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

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