#twima2 is live!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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, from March to May 2015, has been to collaborate with the world's classrooms on a writing project. And we, at our Master's Degree Module on The Use of ICT and Web Resources for Primary Bilingual Education from URJC in Madrid, have been in charge of dreaming stories and making the interactive media for those stories, together with 28 classrooms from around the world.

The outcome is now live: a 700-page interactive iBook live and ready for your downloads!

But behind this digital artifact, there have been 3 months of intensive, enjoyable, international collaborative work, magnificiently led by @theipodteacher, to whom we are greatly thankful.

Our contribution to #twima2 has been sequenced along the two main stages of the 3-phase-project:

Stage 1. 3 to 23 March 2015

Step 1. Discussing dreams among peers. The dreams we wrote about could be personal dreams, actual night dreams, dreams for the world, dreams of our culture or dreams that related to academic areas we were currently part of.

Step 2. Placing these written dreams in a shared Google document, without forgetting the title of each dream and the full name of the dreamer at the end of each written dream, for authorship. These written dreams may include artwork or photos we created, always making sure we used our own artwork and photos, so that we avoided any copyright issues. If we chose photos from the Internet, it was absolutely necessary to be sure they were acceptable and copyright free.

And this was the actual outcome for Stage 1:

Your Dreams Start Here from Mª Jesús García San Martín

Stage 2. 2 April to 2 May 2015 

Step 3. Once the dreams by the world’s classrooms were submitted, we were passed the written work and we became part of the worldwide team who took those written dreams and turned them into multimedia for the iBook. These media could be videos, photos, widgets and much, much more. The sky was truly the limit. The only condition was to choose a dream from a chapter/page by a dreamer from a classroom in the world we had not met; read it, interpret it, and turn it interactive.

And here are our actual products for Stage 2:




Stage 3. 2 to 14 May 2015

Step 4. Host teacher, JonSmith, was using iBooks Author to increase the interactivity and ease of transferring work to the iBook, uploaded the whole collaborative iBook to iTunes and, after Apple approval, here we are the full iBook live! The #twima2 iBook is now live and ready for your free downloads.

Click the link below to download on your iPad or Mac.

View on iBooks

Thank you everyone for being part of the project, and my special congratulations to @MartaLFabero28 (one of my #ictclil_urjc students) for her extra contribution to #twima2 with her cover, which has been singled out to be the official cover of The World is My Audience 2.
We all hope everyone likes it and enjoys interactively reading it as much as we did while collaboratively designing it.

And, stay tuned for #twima3, as it will start up in the fall. So if you missed out this time, we will be back!

Chef of Volume

Chef of volume is the e-publication that Marta Plaza, a pre-service teacher taking part at the Master's Degree Module on The Use of ICT and Web Resources in CLIL Primary Education at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, has designed for bilingual third graders.

She has been working on it since February 2015, and now it is time to spread the word about her open educational resource that aims at Primary Bilingual learners to acquire various key competences, such as Maths, Digital competence, Communication skills and some others which can well be acquired by accomplishing the wide range of missions and challenges that she is proposing.

If you check her e-publication as a learner you will be able to create presentations on geometric shapes, online write recipes of creative imaginative sandwiches, or create brief animated video clips on daily food. Besides, you will also be able to take part in audio and video challenges as well as viewing other kids who have already done so, such as Holly and Phoebe, who Marta has augmented thanks to Aurasma:

If you are a CLIL teacher, checking Marta's site will surely inspire you for designing your own learning missions and you will also be able to track Marta's evolution along her journey through ICT and CLIL from scratch, as she is providing the very beginning of her e-publication through the design of its skeleton and mindmap, evaluating visual principles from other epublications, towards the participation in collaborative projects worldwide so as to become a connected educator, such as #twima2, @infoEdugrafias or Spring Blog Festival, Moodle MOOC 6 and Student Blogging Challenge.

Do not miss this promising young Primary teacher's e-publication and stay tuned for upcoming challenges and missions. Now meet Marta and visit her site.

Feedback will be appreciated!




Congratulations, Marta Plaza, for your awesome educational resource!

Pretty Woman Revisited

Twenty five years enjoying Pretty Woman, one of the classics of cinema in the late twentieth century.

But, do you really know it all about this enchanting film that shows the American Dream every man and woman would like to live?

Even though you may have seen the film as often as I have, maybe in English, or maybe dubbed to your own language, or maybe subtitled; even though you might have spotted flaws in one or more scenes and showed off about it such as the croissant that becomes a tortilla for Vivian's breakfast, are you really a Pretty Woman Master?

Let's see!

Did you know that

• Julia Roberts and Richard Gere were not the first choice for the film?

• the movie was about to be called "$ 3,000"? Wonder why!

• in the first version of the script, Vivian was addicted to drugs?

• Julia Roberts was so skinny that it was decided to use a double with more "curves" for intimate scenes?

• the legs we have all seen on the promo poster are not Julia Roberts' real legs but belong to a model?

• the necklace that Edward gave Vivian was actually a real quarter of a million dollar one, guarded at all times during the filming? And that the actual snapping the box lid to catch Vivian's finger was improvised by Gere and was not in the original script altough it was later included in the final version of the tape?

• the magnificent red dress every woman wanted to wear was first going to be black?

• in the fight between Edward and his friend Stuckey, Richard Gere actually lost the crown of one of his teeth due to the struggle?

• the scriptwriters first thought of returning Vivian to the streets and sending Edward back to New York with his girlfriend instead of ending the film with the romantic kiss that we all have had printed in our minds for the last 25 years?

See how Julia Roberts and Richard Gere reenact Pretty Woman lines and read about the cast 25th reunion.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Header image from Flickr by Alifia. CC BY 2.0

Student Blogging Challenge 2015 - Week 4 Mission

  Connecting 2015 #ictclil_urjc and 2015 Student Blogging Challenge is landing on week 4.

This week we are joining globally and making an evironmentally friendly stop on 28 March 2015, Earth Hour. Take the chance to use your power to make a change regarding climate change by encouraging your mentees to be part of it all too.

Activities for this week are all to do with the globe or the world we live in, so visit your mentees' blogs and support earth with them.

Do not forget to visit the Student Blogging 2015 Challenge main page and read the suggested missions there. We are now into week 4 of the challenge so students should have an About Me page or post, created an avatar, perhaps written something about commenting, written a post using images and giving correct attribution - maybe a poem or story to finish, too.

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.

Happy Week 4 and Happy Earth Hour 2015. Let's make the change!

How to be effective when studying

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

Connecting 2015 #ictclil_urjc and 2015 Student Blogging Challenge

2015 Student Blogging Challenge is back in business, from 1 March to 10 May 2015, that is 10 weeks, and the future Primary CLIL teachers at 2015 #ictclil_urjc will be helping the #stubc15 participants as Mentors.

What is Student Blogging Challenge?
For those of you who have never heard of this challenge that takes place twice a year before, I encourage you to read all about it at the EduBlogs About Page.

What is your job as a Mentor?
As trainee teachers, you are allocated a group of blogs designed by students and/or full classes who have registered to take part in the challenge.

This is the bunch of 10-year-old students you have been assigned. Find your name next to your mentee.

Each week, those students will be rising up to tasks which are posted at the Challenge Blog, and your duties as their Mentor will be to:

• Visit your allocated student blogs at least three times throughout the challenge. Please check who you are mentoring. Your name will be above your allocated student blogs.

• Leave comments on posts written by the students.

• Continue conversations in the comments.

• Remind them about visiting the main blogging challenge page each week.

• Contact me if having concerns or problems so that I can contact Miss W., the organiser of the Student Blogging Challenge.

• Spread the word at Twitter using our hashtags: #stubc15 and #ictclil_urjc.

In a nutshell, Mentors are there to give challenged students some clues about blogging, reminding them of the challenge as well as carrying on conversations in their posts.

So, welcome to the 14th Student Blogging Challenge, good luck to you all, keep the conversations up and don't forget to grab your 2015 Badge!

Have fun!

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!

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!

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!

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!

Bringing Colegio San Gregorio and Book ME-Library together!

This is the beauty of e-connections and how taking advantage of ICT resources and social networks can bring peer teachers with alike interests together around a common rewarding mini-project that turns out to be an e-connected means to foster reading, writing and digital skills among Primary Bilingual students.

The story of this e-connection starts in a University classroom (URJC), with a group of future teachers taking the Master's Degree on The Use of ICT and Web Resources in Primary Bilingual Education, and approaching Challenge Based Learning through the development of various projects, which will enable them to embrace this methodology with their own students when having the chance to teach real, but at the same time, seeking for project testers, that is, current teachers looking forward to putting the projects into practice in their own ongoing lessons.

One of those students is Billy Ramos, working on the Book ME-Library project to encourage reading and writing skills with mobile devices.
As soon as he is ready for his creations to be tested, I start my Twitter engine and post several calls there as well as in Facebook, where the overall experience is now part of the 30 Goals Challenge and we have become inspire leaders for other teachers around the world to accomplish the eStudents Connecting and Creating goal.

Among many other collaborative colleagues, to whom I am sincerely thankful, Julián Sanz, from Colegio San Gregorio, in Palencia - Spain, responds willing to integrate Billy's assignments into his We Are StoryTellers eTwinning Project for sixth graders, together with Carmen Pérez, a colleague of Julián's.

I quickly e-gather them so we collaboratively plan, schedule, organise, exchange ideas together with proposals, and, as Billy often says: 'We are on it like white on rice' very very soon.

Billy starts with a sweet video introduction for the kids to get to know him better and have a glimpse of the upcoming episodes from Book ME-Library.



Julián, from his end, starts presenting the mini-project to the educational community:



And ... Off we go! The kids from Y6 San Gregorio are looking forward to learning how to become digital storytellers, and there is Billy, in Madrid, to show them the essentials of any story: introduction, nub, ending.





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Meanwhile, in Palencia, Julián, Carmen and their teams of sixths graders, with the help of Billy's tips, are writing scripts and storyboarding trips, tsunamis, monsters, fantastic creatures and loads of other digital storytelling adventures that they share and edit in Google Drive until ready for the final design.

And, there is a new decision to be taken, which tool to use for the digital creation. The winning tool is ... collaborative Storybird, so Billy comes into action again and with his superpowers, efficiently screencasts a how-to tutorial about the artful tool.



On top of that, Billy heartedly creates a sample story with Storybird: Who is bigger than me?, especially dedicated to the Y6 kids from Julián's classrooms, which hides an augmented personalised gift; to open the gift you need the Aurasma app in your mobile device, follow the Book ME-Library channel and scan the book cover with the app.

You wouldn't expect me to spoil it for you, would you?




Now, the sixth graders have all the ingredients to cook and serve wonderful digital stories, feel they are storytellers and have the spirit of e-connected students at the same time. Here you are some of their outcomes, and don't miss the authors' pen-names!!!

And this is the ending of our own e-connected story or perhaps it is the beginning, who knows? But one thing is sure: "We taught and learned happily ever after".

Adventure Picture e-books for Primary Bilingual Readers

Jacob Welcker, from the URJC Book ME-Library team, is the author of these two adventure picture e-books aimed at fostering digital reading skills among 8-12-year-old young learners.

If you are a CLIL Primary teacher, or if you teach ESL to young readers, like his stories and ever use them in your lessons or recommend them to your own students, the whole Book ME-Library team will love to hear from you.

Run your mouse over the cover and click to flip pages. Comments and feedback are most welcome!

Crossposted from Book ME-Library.

A collection of e-books for young learners

@jdtearse and his peers from the Book ME-Library team from the URJC group of future CLIL Primary teachers, have created a really wonderful collection of colourful ebooks that young learners are bound to enjoy!

I am sure teachers are also going to regard them as a good source of ESL material for young readers to be encouraged to e-read. If you like them and ever use them in your lessons, the Book ME-Library team will love to hear from you.

Just click on the images below, and start reading!

Crossposted from Book ME-Library.

Is Celebrity Obsession Bad for Us?

You are invited to take part in our final Do Now: Art And Popular Culture before summer break, twittering about the article entitled Is Celebrity Obsession Bad for Us?

Read the post carefully, watch the video clip and draw your own conclusions. When you are ready to post your impressions, opinions, comments and so forth on Twitter, please start twittering on a regular basis, about this topic.

Start all your tweets with @KQEDedspace and end them with our hashtag #DoNow_urjc. Respond to your peers, and retweet all those posts that you regard worthwhile.

Be creative, illustrate your tweets, include multimedia content, use your imagination!

Lots of other students from all over the world are also twittering about this Do Now and they will be using 

#DoNowCelebrity, so it would be nice if you focused on that hashtag too, apart from our own. In order to manage that, you may use a tool for real time tracking and organizing your Twitter, such as Tweetdeck.

Photo at the top, by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Where Do You Find Everyday Art?

Jodie Mack

From 7 to 20 May 2014, you are invited to take part in Do Now: Art And Popular Culture twittering about the article entitled 'Where Do you Find Everyday Art?'

Read the post carefully, watch the video clip and draw your own conclusions. When you are ready to post your impressions, opinions, comments and so forth on Twitter, please start twittering all along this coming week, on a regular basis, about this topic.

Start all your tweets with @KQEDedspace and end them with our hashtag #DoNow_urjc. Respond to your peers, and retweet all those posts that you regard worthwhile.

Be creative, illustrate your tweets, include multimedia content, use your imagination!

Lots of other students from all over the world are also twittering about this Do Now and they will be using #DoNowAbstract, so it would be nice if you focused on that hashtag too, apart from our own. In order to manage that, you may use a tool for real time tracking and organizing your Twitter, such as Tweetdeck.

#DoNowGraffiti #DoNow_urjc

Storifying the fifth twittering participation of the students at URJC Master's Degree for The Use of ICT and Digital Resources in Primary Bilingual Education in #DoNowGraffiti.

Related posts: What Does Graffiti Look Like in Your Neighborhood?

Where Are All the Green Spaces?

Sidewalk flower in Oakland, CA
photo by Joel Wanek

You are invited to take part in Do Now: Art And Popular Culture from Thu 24 until Wed 30 April, twittering about the article entitled 'Where are all the green spaces?' for a late celebration of Earth Day.

Read the post carefully, watch the video clip and draw your own conclusions. When you are ready to post your impressions, opinions, comments and so forth on Twitter, please start twittering all along this coming week, on a regular basis, about this topic.

Start all your tweets with @KQEDedspace and end them with our hashtag #DoNow_urjc. Respond to your peers, and retweet all those posts that you regard worthwhile.

Be creative, illustrate your tweets, include multimedia content, use your imagination!

Lots of other students from all over the world are also twittering about this Do Now and they will be using #DoNowGreen, so it would be nice if you focused on that hashtag too, apart from our own. In order to manage that, you may use a tool for real time tracking and organizing your Twitter, such as Tweetdeck.

The timeline of an e-connected story

I think by now, all of you must already have read the posts about how @javiramossancha and his Primary CLIL students at Colegio San Gregorio have e-connected with my students, Primary CLIL teachers, at URJC.

Well, today we have a new episode, or rather, the episode that rounds it all up thanks to Javier's great post:

WRITING STORIES an e-connection with students of #ictclil_URJC

There you will be able to follow the full timeline of this e-connected story that has helped an eproject crafted by future CLIL teachers in Madrid become a real classroom project, tested by real CLIL Primary students in Palencia.

Thanks ever so much to Javier for his wonderful availability, to his students and their awesome storybooks, and to Emily, Pablo and Nuria for their sweet CLIL proposals to foster reading and writing skills while using ICT.

Related entries:

Extending our e-connections

URJC and SGAguilar foster reading and writing skills

Interactively Breaking Science

Hello kids! Today we are going to show you some apps and tools we have found for you.

Hello teachers! As you have read, you can also see the multimedia content in order to take information for your future lessons or activitites.

We hope you enjoy with our ideas!

Have a nice Easter holiday and break the science...

1.SEED GERMINATION

The tool we use in this activity is Blendspace. It is a project about the Seed Germination


Blendspace, is one of our new favorite presentation platform, this makes presentations incrementally more engaging!

Participants will need to login to participate in a presentation, but fear not!  You can use your Google Account to login.

You can choose varied layouts, be colorful and sequence your presentation the way you want it!  Here's what's awesome about the layout:  Not only can the participant play the slideshow in the order you sequence, they can also from the layout view, choose their own order.



 http://blnds.co/1itG53M




The rubric that teachers can use in order to assess their students in this activity is the following one:

2. HOW DOES A TORNADO FORM?
This activity is called "How does a tornado form"? The task has to be done in pairwork. The children will do step by step the different slides. They can look for the information when is needed in the Internet (for example, in the case of searching what are the most frequent places where a tornado occurs).

The  instructions are given through voice comments. Voicethread is a tool you can store as a iPhone or Android app. Also, it allows you combinationing visual and recorded media which is perfect for creating multimedia presentations in a relatively short time frame using simple tools. It also prompts students to think carefully about what they are going to say before recording themselves These are the main characterisitics of the VoiceThread. It is only an example how you as teacher can use this tool. The objective is that the children will make a VoiceThread themselves with the guidance of the teacher. It is easy to use, and the pupils find it motivating because they have to record their voices.

RUBRIC

3. EARTH DAY DEBATE

The app we have used is Voxopop. It is a useful tool for creating oral debates where students can develop opinion by debates with mates and teachers. We have created a talkgroup with the name of "Breaking Science Group" and you can discuss about our next project: Earth's Day.

The rubric teacher can use is the next one:

4. PINTEREST ACTIVITY

Pinterest is a fantastic tool where everybody can "Pin" whatever you want. You can use it properly where you create folders or spaces with different information, pics, videos, etc. Students can research and add if they want!Use it and enjoy!

The model of an assessment for students is this one:

5. PURPOSE GAMES
In this activity the kids will answer to a test about the countries in Europe, a regular test usually made with a worksheet but this time we use the ICT adventages. This way, the activity is more attractive for the students. This test appears on the Spanish test CDI and this contents are quite important.
To solve the activity they have to press 'start' and the timer will start and they will have to press the dot related to the country appearing on the screen.
Countries activity - http://www.purposegames.com/game/552a656d45
 Rubric - https://twitter.com/shhakar/status/455424489409765376


6. Quiz Beans

Rubri - https://twitter.com/shhakar/status/455424718410383360

This activity is done to review some contents they have acquired.
It is an alternative way to check the unit knowledge using ICT.
The pupil will answer with YES or NO if the affirmation is true or not.

Quiz activity - http://www.quizbean.com/#/breaking-science-question-time-2/qbBM3t


 

Full info at Breaking Science Blog.