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

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