Final Reflection

FINAL REFLECTION

 

1. What did I know about what we have done in this course?

When teachers presented to us the guideline that we were going to follow during the two months that lasted the course, I saw that I had use  some of the web pages or tools that appeared like Canva, Word, Excel, Blogger and some online dictionaries.

 

2. What have I learnt? 

 

After finishing these two moths of intensive work, I could conclude saying that I have get a huge knowledge about a lot of diverse web pages that can be useful for many things that in the future we are going to use as teachers, like for example, MySympleShow, Powtoon, Canva, Kahoot, SotryJumper, StoryBoard, etc. These tools are very functional because make the activities more attractive and dynamic to children and also shows another type of input, regarding the traditional printed flashcards. 

3. What is going to be the most useful for me? And the least? Why?

On one hand, the most useful for me are going to be some tools that I have mention on the previous question. As I am going to be a childhood education teacher, the tools that caught my eye were the ones that the input was visual and also the ones that you can ad an audio or song. Because children in childhood education do not know or they are working on communicative skills (writing, reading, speaking...) they need a lot of images, pictures, videos, etc., to comprehend what is the activity about or what they have to do to achieve the goal.

On the other hand, the least useful tools or web pages that we have used during this course are, for example, Excel and Coogle, as children are too young to know how to use these tools because in order to use them you need to have knowledge about computers and mathematical operation, and children of their age do not have this level of cognition yet. 

 

4. What have I liked the most?

What I have liked the most are the pages that allowed me to create digital stories like Powtoon, StoryJumper, SotryBoardand MySympleshow.

 

5. What you are able to do with technology when the course started, and what are you able to do now?

Before the course started, I was very resistant to use technologies in class with my future students, as today in our society children spend the most of their time with a screen glued to their faces, but now, thanks to some of the tools I changed my mind. So, when I started this course I was not really aware of how amazing the technology can be to create web pages or tools for teachers to help them create interactive and motivating materials; and now, I am able to use these pages that are going to be very useful and practical in my future job.

 

6. What  you think teachers in general and language teachers in particular should know about technology?

Teachers in general should now and take into consideration web pages that could be useful for them in their every day life in class, like for example, teachers of primary education should know how to use Excel to revise marks and who has attend to class and who doesn't. Also, they should now tools that are related to creating motivational and inspiring activities, so students don't get bored or frustrated. And, language teachers in particular should know the same that I have mentioned for the general teachers, but also they should manage a different range of online dictionaries to revise every time they want how a word is written or pronounced. 

7. And how you think this course has helped you to be more effective teacher?

This course has helped me to more effective as a teacher because it has shown me that even thought the activities that we create are online, they also take time to think and to create, as you can ad or remove may things. So, it has given me the vision about how also internet is a time demanding tool.

Final Symbaloo

 FINAL SYMBALOO

The second entrance of my Blog was a screen capture of my initial page of Symbaloo, and I remember that I had a lot of web pages that the page already give you but non of them was there because I used them or because I knew about them. But, taking a look at my final page of my Symbaloo I can see and confirm that I learned a lot in these two months because I have four rows of web pages, that some of them I used before this subject, but the majority of them not, so I feel proud to be able to use them all correctly and to have enlarge my knowledge about ICTS.

Powtoon

 POWTOON

Today was our last day of class, and Jesús showed us this amazing tool called Powtoon. Is a video animation creator where you can change almost everything you want: settings, images, characters, text, record your voice... The only drawback is that for many things you need to have the premium version, and in order to have this premium version you need to pay for it. 

He asked us to use this tool for a team homework and we decided to create our video thinking that it could be a very useful and fun idea to put it the first day of school, because this video is a presentation of the teachers that students will have during the three years of childhood education. I really enjoyed using this tool as is all well-visualized and easy to use.

Mysimpleshow

 MY SIMPLE SHOW

Three weeks ago, we had to create activities using ICTS, and I used Educaplay. I created an activity where children need to answer yes or no to questions about the hygiene routine. Today in class, the teacher has given us feedback about these activities and I decided to change the ICT tool, so instead of Educaplay, I have used MySympleShow, a video creator.

I create a story in which the teacher has to pause in the minute 0:16 to give time to children to answer the question that is proposed. Then, she will play the video again to see if their answers are correct.

For the CLIL Project, we had to create activities using ICT tools, and I decided to use MySympleShow as I liked it a lot. In deed, I did three activities for the CLIL project with this tool, for the activation part: one to activate student's knowledge about the hygiene routine (which is placed at the biggining of this entry) , another for the snack routine, and finally, one for the tidy up routine.

    Link for the snack routine video: https://videos.simpleshow.com/wQcRXHFhej

    Link for the tidy up routine video: https://videos.simpleshow.com/aAlBzSDk4D

SurveyMonkey

 SURVEYMONKEY

SurveyMonkey is an online web page that is used for doing surveys about any kind of topic. As future teachers, this web could be helpful for using their children's parents, like for example, to ask them for their permission to do an excursion, or to ask them for help in any activity, etc. So, we do not use a big quantity on paper and they can answer to the survey any time and anywhere.

Zoom

 ZOOM

Until the pandemic began I have never heard about zoom, and it turned out to be a very practical and helpful tool. The most interesting thing of it, in my opinion, is that you can share your screen with anyone that is in the meeting, and people can see what you are seeing at the same time, so students not get lost. In case there is another pandemic, this tool will be again a life jacket for many teachers, as well as for students.

Excel

 EXCEL

Excel is a tool that for me was always very complicated to use as you have to be very precise with the commands that you give to the computer. Yesterday in class, the teacher show us how to do math calculations for the average mark of the students. I find it very useful, but maybe for teachers of primary education as they have to mark a lot of things (homework, exams, worksheets, attitude, etc.); but for me, as a childhood education teacher I think that maybe it could be useful but not as much as for other teachers. Anyway, I really appreciated that Jesus teach us how to do it in case I will have to in the future.

Then, for homework, we had to do an activity on our own. This time, without having the teacher in front of us explaining what we had to do it turned out to be a little bit challenging as well as difficult, but finally, I think I did a great job. 

Amara Subtitling

 

AMARA SUBTITLING

Amara Subtitling is an online page that helps you to subtitle any kind of video you want. This web can be very convenient to use it in education, especially in childhood education as they are starting to learn how to read, the teacher could pause the video whenever she/he likes and pay attention to how key words are written.

Audacity

 AUDACITY

Audacity is a program thought to edit audios. It gives you plenty opportunities to improve your audios, music, etc. You can either record yourself, and then maybe, eliminate the parts that you do no like, or you can also edit audios from different platforms like Youtube. An advantage is that is compatible with several services, like Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.

I reckon this tool is not very useful in childhood education because they are very little to know how to use it as they do not know how to read or write. But, it is true that depending for the task that the teacher is planning, maybe this device could be serviceable. 

IWB

 INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD

Today in class the teacher has presented to us the Interactive White Board (IWB). I believe is a very functional tool as we are going to use them every day in our future profession, as teachers. Nowadays, almost every class of childhood education has an interactive whiteboard for children to use it. As children are beginning to read and write, this board is very visual as well as tactile so, for them is easy to use as they can touch the screen and whatever they have written drown appears. 

With this tool, I came up with a simple but fun idea: matching colors. This activity is thought to be done with children of three years old, as it is very simple. On the screen they will see on the top of page four main colors: red, yellow, green, and blue; and at the bottom of the page, they will find a bunch of photos with different colors. What they have to do is get the interactive pen and slide the image at the bottom to the correct color. This activity could also be modified to make it more difficult by adding more photos or before selecting the photo, the children must say out loud the name of the object in English. 

One disadvantage of this tool is that depending on the computer you have you can have some problem downloading. I have a Mac computer, and it did not allow me to downloaded it because it said that it was not compatible, so I had to do it with my roommate's computer, which uses Windows.

Kahoot

KAHOOT 

Today in class we have seen another tool, called Kahoot. In my opinion, this web tool is very useful not only for primary education students, but also for childhood education students. We, as future teachers, can use it as an introduction tool, saying this, I want to say that you can use it as a tool for introducing some topics, concepts or ideas. Also, you can use it as a revision tool, to revise after a session if your students have understood what the lesson was about. And also, you can use it as a final task or activity, to close the session.

This kind of web pages are very engaging for students, because even though they are being assessed, they do not feel like it, so they have a great time and also have fun. I wanted to create a Kahoot about animals, unfortunately this tool only allowed me to create two kind of questions: multiple-choice answer and true-false; the other options were accessible if you pay for them. 

Quizizz

 QUIZIZZ

Quizizz is a wonderful web page to use as a teacher. It gives you the opportunity to create different kind of online activities: multiple-choice activities, fill-in the gap, etc. But, what it is a pity is that the basic option (not the premium one) only gives you the chance to upload images that can go with the text, but not audios and neither videos. 

I have created a quiz about fruits, which I think is a ver common topic to wok with childhood education students. 

Downloadhelper

DOWNLOADHELPER

 This web page is very similar to Y2mate, and is called downloadhelper. They are very similar because it helps you to download videos in a safe way. And, again, this could be very convinient because even though you do not have internet in class for any reason and that day the class was centered in the video that you hace search, you are prepared to carry on with your class plan.

Y2mate

 Y2MATE

Today we have seen this tool called Y2mate. Is a tool which is used to download safely videos from YouTube. I think is a functional page because in case one day in class you do not have Internet for any kind of reason, you could always put the video and keep going with your plan in your class for that day.

Openshot

 OPENSHOT

Openshot is a page used to edit videos. It is free to downloaded it so, everyone with a computer can do it. This page was created with the intention to be easy to use and to not pay for anything, which is great, because as I have seen during the course, many pages force you to pay if you want some extra items or extra materials.

Storyboard

 STORYBOARD

Today in class, some of my classmates presented several tools to create  interactive stories, and they talked about Storyjumper, storyboard, etc. So, because on a previous post I have created an interactive story using the web page Storyjumper, now I have created one using the tool called Storyboard. I have done it in a simple way, to get familiar with the web page. My story is about Greece Mythology, and I present three charismatic characters of Greece Mythology: Medusa, Daphne and the Bull of Creta.

StoryJumper

 STORYJUMPER

Today in class we have took a look to another web page called Storyjumper. After looking through it carefully, I believe is a wonderful tool, where you can create your own story, and it could be about anything you like: animals, family, adventures, etc. Is all left to your imagination. It is marvelous because you can insert videos, your own voice, sound effects, music, etc.

Because it was my first time using this tool, I have created a simple story called Where is Tom?, where a girl is presenting his dog, saying that he likes to hide and she needs help in order to find him. At the same time, he is presenting different animals. Also, the structure of the questions is always the same, so for childhood education students is easier to remember what the sentence means and what they need to answer.  Finally, is a simple story and it is written in capital letters because is thought to be use it with childhood education children, so they are able to read it and the follow the story easily.

Genially

 GENIALLY

I wanted to explore a little bit more about Genially, and I have created another activity. Again, is related to the animals, but this time the center point is how animals sound. 

Genially

 GENIALLY

Today in class we have learned how to use Genially. In my opinion, I reckon is a great tool to use especially in Childhood Education because it provides to teachers, like us in a near future, a bunch of tools to use in out daily classes. You can put music, create interactive images, stories, put sound effects, etc. 

I have create an interactive image about the farm. I have selected an image in which you can find mostly all the animals that you can find in a farm and this kind of tool enables you to click on the animal and the word appears.

I upload also the final image of how, finally, the activity turned out.

Educaplay

 EDUCAPLAY

I have created another activity using Educaplay. This time, I have created a test for the CLIL subject, in which students, having some help with images, need to answer some questions about the washing hand routine. 

Educaplay

 EDUCAPLAY

I have created another activity using Educaplay, to see how diverse this web page can be. This time, I have created an activity in which students have to order the letters to create a word. It could be very useful for childhood education students who are 5 years old, because they know how to read but not in a full way, so this kind of activities could help them to get better in their reading skills. 

Educaplay

 EDUCAPLAY

This web page is a very useful page to use with students. You can create a huge variety of activities like: crosswords, tests, marching columns, dictates, dialogues, etc. I must say that for me at the beginning was a bit difficult to use, but gratefully this page has an explicative video in every exercise, so is difficult that you get lost. 

A con of this page, is that it is a bit limited because for some movements you need to have a premium version, and in order to have it, you need to pay for it.

With this page, I have create a matching exercise about colors.

And, this is an image of what the page looks like.

Quizlet

 QUIZLET

Quizlet is a very useful tool for teachers in order to create activities or exercises for their students. Is a very visual web page, in which you can find multiple types pf exercises like matching activities, guess words, multiple-choice exercises and so on. I have created one Quizlet about professions. 

In my opinion, it was a very easy web page to use because it was very intuitive and in all the steps tells you what you have to do, so there is not any complication to give it a try.

Here, I put a picture to show how it looks like

Mentimeter

MENTIMETER

Mentimeter is a wonderful tool to use with your students because it is very visual, it can be used with multiple people at the same time and is very motivating too.

I have create a simple multiple choice game with this app to be used with children in infant or primary education. Is about animals that we can find in the zoo. And above, there is the image with the result of the game (more or less) and the code you should have to participate.

WordCloud

 WORDCLOUD

This web page is called Wordcloud. In my sincere opinion, I assume that this tool could be very useful because, first of all is very easy to use; secondly, you can save the image as you prefer (as image, as web page, as pdf, etc.); in third place, I want to highlight that is a very visual image, and this could be a huge advantage to childhood education students, as they do not know how to read and write yet.

I have create a word cloud about animals, which I think is a very engaging topic with small kids.