtual Classes, and other online learning environments for face-to-face, blended, and fully online learning. The live presentations include the speakers’ reflective process on teaching and learning in fully online and blended learning formats. 

Moodle MOOC 5 also includes Moodle for Teachers (M4T) courses for beginners and advanced Moodlers. The courses is asynchronous (Moodle) and synchronous (WizIQ) with recordings of live classes on WizIQ, YouTube, and Vimeo, just in case you cannot attend on the spot. 

There are two learning areas: WizIQ course area and Moodle for Teachers (M4T) Moodle website. The live online sessions and recordings, tutorials (courseware) and ongoing discussions (coursefeed) are available in the WizIQ course area. 

Unlike the traditional MOOCs that stress content and course delivery, Moodle MOOC focuses on active learning, reflection, sharing, and collaboration. The aim of the course is for the participants to learn through meaningful connections and social interactions. Participants who wish to receive a certificate of participation will be required to document their learning experiences by keeping a blog, wiki, website, or any other artifact that will include a description and reflection of the live sessions and/or recordings. 

Moodle for Teachers Learning Experience (M4TLE) is an asynchronous component of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on WizIQ for teachers and anyone interested in teaching online using Moodle, WizIQ, and other web technologies. 

The MOOC takes place from 1 to 31 October 2014. It is in the spirit of open education and completely free. 

Participants become acquainted with Moodle as a course and learning management system. They learn how Moodle can be used in fully online, blended learning, and the flipped class. 

The MOOC only includes asynchronous (not dependent on time) elements on a Moodle site called Moodle for Teachers. The rest takes place at WizIQ.

The MOOC is self-paced with ongoing discussions and facilitator and technical support are available.  It is coordinated by Dr. Nellie Deutsch and Tom Hodgers.

Enroll now and join an engaging MOOC. Do not miss it!

Announcing Mentor Relationship - The 13th Student Blogging Challenge

Join the Student Blogging Challenge!

Are you into blogging with your students? Are you a blogging teacher?
If so, you are bound to love the challenge by the team of EduBlogs.

Registration is now open for classes and students willing to rise to this amazing chance to learn to blog and comment in 10 weeks.

The first challenge starts on 14 September 2014, so get ready and go for it!

At the end of the challenge series, if you have successfully accomplished the various weekly steps, and I'm sure you will as you are supported by a wonderful group of trainers, you will grab a badge looking like the one on the left. But the most important part of this challenge is, undoubtedly, fun, so take some minutes of your time, sit back, relax, and read all the details of this new series in the Student Blogging Challenge Blog.

Meanwhile, why don't you spread the word in Twitter? The hashtag for this challenge series is #14stubc. By using it you will also be able to gain instantly updated information about the whole event and stay tuned!

And if you need help with class blogging, do not miss the Blogging With Students Edublogs Teacher Challenges. You won't regret it!

Let's get talking!

Class flyer





Attend class

Let's get talking! by María Jesús García San Martín

Have you been 'FaceQed' yet?

Not yet? 

Well, well, well, I have been a lucky one and my eleven-year-old technologically creative son has avatared me with the brand new free app FaceQ, available for both iOs and Android.

While having an iced drink at a cosy sun umbrella-protected café in the middle of one of those historical trendy colourful suburbs that only a few can enjoy in the summer if they work in a city closed for vacation in August, such as it is warm Madrid, my son would not stop fiddling around with his mobile, taking snapshots, uploading them to his Instagram and talking about avatars and funny faces.

So, my obvious question as a mother, was: 'What are you doing with your gadget'?

Fast and happy, he answered with another question: 'Would you like to have a new avatar?'

And there he came up with this snap design, while I had not really been able to find a sec to say yes, in a couple of minutes, created with his iPhone, using the free FaceQ app, while enjoying the shade without losing imagination.

And this is how I found out two things: what I looked like for my son and how he felt about my working away from home from Monday to Friday.

Besides, I was inspired for a few back to school icebreakers (Thank you, son!) with the aim of fostering ICT use in the ESL classroon once again. I think this app can be a nice free tool to carry out some quick quests over the first days back in our lessons.

Ten ideas coming to my mind right now:

• Pair the kids up and get them to avatar each other. Then, ask them to describe their designs to the rest of their peers and have a 'Guess Who' game.
• Have the kids avatar themselves using the app and compare their faces with the same avatars other peers have designed of them; compare the differences, make them aware of the fact that the image one might have of oneself can be different to the image others have.
• Share the avatars as pictures in their virtual classroom profiles.
• Turn them into posters and decorate the classroom with a big group picture of the class avatars.
• Make badges out of the students' avatars, so they can wear them, both virtually and as real pins.
• Hold a vote for the best avatar and give out prizes or awards.
• Keep them until the end of the school year, then have another round of FaceQ design and get them to explain the changes in their design. How has the image changed, to yourself and to others?
• And of course, take advantage of the designed faces and get them to practise parts of the face, colours, revise shapes, types of hair, eyes, clothes, accessories, and so forth.
• Get them to design the faces of their whole family tree, and then have a nice round of 'introducing my family' presentations among peers.
• Or get to know them better by asking them to avatar their favourite cartoons, characters, sportspeople, heroes, singers, idols ... Here you go another couple of my son's outcomes, which show two of his most-loved heroes in the world right now. 

'Who is each gentleman? Would you like to take a wild guess and leave a comment with it?'

It is a simple easy to use app; outcomes are quite attractive and ready in minutes, as you see. On top of it all, there is no need to register the under-age users and you can go social with your designs too, as they are shareable through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, but you may also mail your creations, so why not give it a try? 

Many of our students might come back to school having already heard of FaceQ or even having used it, so it is a nice chance to go fashionably mobile in class from the very first day.

International Writing Exchange

2013/2014 school year is not even over yet, and however, we teachers are already getting ready for 2014/2015.

I guess we can't help it! As a well-known colleague of mine says, 'September will be here before we know it', and so, here I am, once again, jumping into a new collaborative project for English Language Teachers to try and help learners with writing and speaking skills, connect with other teachers worldwide and develop ideas and new activities.

These are some of the reason why I have joined The International Writing Exchange (IWE) 14-15 taking place at WiziQ and Moodle, willing to learn, collaborate and come up with connected digital artifacts, which I am sure we will be able to design together and thanks to the great support by Dr. Nellie Deutsch's Integrating Technology for Active Lifelong Learning.

Are you a teacher and would like to collaborate too? Watch the trailer below, read the course description and go for it!



All the members of the IWE are looking forward to welcoming you and your students. Don't forget: 'September will be here before we know it'. 

Density Experiment - Breaking Science!

The Science Breaking team of future CLIL Primary teachers at URJC have a new experiment they'd like to share with you all!

Ready for the new challenge? Watch their video clip, listen and practise!

If you are a teacher and ever carry it out in your lessons, or at home if you are a student, @ScienceBreaking will love to hear your feedback!

Cross-posted from Breaking Science

Platero in handy

2014 is the year to commemorate two special anniversaries: 100 years since 'Platero and I' by Juan Ramón Jiménez was first published, on one hand, and on the other hand, four hundred years since El Greco was born.

Shall we introduce El Greco to Platero and arrange a creative educational meeting? 

That's our goal at Platero in handy (Platero que ni pintado), and to accomplish it we are proposing that the characters in El Greco's paintings tell the story of Platero, becoming real storytellers.
The idea comes from @inmitacs, a Spanish Arts teacher interested in ICT, Education and Challenges, who has previously founded and taken part in other collaborative projects, such as Queremos Musicarte.

At URJC we are accomplishing this goal and we'll be flooding the classroom with Art and Literature. Are you going to miss it?
I invite you to accomplish this goal too, as part of the 30 Goals Challenge for Educators on its 2014 world tour. I am happy to be your Inspire Leader for this part of the journey, when the tour lands in Spain once more.

Accomplish this goal:

Option A:

• Choose an extract, dialogue, or chapter of Platero and I which can be narrated.
• Choose a character from one of the paintings by El Greco.
• Encourage your students to record a podcast or a videoclip so the creative meeting between the narrator and Platero takes place.
• Or, get them design their comics. Any creation goes as long as some part of Platero and I is being told by a character in one of the paintings by El Greco.

Option B:

• As students in Spain introduce you to our Literature, Culture and Art by accomplishing their goal, why don't you try and accomplish the goal too as teachers and them extend the accomplishment in your own lessons?

Reflection

Promoting the interaction between several subjects, across various languages and countries, as well as working with key competences is an essential part of any collaborative project that aims at bringing Languages and Cultures together.

By accomplishing a goal like this you will be able to foster Language skills, Communication skills, Writing, Arts and ICT skills. You will also get yourself and your students connected with other peers in the world and introduce them into Spanish Art and Literature, giving them the chance of becoming world digital citizens.

Resources

Grecoland

Greco App (Android)

400 hundred years without El Greco App (Android)

El Greco iOS App

BYG Toledo "El Greco 2K14" iOS App

Platero and I

Platero, follow me! App (Android)

Platero, follow me! App (iOS)

Platero and I. eBook

Pixton Comic Creator

Comic Maker App (Android)

Comic Strip It Lite App (Android)
Tell Me About It! 15+ Fun Apps and Tools to Get Children Speaking

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed your stay.

Find out more about The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators at 30Goals.com and join our 30 Goals Facebook group!

Thanks ever so much to Platero que ni pintado Project!

Happy 2014!

Season's Greetings

Digital Storytelling for Teachers

Halloween Public Voicemail Board

Enjoy receiving voice messages through SpeakPipe?

What about spooky Halloween voice messages?

Halloween is just around the corner, so we built a public Halloween voicemail board for recording, listening to, and sharing scary Halloween voice messages.

Visit the board here.

Go ahead, record your spooky messages and share them with others.


Don't be shy - you can become a Halloween spooky-star!