Hello again!

Hello TwoTwonians,

I knew that the last post wouldn't be the last and here you have the prove 🙌 Writing a blog creates and addiction, each one of us have an imperfection and this is mine 😜

My neurons have been in an innovative training conference; III Jornadas de Innovación Educativa i&EDU 2018. These conference are organized by the Subdirección General de Formación del Profesorado de la Comunidad de Madrid. 

In the conference we have seen and listened a lot of things: presentations, round tables, workshops and Pecha-Kuchas. Ok, you don't know what Pecha-Kucha is, don't you? It's a presentation format: 20 slides and each one takes 20 seconds. And this is what we have done 👌

Our Pecha-Kucha is about the radio that we created in the school. We have presented it with Genial.ly, you know that we are in love with Genial.ly since we discovered it💓

This time, Soraya presented the Pecha-Kucha. It wasn't difficult, she only had to do her best and she really enjoys public speech. There are not 20 slides in the presentation and this is for one reason: in some slides she spoke more than 20 seconds and that slide represented two slides. I think that this is not cheating, but it can be our little secret 😉

There were very interesting presentations, and here you have our favourite ones:

• En sus zapatos: un proyecto de empatía activa. It was a wonderful presentation. Do you know that there is one type of theatre called conscience theatre that helps the students to share their fear, happiness, frustration and so on? You can find more information on this website. I think that we are going to take a look, it sounded very interesting. 
• Harry Potter. There were two presentations about Harry; one was about a complete Project Based Learning and the other one about a very enthusiastic librarian who changed the school library in a very motivating way! We need to motivate our children in each corner of our schools! 💪
• Aplicaciones móviles y ABP. Project Based Learning (PBL) is a very attractive format to introduce topics and link contents. In this workshop we learnt about a lot of apps that can make our teaching lives easier. Thanks Javier!

And this is all for today! There is a lot of information, so you have work to do! Explore, investigate and apply it 😙

TwoTwo

Is this the end?

Hello TwoTwonians,

How are you? I've got a mix of feelings and my two neurons too 😒😊This is going to be my last post as a student, but I think that it's not going to be the last forever and ever. We have learnt quite about ICT and we are quite happy about that. The radio programme is a new project that we started because of the things that we have learnt. And we want more and more; maybe a news programme, maybe other crazy ideas 😜 (Google Classroom, Edmodo, eTwinning,...who knows?)

It wasn't easy to put the whole subject in a final artifact. First, my left neuron thought about using Genial.ly, but my right neuron disagreed (no surprises, as you can imagine). I suggested Powtoon; we never used it before on this blog and it's an amazing app. Both agreed. The problem was the time, but no pain no gain and we started to work on it.

We used these apps apart form Powtoon:

• Canva: we told you that we love it 💕. It's very easy to use and the results are amazing and it's free! What else do you want?
• Pixabay: the photos and logos are from Pixabay. Remember that it's a good resource when you need photos. 

Final artifact

It hasn't been simple to summarize four months in less than 5 minutes, but we tried it. In this moment, we are wiser about ICT and we are mad about creating new projects with students and enrolling in some courses. I wouldn't say that this is an easy job. No sorry. All the apps that I suggested are easy to use but they consume a lot of time and sometimes you need to watch and read a lot of tutorials to master them. Is it worthy? All my neurons, my creator and myself think that it's more than worthy.

If I have to choose my favourite activity is, without any doubt, the video project. Using the Chroma technique was quite fun, but the outcome was A M A Z I N G.

Maybe I am not the right person to give you any piece of advice, but teaching is one of the most wonderful professions that exist in this world and suggest new things for your students is fun and gratifying. Show them how Chroma works, record them like in a radio programme, search for photos and be legal with the authors, try a new app once a month (my next is going to be StikBot). And overall, don't be lazy. Don't be that teacher that everybody points our like the I-like-the-textbook-and-that's-the-only-thing-that-I'm-going-to-do teacher.

It has been a pleasure 😍

We will keep in touch!

TwoTwo 

Online storytelling

Hello!

Are you ok? Still impressed by my Chroma project? 😏 Me too, but don't worry! I bring new surprises for you today! From the beginning of this blog, I have shared with you several activities, all of them educational; but on this post I want to make an exception.

All of us have stories that make us happy 😛, embarrassed 😳, sad 😞, curious 🧐...Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools, not only for teachers, but humans in general, to get whatever we want; remember that communication is very important in our days. Today's post is about stories, but not about a story that is written and that's all. NO NO NO. Our post is about telling stories online. Yes, my right neuron is happy again, my left isn't.

Flipgrid is a social video for student engagement and formative assessment. We joined to this social platform with the project Twima: The World Is My Audience. This project is about telling stories; so far there are stories from my classmates and from students and teachers from Alverno.

As I said before, we joined to Flipgrid and when I say WE I mean we; our creator Soraya has joined us too and she has told a nice and fun story about her first time teaching as a private tutor in the United Kingdom. Let's listen to her! 

If you want to hear more stories, here you can find the whole #twima8 grid. I recognize some faces 😆 Hello! 😂

Participating in one activity like this encourages you to share your own stories. Our is about teaching, but there are others about Why am I a teacher? or Happy Exchange Experience. For me this project has got several advantages: sometimes you've got stories that you want to share but you don't know if they are relevant for you colleagues, classmates,...Twima has given us the opportunity to tell how shocked was to have got parents into the classroom. The alternative story than Soraya wanted to tell was: she is working in a public school in Madrid and it's her first time. Sometimes she wants to share stories about her first impressions (everything is new for her), but she knows that those stories maybe are bored for her colleagues. Sometimes, opening the mouth liberates yourself. The project is quite cool and innovative! Why not to create a similar activity with primary students to share their own stories 🤔 (left neuron idea). 

What about you? Have you got a story that you want to share? Don't be shy and remember that sharing is caring! Spread the voice and you story, of course! 

TwoTwo

Three, two, one...ACTION!

Hello people and neurons!

Have you enrolled in any course? Come on! Don’t be lazy and be curious! As teachers we need to teach and learn everyday; it doesn’t matter if the course is about Chinese cookery and culture or projects based learning. The important thing is that your brain works, in this way you will encourage your children to be active people, to have curiosity and not to be a couch potato 🙅

Today is the day! Chroma is here! My group and I went to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports last Thursday. Specifically, we went to Future Classroom Lab. It’s a classroom with amazing chairs (yes, my right neuron fell in love with them) and a big green wall. You remember that I explained what Chroma is two posts ago, don’t you? So, we recorded ourselves with an improvised prompter and a mobile phone; the professional recorder decided not to work thad day. It was a good experience and I got some ideas to apply into my classroom.

The recording was in different steps; in total we recorded more or less 20 videos, there were 5 or 6 bloomers very fun. Our creator, Soraya, was the editor, so she brought the videos at home and we start playing with them. How did she make it?:

• Video: you have to cut the video because sometimes there are gestures or sounds that you don't want them to appear. The app that can make that is QuickTime. It's quite easy to use; apart from cutting the video, you can record your voice, record your screen and record yourself. 
• Edition: as you know, I used iMovie. It was easy? Well, Google and YouTube helped me a little bit to figure out how to mix music, headlines, the background photos and our videos without making any mess! Is it intuitive? I love trying new things and touching and clicking here and there, but it arrived one moment that I had to look for tutorials. Is it a waste if time? No way! I can't be happier with the result. It took time, but tell me that you don’t love it! 💞
• Backgrounds: Pixabay was my friend but iMovie also helped me. It's got picture and video backgrounds where you can add words. You cannot change the templates, but for this project I didn't need to change them; they were quite useful.
• Sounds: GarageBand has got sounds that you can incorporate into iMovie (I love when the apps sincronice themselves). Besides I looked for more sounds and audio effects online. On this website you can find a lot of free sounds, you can pay too for more. 
• Patience: a lot of patience to create this and don't make the laptop fly across the window!

Our project was called Channel 4, we wanted to create a news programme where our kids have to work in different areas. The storyboard is here and now, now I am so proud of introducing the amazing, the fantastic, the unbeatable video. Enjoy it!

I started to play with Chroma in my lessons, only to check if green paper could be an alternative to green paper and it worked! I recorded some of my students with the app TouchCast; highly recommended it. In this app the templates are done, then you avoid all the time with the edition step (this is very important because the time that you spend in an activity is very crucial for your organization; I liked iMovie but I know that I couldn't use each week for the following reasons: the time and the surprise element; maybe TouchCast can solve the problem about the time and for the surprise element I can create different programmes, not only news).

I hope this post encourages you to do different things in your lessons and start to use Chroma or videos in general. Have fun!

TwoTwo

P.S. In some parts of the video, on the right side, you can see ghosts. They are not ghosts, these are us that didn't control quite well the light on the wall 😬

Training weekend

Hello again! 

How are you? I have been quite busy this weekend. My two neurons get mad with training; they love it (one more than the other one) and sometimes this “love” makes me feel very tired because I enrol in many activities...but I am quite satisfied with myself 😌

On Friday I started an immersion course/workshop called Exploring your own classroom practice. It was for teachers who wanted to share their own innovative practices (good practices) or activities that make them feel proud of being teachers. The course lasted since Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. It has been amazing! I learnt a lot of new techniques, met a lot of people and swam in a heated pool. If you have got any chance, enrol in a course about innovation or sharing between teachers. It’s worthy 100%. If you are asking which good practice I brought, yes, you guessed it! I talked about the radio project 📻 My colleagues shared with me different ideas that I am going to apply for sure in my lessons: a real radio programme in Madrid (so excited about this 🤸🏽‍♀️), an app to record and host podcasts, the activity Teacher for a day, how to create films with stop motion technique and more and more and more.

But this is not the only training that I took 😏 I have to say that few months ago I didn’t like online training, I thought that online courses/webinars/workshops and so on were of a bad quality and a waste of time...until I discovered educalab. It’s a website from Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, which has got quality courses and a huge directory with different courses: 

• MOOC: Massive Online Open Courses
• NOOC: Nano Online Open Courses
• SPOOC: Self-Paced Online Open Courses

Besides you can find a lot of useful resources like this one for being journalists.  And this weekend they organised the 4th Webathon on Digital Educational Experiences. What is that? Wait! I’m coming! You only need a good connection on your device and time. You are going to be the public of a digital educational monologue or conversation between specialists. 

Left neuron: Ok, that’s fantastic 😒, but how much does it cost? 😏

Right neuron: Nothing! You are going to learn for free from specialists in different areas ✌🏼They want to share for free!

Left neuron: Really? 😳 Well, that’s not bad 😒 but I didn’t enrol and now it’s late 😁

Right neuron: Don’t worry! The marathon is on YouTube and you can watch it whenever you want and whoever you want with 😍

Left neuron: It’s ok 😩 You won!

And this is how I watched this webinar (I saw the programme and there was one webinar about school radio, I think that the radio project follows me 😂 and I cannot be happier! Yes! I chose it!):

📻ON AIR INNOVATION (since 1:58:27 to 2:30:48)📻

Who? Esteban Santana and Gloria R. Ruiz Rodríguez. 

What? Scholar radio.

How? They divide the project in different windows: 

• Products: the products are the podcasts.
• Tasks: the students can choose different tasks to create the final product: interviews, investigation, marketing.
• Activities: evidences that they are learning. 
• Key competences: linguistic competence; competence in information treatment and digital technology; competence in learning to learn; social and civic competence; initiative and entrepreneurial spirit and cultural conscience and expression.
• Methodology: the methodology involves 11 steps; the start with the election of the topic and plan a question, then they form the teams, they defining the product or final challenge until they arrive to the metacognition.
• Spatial and temporal distribution: the scholar radio goes outside and inside the classrooms. They implemented this project in three phases: training and investigation, collaborative training and project and experiences in the classroom.
• Indicators.
• Instruments and tools for evaluation: they evaluate through rubrics. 
• Didactic resources.

The podcasts have got different topics: technology, elections (with a final debate). The evaluation is not only for the final product; the podcast. The evaluation is around all the different steps and activities that the students have been done. It's a cross-curricular project, for this reason they are going to  be evaluated in different areas.

Who for? Early years, primary, high school, university students and even children in educational prison centre classrooms.

Is this for me? Of course that this is for me and for you. The radio is a very attractive product and you have seen that almost all the key competences are connected, so you have fun and you cover all the curriculum; not all, but you know what I mean 🙌 The radio improves the coexistence; this is a personal opinion but I think that the vast majority of the problems are caused by a lack of communication; then I complete agree that radio improves the coexistence, our students learn how to communicate and between you, me and the gatepost, that's an essential skill for their adult life. 

And this is all for today folks! I am quite exhausted because I have got a lot of information and new activities and resources that I want to apply tomorrow and my students are going to think that I am crazy (more than usual)!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

TwoTwo

Chroma is coming!

Hello TwoTwonians!

How are you? I am quite excited, as usual. Do you remember my last post about podcasts? I told you that I will increase my playlists; I created a new Soundcloud account for my school and a blog! So proud of my two neurons and my twenty-four students 😍 The idea is to create a radio school with podcasts. This is our first programme! If you have got any suggestion, tell us! We want to improve it and overall having fun! 😄

Today we want to take a step forward. Podcasts are an amazing resource, but we want more. What about to create a video/short movie? 😱 Yes! It's insane with a lot of work to do, but we are all mad here! 

Image by: tookapic CC0 Creative Commons 

The first thing that we need to do is to split the work. Working in groups is not easy, but if each member knows what is his/her job, it will be better. In my work team we are 5 people and the main roles are: drafter, recorder, community manager and editor (in the draft that you can find at the end of this post, there is all the information). 

Our group decided to create a news programme. Its name is Channel 4. The objectives that we want to achieve are several; to work cooperatively, to improve students' listening and reading comprehension skills, to learn subject contents through a visual format and so on. This activity is a good one with future purposes; a lot of schools have got newspapers, but having a TV programme is playing in a different league 😏

Channel 4 will have different sections:

• TV presenter (yeah! It's our creator; Soraya 👏👏)
• Natural Science news: earthquake
• Social Science news: Brexit
• Cultural news, linked with Arts and Crafts: Saint George
• Physical Education news: new sports.

The students will split in groups; the idea is that each group takes a news and develop an investigation activity. They will present their works with the tools that they will decided: Genialy, lap books, videos. I, sorry we, believe in creativity and originality and for this reason we want that our students explore different ways to create a final project. 

At the end of each news, the groups will have to answer the questions that each reporter has asked. 

And now, we talk about the video 🙈 The video will be available in our next post (maybe yes, maybe no). But, don't be impatient. I can tell you which apps we are going to use:

• iMovie: I will explain how to use this app in the next post. We will use Chroma; a technique to change your background. Chroma for dummies: you record yourself with a green background and later you add your own background.
• GarageBand: I told you about this app in my previous post. It has got lots of sounds that you can use in your videos. 
• My own brain and my two neurons: the most important part (my two neurons agree). Digital technologies can be amazing, but you need to know how to use them 😉

The background photos that we used are from Pixabay. They are all under Creative Commons license. The sounds that we introduced are available in GarageBand. The draft of the plot was created in GoogleDrive with a GoogleDoc as in my previous post (here you can see it):

I hope you like my new idea! I can't wait to show you it!

TwoTwo

To be or not to be

Hello my friends!

How are you? I have to say that I am quite excited with this post, as usual! Today I want to share with you what a Podcast is and how to create it to teach in your lessons (I am going to do it next week with my 6th graders! I'm so excited 💪 Wish me luck 🍀). 

A Podcast is an audio file with a lot of possibilities, it can improve the confidence of your students, their pronunciation, their fluency and accuracy. I will answer you the following questions and you will understand it better.

How can I create a podcast? I use GarageBand, it's an app for Apple devices but let me say that it's wonderful. You can add loops, change your voice, add more loops and even add music. Do you want to play the guitar with this app? You can! If you haven't got an Apple device, Audacity is other alternative, different neurons have told me that it's easy, but my right neuron doesn't' agree!

Where can I storage my podcast? Once you've created your podcast, you need a room to keep it. My option is SoundCloud; it's free and very easy to use. From GarageBand you can share your podcasts and creations directly with SoundCloud. It's a piece of cake.

Why do you have to create a podcast and you can't continue with my boring and useless lessons? Are you sure that you need an answer? Think it twice 😏

I created a podcast as a welcome in my audio project called To be or not to be. We are in April, April celebrates Saint George (in some regions in Spain the 23rd of April people gift books and roses) and Shakespeare death and birth. For this reason, I though that it will be a good idea to start a new project with Shakespeare. Ready? Steady? Go?

The first that I did it was to create a lesson plan. The draft is in Google Drive and I created a Google doc. You can create documents, presentations, questionnaire and spreadsheet. The best thing is that you are working online and the document is saved in the cloud.

Then, I created the podcast with GarageBand, I added to my channel in SoundCloud and I wrote some hashtags. Here you can listen to the voices of  Romeo, Juliet and my creator. She mixed some voices and music. I really love it!

You should be familiar with different concepts when you create an audio channel. The audio channel is the main page, your profile and, the playlists are the different folders with different music. This is my audio channel (yes, I've only created a podcast, but wait a couple of weeks):



Do you study with music? And what about your students? This is my favourite playlist; it's called Study and I play it when I am doing projects, planning lessons or thinking about my final thesis 😅 

Explore the many posibilites that these apps have got and share your projects!

TwoTwo

Be mad with an infographic

Hello my dear friends!

I don't know if I've told you, but I love being creative and sometimes my imaginations hasn't got limits. My right neuron feels quite sad when a student colours an elephant with the grey crayon or a whale with the blue crayon. I think that students must be creative and use their imagination as much as they can. This will give them originality, a must tool in this society. For this reason, today I bring a nice infographic. Wait! Didn't I explain what an infographic is? Sorry! My fault.

An infographic is a very visual way of representing and transmitting knowledge. I use the app Canva. I told you about this app in this post. I think that is the best free app that I've ever used to create nice and visual content. Canva gives you a lot of free templates for infographics, CV, recipes, diaries...You can choose several illustrations, pictures, fonts. Try it! 

The topic that I want to show you through an infographic is a topic that I really love. I like telling stories, but sometimes the students find very difficult to express themselves with creativity and they tell the same stories that we know: Little Red Riding Hood, the Beauty and the Beast... In this infographic I summarize the best tools that I consider essential to make up a story. In this way the students reinforce their writing and speaking skills. 

How to make up stories de Soraya Borja Almarcha

I hope you like it and you can make up wonderful stories with your students. 

Take care and have a wonderful Easter break! See you soon!

TwoTwo

Mindmaps or how to create chaos in harmony

Hello again!

How are you? Have you already created a comic? Don't be shy and share your creations! Education is sharing 😛 I've come back to talk about chaos (my right neuron) in harmony (my left neuron).  I love when both of them combine in a perfect way! 

I've got visual memory, I mean, I remember better when I see a display for example, that when I listen to a song. For this reason today I bring you a mind map. A mind map is a visual map that allows you to see a lot of information at a glance. It's amazing, isn't it? Let me explain better.

I am going to use MindMeister; it's an app with a lot of possibilities: you can create a map with links, documents, you can present the slideshow, share it with you colleagues and convert it into Word, PowerPoint and so on. Impress? Not yet? Wait for my mind map, please 😏. (It would be better if the free options were wider, but for the first time, it's ok. I will discover other apps in the future.)

I would like to introduce my students in a very special project: Scotland.  I know that it's a country full of surprises and it worths to discover it (I lived there 10 months, so, I know what I'm talking about). This project lasts whatever your want. This means that when you start with projects, the best thing is start with a short project, in this way you can realize if the project works for your students and for you (the self evaluation is an important step in education, don't forget it!). 

I will include this project in the English subject; there are cross-curricular links with PE, maths, but the main focus is on the English language. Each  teacher can adapt the main topic to his/her own aims. My general objectives for this project are:

• To discover the United Kingdom and more specifically, Scotland.
• To raise students motivation in the Scottish culture.
• To practise the past tenses.
• To be able to summarize a story in a video.
• To be able to express themselves in different languages.
• To pronounce specific words in the proper way.

I divided the project in 7 different steps; the main idea is that each student "tastes" all the different stages. This is a brief summary about what you are going to discover in each step:

• Geography: the students will learn where Scotland is, which countries form the United Kingdom and what the Ben Nevis is. The assessment will consist in the comparison of Scotland and the students' country in an infographic.
• History: from the Vikings in Scotland we jump to Mary Queen of Scots: the most important queen in Scotland and the one who fought for the independence. The students will be assessed through different games. 
• Language: in Scotland, there are two languages: English and Scottish. The students will practice the pronunciation of the English language. They will need it for the final surprise 😁
• Culture: have you tried haggis? And shortbread? The students will discover the different traditional meals that Scots have got. The assessment will be to record a video cooking in the school's kitchen. Besides Saint Andrews is the patron of Scotland, a video will show them who Saint Andrews was. 
• Curiosities: the legend of Loch Ness Monster and how the Scottish men dressed years ago, there are two topics that students will enjoy. This can be linked to arts. 
• Films: the film Brave will explain the different clans that existed in Scotland. There is a legend called The Story of the Giant's Causeway that will show the students why the coast of Scotland and Ireland have wonderful stones like these

 

• Final surprise: I think, and this is my personal opinion, that every project has to have got a final surprise; and this project has got a wonderful one. Do you know anything about Erasmus+? Me neither until one year ago, but I am a very proactive body with two neurons that want to innovate more and more. On the mind map you have a short video about the project Erasmus+ KA2. Could you imagine how it would be to travel with your students to Scotland (or anyplace in the UK) as the end of the project? It would be absolutely A M A Z I N G.

I really like teaching through culture, there are a lot of interesting things and curiosities that can attract our students, for this reason I chose Scotland. Each step has got its own assessment, but the best assessment for this project would be the trip to Scotland. If the students know that they are going to put in practice everything that they've learned, they are going to be brilliant in the lessons and their personal motivation is going to be on Ben Nevis pick.      

I hope you enjoy and like this project!

TwoTwo

PS, the two photos that appeared in this post were taken by me one year ago 😉                                    

Cheer them up!

Hello TwoTwonians!

It's been a long time! Sorry, I have been quite busy! Today I want you to reward with a special entry. It's special because it's going to talk about emotions, feelings, and this is not an easy topic in education.

Do you know why puppets are so useful in Early Years? Well, I'll tell you. The Early Years student can hide his/her own real personality behind the puppet and he/she feels that is safe. Nothing happens, because the puppet is who is talking and expressing his/her feelings. But, what does it happen when we want that a Primary student talks about what he/she feels? We can't use a puppet, they are not going to feel comfortable and they are going to think that we don't take them seriously. 

Left and right neuron agreed that this can be a problem; students might be struggling with a subject matter, a family situation or a school situation. Then, how can express themselves? My neurons worked hard to find a solution and the solution came in the shape of a comic. Think! In the comic they can reflect their own fears and feelings and after all, it's a comic! They are behind characters that they create by their own.

There are several tools online. We, my two neurons and myself, chose StoryBoardTHAT. You've got several scenes, characters, shapes, text boxes... It's very intuitive and it's free. Like the rest of the applications, the only that you need is time to discover all the features that they can offer you.

Sometimes, teachers don't realize that students might be under difficult situations and we ask them their best. We transfer concepts, but we need to create a well-being area in their lives too (and this is the most difficult part). The comic that we created will help them in two different situations: if the student can't cope with a subject and, if the student is living a difficult situation at home which makes difficult that he/she focuses on the school tasks. 

If you click the image, you will directed to the comic in a bigger size

Would you like to try talking about feelings through comics with your students? Do you think that it would be an effective idea? The students can create a comic to explain a difficult topic in any subject. One thing I can tell you; it's very safe because you choose the type of privacy you want to. Students can be very creative with ICT and they love comics, then it's the perfect combination. Get a move on and share your/their comics! You won't regret!

TwoTwo

Don't be behind the times

Hello again!

I hope you've already started with your content curation tools; I'll tell you a secret, move your ear closer...these tools are addictive. I created another  Pinterest board and it won't be the last time. You will see why I need emojis 😊

My two neurons and I agree that new technologies must be present in our daily lives, but we agree too, that we need to use them with common sense and with a real purpose in our lessons.

It doesn't matter if you are a nostalgic or an expert using PowerPoint, you do know that it's an out-dated platform to make presentations; sorry, I had to say it! Let's see which apps are useful for teachers and why we need to use them.

• Prezi: it appeared years ago, for this reason was a revolution. The movement of the "slides" in the main board is the attractive of this app. For some people, that movement is stressful. My neurons agree. 
• Powtoon: don't expect a slideshow because Powtoon doesn't offer it. It's an app to make videos. It's not an intuitive app, but I love challenges and I created some videos for my presentations. The main problem, or the challenge, is that if you want it to use for presentations, you must  coordinate your voice with the video; it seems easy, but it isn't. Here you have a video that I created for Instituto Cervantes in Manchester when I worked with them as a Spanish teacher. 
• Genial.ly: one of the newest ones. I am learning about it; but until now, I know that: it's got attractive templates for presentations, video presentations, lists, maps and a large etcetera. Add resources, change the interactivity, add your own background... and if you want more, upload your profile to the premium plan and enjoy.

I created a slideshow with Genial.ly. The main topic is food, the lesson will be for 4th graders and it would be in the English lesson. First you need to bear the learning objectives in mind. For me, these are: 

• The students can identify general food and classify it in different groups: diary, spices, fruits, sweets.
• The students can make sentences by their own with picture support.

Second, you need to discover; there are thousand of resources, games and applications that you can find with each topic. I recommend you ESLgames+ and ClassTools: jigsaws, board games, roulette wheel and videos are only some few games that you will find here. 

Third, enjoy and create material that you like it! If you believe in the things that you are doing, your students will love them.

This is my presentation: 

I will be honest; it takes some time to create new materials and to know how to use new applications. We think that when we have a job it's all done. But that is not true. Try new things, explore, take a risk, leave your comfort area. Your students will thank you and you will be happier 😍 (right neuron talking).

Here you have the presentation, the real one! I couldn't assist, then my creator, Soraya, had to do it. Don't be too strict with her, she did her best :-) 

That's all for today!

TwoTwo

This is a mess! Let's tidy up!

Hello TwoTwonians!

Today I was a little bit overwhelmed, let me explain myself. My left neuron is very organized and my right neuron isn't, let's say that it's more creative. And sometimes it's very difficult to make them both happy. 

On the web, there are thousands of resources, you can spend hours clicking and clicking again (remember that in my first post I recommended Focus to you, an essential app to manage your own time). For this reason my left neuron wanted a place where everything is organized, but my right neuron wanted more mess and loads of creativity..and I found the solution! The solution is called content curation. Do you know what is it?

Content curation means that my both neurons are happy and satisfied. On one hand, the resources are organized and on the other hand, they are linked with other resources that are very useful. It's great!

There are different tools to start curating content (Symbaloo, Pearltrees, List.ly), but Pinterest is cutting-edge . Why? It's intuitive, easy to use and you can find thousands of resources about everything! Do you want to make a nice activity for Saint Patrick's Day? Pinterest is your solution. What about nice cards for Saint Valentine's Day? Go for Pinterest. For Easter? I think that you know the answer. 

Let me explain a little bit about Pinterest:

• What is a Pin? A Pin is a picture that you upload to Pinterest. Each picture is a link, then when people click on your picture, they are going to land in your blog.
• What is a board? The boards are categories or sections that you can create in Pinterest to organize your content. For example, I have a board for classroom management, another for storytelling time, for CLIL and so on. There are group boards where people can collaborate in the same board; remember that sharing is caring!

This is my favourite board: routines. I think that our students need routines to feel comfortable in the school environment. You can find wonderful displays about the days of the week, the months, the routine of washing their hands and more.

Don't be shy and create some boards, you'll feel better when you see all the great ideas that you can use in your lessons in an organized and creative way.

See you soon!

TwoTwo

Left neuron talking: image attribution

Hello guys!

TwoTwo on the line again!

Today I want to explain one important thing about images on the net. Sometimes you see very nice pictures and you want them, that's perfect! But let's make it clear; not everything is for free use (this is the bad news), and the good news is that there are a lot of sites with images, pictures, vectors and so on for non commercial use. Let's take a look!

Pixabay is one of these sites when you can download photos for free use, even you can choose the quality. Most of them are under the license CCO Creative Commons and that means that we can use them. For example: I chose this picture (my right neuron will be explain why I chose it). In the footnote you can see the author (if you click, you will be directed to the author's page in another window) and the license. This photo hasn't got a title; if there would be a title, the title would be before the author's name.

Image by: Grafikacesky CC0 Creative Commons

Right neuron talking right now! I chose this picture because I want to use it in a Early years classroom (5 years old would be ideal). The main topic of the CLIL lesson is the prehistory. I will use this photo in the classroom to introduce the differences between that period and nowadays: 

• Animals in the prehistory: there were mammoths, huge elephants with a lot of hair;
• Clothes in the prehistory: the clothes were made with natural things: leather, leaves;
• Weather in the prehistory: the weather was very cold, there was ice surrounding people, animals, mountains;
• Houses in the prehistory: there weren't  houses or buildings, people lived in caves.

This would be the introduction for my CLIL lesson using this photo.

I hope you like this brief post about picking pictures on the net and a few ideas about a prehistory introductory lesson in an early years classroom.

Take care 😆

TwoTwo

Hello, is anybody out there?

Hello! My name is TwoTwo, because I've got two neurons and both are bilingual. Let me introduce myself. 

My voice is cool too

The right neuron is the neuron which pushes me to move to Madrid from Scotland in August 2017, to start a new adventure in the public school education system and to enroll in a Master in Bilingual Education (and as you can imagine, this blog is the result of one of the subjects of this Master: ICT & CLIL).

The left neuron is the neuron which decides to think before talking, but sometimes it fails in this mission. It is the neuron which says "education can be hard, but don't worry, you are making a difference", too. It says that ICT can be time consuming but the results are amazing, you only have to look at me 😏.

I was created by Voki; it's a very intuitive app where you can create your own avatar, insert your voice and change different physical features; you can be even a cat! Very useful when you want to hide your identity in a nice way. As teachers, we need to take into account always that our online privacy is very important.  

The effects of the picture are made by Canva. Canva is a very useful app when you want to create displays, computer graphics and I found it very useful when I was preparing my exams for being a civil servant (here my two neurons were working together). You can upload photos, write with hundreds of different fonts, find templates for CV, presentations, displays, banners, school newspapers, magazines and a long etcetera. Try it! It's very intuitive! 

This is the school newspaper that I created last December

Now that you know me better, let me tell you a little secret. I really like to spend time surfing the web, but sometimes I realize that I spend too much time without resting. The solution for me was the "pomodoro method"; pomodoro is an Italian word which means tomato. The method is very simple; you need a kitchen timer (tomato shape will be more motivating) or a wonderful app like Focus. The app has different intervals. I do my best during 25 minutes, later I have a rest of 5 minutes (walking a little bit, eating something, talking with somebody, checking your social media) and 25 minutes more focus. You can change the settings and adapt them to your pace. For me it works perfectly. If you don't know how to organize your time, I strongly recommend it.

And that's all folks!

TwoTwo