YLTSIG Webinars: Where have our textbooks gone?

Join three of my #ictclil_urjc 2015 Edition teachers on 10 June for the free live session 'Where have our textbooks gone? on WizIQ, when they will explain how they faced up the challenge of teaching without textbooks after a tornado blew all the paper textbooks away and had to think of open connected interactive digital ways to engage CLIL Primary Bilingual students into learning.

This free webinar is part of the  IATEFL YLT SIG Bi-Monthly Webinars 2014-2015 series on teaching young learners, hosted by the Network for IATEFL YLT SIG.

For 60 minutes of live broadcast, Elena Benito, Coral Muñoz and Marta Plaza are sharing with you all their Open CLIL e-publications aimed at Bilingual Primary students, where they have envisaged a wide range of learning missions focusing on learners to rise up to challenges and investigate, through a project-based-learning methodology, so as to become autonomous learners while acquiring skills and accomplishing various goals.

Along their three-month Master's Degree Module about The Use of ICT and Web Resources for Primary Bilingual Education, at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, these three pre-service CLIL teachers, together with the rest of their peers, whose outcomes are gathered at our public social list, have been progressing towards the e-publications they are presenting on 10 June, by means of crafting different learning missions themselves, getting inspired by other teachers who have already dived into e-publishing their own materials; connecting with international educational experts worldwide at live and face-to-face events, collaborating with other students and peer teachers in several projects and becoming aware of the importance of student-centred orientations when teaching and starting active methodologies in the classrooms.

Their digital reference locations have been the University Moodle Campus and this blog, and they have taken it from there so as to open up their own imagination, invent and design their own ICT activities, combine them with their CLIL teaching objectives and wrap it all up into attractively visual digital showcases, such as the three that we are singling out in this upcoming live session: Multiply your fun, Music is fun and Chef of Volume.

 

Do not miss the chance to listen to these three young talented CLIL teachers and surf their findings and achievements as well as their own viewpoints on teaching young learners.

We are looking forward to meeting you all live on Wednesday, June 10 2015 | 5:00 PM (Romance Standard Time)!

Please enroll the session and spread the word.

Moodle MOOC 6 is now in progress

As every fall and spring, a new free edition of Moodle MOOC, and we are running the sixth one already, is available thanks to Integrating Technology 4 Active Lifelong Learning, hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch.

Last 1 May the sixth edition of this well known MOOC went live at WizIQ and it will remain open and accepting your enrollment up to the next 31 May.


As part of this sixth edition, I have the honour to co-present on 7 May at 17:00 Spanish time with my #ictclil_urjc pre-service teachers from the Master's Degree I teach at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, about The Use of ICT and Web Resources for Primary Bilingual Education.

The 2015 edition of this Master's Degree is getting to an end too, and we have been so lucky as to be invited to finish it online, spreading the word about or work, disseminating our brand new e-publications, and having another great chance to learn and collaborate with educators from around the globe. By the way, at Moodle MOOC 5 there are 26 presentations with 19 presenters from 15 different countries.

Our live session is entitled 'The Challenge of Digital Crafting with Moodle', and you are free to join whenever you like, exactly as with the rest of live sessions scheduled for these upcoming 4 weeks in May, the discussions and reflections and so forth.

Check the interesting syllabus and welcome aboard! At the end of the free MOOC, you are also entitled to your certificate but without any doubt, the beauty of this MOOC is, as it has always been, sharing, contributing and collaborating.

Looking forward to meeting you all at #moodlemooc6.

GRETA - ELT, Spring of Ideas - 25 April 2015 Jaén

On 25 April 2015, I had the pleasure to share GRETA Teacher's Day with almost 100 teachers and pre-service teachers interested in CLIL learning.

It was a light-hearted event at University of Jaén, to which I was warmly welcome by the GRETA team, who quickly managed to make me feel at home, and so I would like to thank them all for that.

After some days to reflect and think about all the innovation, positive attitudes and splendid materials I had the pleasure to view and feel in Jaén, I'd like to provide you with the presentation and handouts I used in the workshop that opened the day, hoping that you might find it enjoyable and maybe inspiring for your own spring teaching/learning practice.

Challenging Future e-Teachers to Blog e-Projects (Handouts) from Mª Jesús García San Martín

It was a real joy to be able to take part in the event and hope all those there enjoyed as much as I did. Looking forward to our next meeting now!

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!

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

Memories from Spring Blog Festival 2015

Spring Blog Festival (SBF) is a one day event that takes place every March 21. 

SBF15 took place on Saturday March 21, 2015.

The aim of the festival is to showcase bloggers and their work. This year, the event gathered speakers from various fields: Steven Downes, Norman Vaughan, Joanna Norton, Mary Hricko, Anita Zijdemans Boudreau, Karen Blumberg, Nancy Zingrone, Halina Ostańkowicz-Bazan, Janet Salmons, Janet Bianchini, Vance Stevens, Dr Ebba Ossiannilsson, and myself.

For me, it was a special Spring Blog Festival this year, as I was co-moderating the event with Dr. Nellie Deutsch. I had taken part in Dr. Deutch's Blog Festivals before as a presenter, but being at the heart of it all was a real honour, and I do thank Dr. Nellie Deutch for that.

Besides, it was the first time I was going to present in front of the pre-service teachers I am supporting this year at the Master's Degree Module 'The Use of ICT and Web Resources for Primary Bilingual Education' at URJC in Madrid, so I must confess that I was panicking at the beginning of it all, but looking forward to sharing their work at the Festival and making them aware of the importance of these live events, the importance of interacting and connecting with all these important speakers, who, if it were not for Internet and technologies, they would most surely not have the chance to meet.

After 15 exhausting but happy hours, keeping our fingers crossed for everything to go well, for every speaker to be comfortable and relaxed in the event conference area, for all the clips to work properly, for all the chats to be copied at the right time and the recordings to be screencasted at the exact minute each sessions started, following how well the #springblogfestival hashtag was doing at Twitter and hoping for it to become trending topic, I was absolutedly knocked out but ever so proud of having had such a wonderful webathon, having learned so much from other educators, having grabbed so many ideas to put into practice in class, having seen my students magnificently rising up to the challenge of attending live educational sessions on a Saturday, and having enjoyed every minute of it with Dr. Nellie, with whom I was connected in the back stage chatting real time, sorting issues out, sharing viewpoints, and, above all, having a wonderful personal relationship with a generous educator and warm peer.

So, I just hope all those who attended had such a great time as I did, enjoyed the sessions, and I am looking forward to meeting you all in the next Blog Festival.

Here you are the links to the webinars, recordings and content of the presentations, at the conference area, and below, you can view your favourite bits and pieces whenevery you like, as the Spring Blog Festival has its own YouTube playlist:

Spring Blog Festival 2015

Write down 21 March 2015 on your agendas. The Spring Blog Festival is back!

During 13 hours non stop, the same amount of speakers from all over the world will be going live to showcase their experiences on a wide range of topics, which cover from transformational blogging and reflective blogging to connectivity, history, evolution, teaching tools, multi-media, thinking & creativity, families, schools, and content curation.

Please join us live from 11 am GMT to 23 pm GMT at the Festival Conference Area and spread the word at Twitter using our event hashtag #springblogfestival.

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.

Recording of Flip, Blend and Wrap it all up! is ready now

Last 1 December, my peer Billy J. Ramos, @somar0209, and myself copresented together the third live session of the series entitled The EduPower of Blended Learning at WizIQ.

In this last session, we gave tips about surviving through face-to-face lessons, combined with a virtual classroom at Edu 2.0, and through collaborative project blogging challenges.

For those of you who could not attend live, here you are the recording ready now:



We are looking forward to gaining your feedback and reading your comments!

Practise your English pronunciation while you watch TV shows

PlayPhrase.me offers you the possibility to improve English pronunciation and patterns of intonation with your favourite phrases out of famous scenes of TV shows and movies.

Just key in the phrase or chunk of text you would like to practise and the tool will come back to you with the bits where the phrase was uttered by various actors and actresses at various films or TV shows. You will then be ready to drill the phrase as if it were a karaoke machine, as the phrase rolls down, highlighted below the sliding scenes out of which it has been singled out.

Quite a dynamic enjoyable way to keep your English intonation and pronunciation up. Enjoy it!

Flip, Blend and Wrap it all up!

Join us for this free live session at WizIQ on Monday 1 December, at 6pm GMT+1

The experience about blended learning we would like to share with you all in this live session entitled 'Flip, Blend and Wrap it all up!' is a range of learning challenges that we have accomplished flipping and blending lessons and breainstorming with you about your own e-learning challenges, how to set them up step by step, and offering tips on digital tools and digital assessment.

Flip, Blend and Wrap it all up!

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

This is the third live session of the series entitled 'The EduPower of Blended Learning', a self-training online course in order to get ready for the Teachers Micro Teaching in Pairs series on WizIQ, hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch.

This live session is co-presented by @mjgsm and @somar0209.

Shape Your Online Classroom & Blend it with Hands-on Projects

Join us for this free live session at WizIQ on Monday 24 November, at 6pm GMT+1

The session entitled 'Shape Your Online Classroom & Blend it with Hands-on Projects' is aiming at sharing tips with online teachers about how to set up a virtual classroom using Edu 2.0, combine it with learning challenges, team e-projects and collaborative classroom blog.

This is the second live session of the series entitled 'The EduPower of Blended Learning', a self-training online course in order to get ready for the Teachers Micro Teaching in Pairs series on WizIQ, hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch

This live session is co-presented by @mjgsm and @somar0209.

Shape Your Online Classroom & Blend it with Hands-on Projects

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

Blend, Flip & Boost Your Teaching Online

Recording of the free live session by The EduPower Couple! at Wiziq on November 3 2014, as part of their public training for Teachers Micro Teaching in Pairs.



Thanks ever so much to all those who attended and shared with us!
Please join us for upcoming events,
@somar0209
@mjgsm

The EduPower Couple! - Collage of co-presenters

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

The EduPower of Blended Learning

Brought to you by the EduPower Couple!

Course Highlights 

• Advantages and drawbacks of blending learning with ICT
• Blended learning using a virtual classroom
• Collaborative blogging and teamwork

Course Description

The aim of this series of three live sessions is 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 classes have been 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 this series include 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 is prompting participants with lively relaxed educational pills, keeping up casual conversation and inspiring interaction.

This course is part of the 'Micro Teaching in Pairs on WizIQ' sessions, within the 'Learn to Flip & Blend with Technology' MOOC.

Timetable of Live Sessions:

3 November 2014: Blend, Flip & Boost Your Teaching Up

Live Session Highlights:

Introducing blended learning through flipped classrooms, teamwork and project based learning methodology, all linked together via ICT

17 November 2014: 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

1 December 2014: 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

The EduPower Couple! - Collage of co-presenters

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

We are looking forward to sharing with you all. Please come, join us and share!

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!

Learning to micro teach in pairs

On 20 October 2014, Tauseef Farook and myself were invited to a series of micro-teaching sessions to learn how to deliver a micro-teaching lesson. Tauseef and I had never met before but we were both attending this live session at WizIQ, hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch, from IT4ALL.

The session was part of a series of live lessons in preparation to be able to teach online, in pairs; an e-training initiative starting in November 2014, fostered by IT4ALL at WizIQ. 

It was an amazing experience, as it clearly showed the beauty of virtual professional life. How could you meet other teachers from the other end of the world and get ready to teach with them, apart from online? No other way! That’s the perfect added value of online teaching.


The session started with an overall introduction by the host, and then the attendants were just paired up to practice in breakout rooms for 15 minutes.

During that quarter of an hour, Tauseef and I discovered quite a few things about each other and discussed about challenges and benefits of micro teaching in pairs, as well as resources to acccomplish that type of teaching successfully. That was the proposal. After that time, we were taken back to the main room where the rest of the session was taking place.

And this is how Tauseef and I met, first time ever, and we discovered that both of us are ESL teachers, into ICT, and love our profession. We very quickly decided that one would tip at the chat room while the other would write conclusions on the whiteboard. That was the first outcome of micro-teaching in pairs: agreement!

Now, we are inviting you to have a look at our tips and conclusions, drafted in 15 minutes by two teachers who had not even known of the existence of each other until 20 October 2014. 

Isn’t it awesome? I thought it was fully enjoyable and inspiring!

So, first, the challenges to micro teach in pairs: reaching agreements, having a mind to bring together our different approaches. Finding a common topic to teach. Finding common time together, skipping time zones and so on, to plan, schedule, create, and so forth, and finally, finding a good way to engage and motivate learners in our online paired up lessons.

The benefits of micro teaching in pairs are quite obvious: team work is better, and richer than single teaching. Two minds are bound to produce double work than one. The workload is shared, so it runs more smoothly and we can support each other, putting into the lesson the best skill each one has.

Apart from that we can encourage each other if one might feel down and build the confidence for weak points to get stronger.

As regards resources to get ready for micro teaching in pairs and presenting, Google drive is a good option, to edit and create together, as it does not matter where you are based, you can still work together as if it were real time. That leads us to the design of presentations, tutorials and so forth inside our common Drive. And, finally, offering students real life situations, like the one we have just lived, is a good chance to make them understand the value of that being taught.

Thanks a million for your attention and to Dr. Nellie for the chance of finding each other and enlarging our professional teaching community.

Now, on 24 October, we feel ready to present our conclusions to the world. Come and join us!

Micro Teaching Sessions on WizIQ: Teaching in a Live Virtual Class

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.

Webinars for IATEFL YLT SIG

Join me on 28 September 2014 at 7 pm Spanish time for the free live session: The timeline of an e-connected story.












Check your time around the world.

This live session is part of the YLT Webinars and I'll be sharing the story of an e-connection that starts in a University classroom (URJC) from Madrid, with a group of future CLIL teachers taking a Master's Degree on The Use of ICT and Web Resources in Primary Bilingual Education, which spreads towards real CLIL classrooms from Colegio San Gregorio in Palencia (Spain) and their designing digital storytelling together.

The timeline of an e-connected story - YLT Webinars

Uploaded by María Jesús on WizIQ Tutorials

Thanks to all my Master's students and to @somar0209, @javiramossancha and @julisanzmamolar, who have generously collaborated in this digital e-connected adventure that brought University and Primary Education together.

Read more YLT Webinars.

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!