Toward the End...

 Reflection....

Hello! Welcome again.

Dear fellows, we are going toward the end of our journey in this subject.

The upcoming weeks are the final steps to achieve our main goals. 

Almost after one week,  is my turn to present or deliver that lesson we have as our final project. 

Of course, we are working on that, I mean my partner and me, but we are a little bit confused about some things. Since we have to teach listening skills to our "students" we are having some difficulties finding some interesting games. We have already created the exercises and we are also working on the interactive Powerpoint. 

I am enjoying the time while I am working on this project, but I don't know why I am feeling worried. 

Maybe it is because I think that together with my colleague we are not going to perform well and this will be reflected in our final grade. Let's face it, we are all worried about our final mark.

My colleagues will be my students in this case, and I find this a little bit strange because they will have to put themselves in the role of 8th-grade pupils. Besides, they have a kind of a central role, they should be attentive and cooperative all the time. I really hope, I will have their support. They as will assess my work as well, and I am not worried about this, they will only do their job. 

However, let's take only the positive side of all this experience. It will serve me, in fact, all of us as an experience in teaching and under abnormal circumstances. So we are preparing to teach not only in a physical class but also in an online class. 

"IT IS GOOD TO HAVE AN END TO JOURNEY TOWARD

BUT  IT IS THE JOURNEY THAT MATTERS IN THE END" 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY!

Apps and Programs used to create a Project

 Hiii Again

It seems like we are meeting everyday through these blog posts.

This week topic is almost the same as that of the last week, apps or programs that we can use to create a project.

I am going to start with BookWidget.com.

I found this website very fantastic regarding the creation of WebQuest and different exercises. 

With BookWidgets, we can make over 40 different types of exercises, right inside the familiar Google Classroom environment or stand-alone. Whether it's small exercises to supplement a textbook, complete lessons or elaborate WebQuests, with BookWidgets we finally have the tools you need to provide a tailored learning experience. Combine sources, text, video, quizzes and interactive widgets to let students learn and practice at their own pace. Track the work and evolution of your students over time. Student work is automatically graded, but we can, of course, override where needed, for instance, to account for dyslexic students. When you're done, you return the graded work, including your feedback with a click. The grades automatically make their way into the grade book.

How does it actually work?

When you first log in to BookWidgets you’ll be taken to your home page where you can quickly access any of the widgets (aka pieces of interactive content) you’ve created to send out to your students.  One of the things I love about BookWidgets is that you’ll find well-crafted support videos built into every section of the app, so if you run into any trouble with anything, there’s always a short video to help you along.

After you select the widget you want to use you’ll be walked through a series of prompts that will help you construct the widget.  Everything is incredibly straightforward and easy to understand.  There’s no coding or programming of any kind, which is often the case for the creation of interactive content.  It’s nice to see how simple the BookWidgets team has made this process so that any teacher, regardless of their comfort level, could create widgets in a relatively short amount of time for their students.

Once you’ve finished creating your Widget, you can send it out to your students with a link (similar to a YouTube video) which you can also share through an LMS or social media.

Students who receive the link will be able to complete the activity, regardless of the type of device they’re using.  You can also choose to share the link with other teachers so that they can customize or reuse the widget that you’ve created, which is an excellent feature.

On one side, I really like that students don’t have to have accounts to submit anything.  On the other side, I think this style of submission opens the door for some classroom management issues to consider.  One nice thing is that the teacher can “hardwire” their email into the widget, so students won’t have to worry about typing it in every time. Teachers can also “hardwire” student information so students can select their information from a dropdown list. Coming later this year, BookWidgets will also be adding the option for student accounts as well, just in case you would like to go with that option.

After students submit their work, you’ll be able to see a breakdown of everything they’ve done.  If it’s an activity where you’ve defined correct answers (e.g. a quiz) you’ll be able to see detailed analytics on student performance as well.

 In the end, BookWidgets is an excellent service for any teacher or curriculum developer that wants to create interactive content in an enormous variety of formats.  The system is easy to use, the widgets can be completed on tablet, Chromebook, or PC, and you can get detailed analytics on student performance.

Knomadix is another interactive platform that teachers can use.

Knomadix can be used for all core content delivery or as a supplement for specific grade levels and subject areas.

The Knomadix platform offers teachers the following features: 

• design and develop custom, interactive content that models smart worksheets, a geometry tool box, smart flashcards, smart diagramming and mapping exercises, interactive language aids and learning activities, and smart multimedia assessments.  
• gives teachers the ability to distribute a learning activity to a group of students or individual students. 
• provides multiple mobile apps that allow students to receive the content distributed by the teacher and consume the content inside Knomadix mobile apps. 
• captures several pieces of data from the student interaction, which includes both final assessment data as well as intermediate process steps, and stores it for further aggregation and reporting. 
• provides teachers with easy-to-use reports and tools to provide an evaluation of student progress and early intervention. 
  

Bookry

Bookry is a complimentary service for iBooks Author that lets you add amazing widgets to your books and interact with readers.

As an author you can benefit from other great features like free templates, widget analytics and push updates. As a reader, you have easy access to all the data you’ve entered into your multi-touch interactive books.

You must create an account to use their widgets. You can use all of their widgets for free but the widgets will be branded with the Bookry logo. If you want to remove it there is a cost to do so. They also are an educational option too.

They have a number of nice widgets in their collection and promise to add more regularly. There are a few that I know will be useful for educators.

For example the Interactive Timeline, a Scientific and BMI Calculator, YouTube and Vimeo video embedders, Word Search, Google Maps, Sketchpad, Match and Slider Puzzle games and more.

The widgets are pretty simple to download and use. You must create a book on their site to hold your widgets. The widgets will be downloaded to that book.  If you want to use the widget a number of times. You will have to download that widget and format for each occurrence in the book. All your widgets for your project will be stored there.  If you change/update something in your widget, it will make that change in your book where ever it is.  

To sum up,all these are pretty cool platforms. However, BookWidgets is what I like most. 

Thankssss

Technology Tools for Students To Know

 Welcome Again 

Today I am going to address two other issues regarding technology in education.

1. What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use?

2. What technology tools will best enhance your students project work and presentation?

Until now, we have learned and talked about the technology tools that teachers can use to enhance teaching. Students must know how to use these tools too, otherwise, the teaching and learning process would be incomplete.  

There are many interesting tools that students can make use of depending on what they might need. 

Nowadays teenagers but not only are surrounded by technology, they know how to use different apps and tools. However, it is important that they know how to use tools that serve the learning process. 

1. What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use?

Undoubtedly all the learning tools are important and very useful. However, I will distinguish some of them only.

Blog

A blog is a personal online journal that is again and again updated and intended to share with others. Blogs inspire students to clearly express their ideas. Most blogs also have a commenting feature, so that people can respond to one another's thoughts. Blogs also address the need to increase and expand various aspects of social learning. From my point of view, blogs are an effective means of gaining insight into students' activities and provide a way to share the knowledge and materials collected.

Wikis

Another tool is Wikis. I like Wikis for a couple of reasons. 

Technical skills involved in the use of wikis are low and most teachers have no difficulty in using the wiki platform.  With only a few steps, it is easy to create wiki pages. Regarding content organization, the wiki task helps develop their organizational skills. Besides, wikis facilitate collaborative learning.

Google Drive

Google Drive is simply a cloud-based storage option that gives us the ability to keep our photos, emails, and other files on their server.

But having extra storage is just the beginning.

Google Drive also comes with a suite of office tools :

Docs  Google’s word processor comparable to Microsoft Word

Sheets, Google’s version of Excel

Slides, the Google answer to PowerPoint

We can even share these documents and make edits in real-time so collaborating between teachers and students has never been easier.

2. What technology tools will best enhance your students' project work and presentation of the results?

I want to mention and highlight Prezi.

Prezi can be compared to Powerpoint, but the later is considered to be a little bit outdated.

Prezi is more appropriate for young people, students in our case. 

• Prezi presentation has zoom in and zoom out function which is very easy to navigate. If you are discussing a particular topic, simply zoom in your canvas with the information that you want to give emphasis.

• It is quick and easy to insert images, audio, and video. Photos can be inserted at any angle you desired. Users can zoom, rotate, resize, or edit a certain object.

• Presentations can be embedded into a webpage or blog.

• It allows user to customize their design pages by making them look like a real newspaper or a magazine article.

• Since it is a web-based software, working in any computer with an internet connection and Flash is easy.

• It is compatible with almost all web browsers and modern computers.

• It contains frames that allow users to group multiple presentation media into a single presentation.  

 As for the other tools their usage depends on the type of project and topic. 

Now  I want to share with you another website, that I find very useful and interesting for teachers. Below you will find the link to it as well.

BookWidgets

BookWidgets allows teachers to create a ton of different types of interactive content. Examples of each type of widget are available to use as a template to start out, and a tutorial walks you through the steps. There are 40 different widgets you can create that can be shared through a link, a QR code, an email, and Google Classroom. Simple assessments you can integrate include exit slips, quizzes, and worksheets. Kids can practice and review skills with flashcards, puzzles, or games such as hangman or bingo. Create a blended/flipped learning approach with personalized materials that can be easily assigned through your Google Classroom. When creating quizzes, select from over 30 types of questions for all content areas. Include answers in the setup so that quizzes can be self-grading and students can gain instant feedback. Differentiate digitally by creating versions of one worksheet and assigning it to groups of students in Google Classroom. The WebQuest widget is especially useful for a blended approach; within the widget, you can embed instructional videos, games, and quizzes.

https://www.bookwidgets.com/ 

Even though I have mentioned only some of them here, this doesn't mean that the other tools are less important. 

To conclude, whether technology is integrated during class time or after school hours, students are given more opportunities to interact with instructors, collaborate with peers and engage themselves in the learning process. Specific technology examples that have been shown to enhance student engagement include web-conferencing software, blogs, wikis, social networking sites and digital games.

Thanks! I hope you find this post interesting.🤭Ⓜ

 COOPERATIVE LEARNING: 

WHEN EDUCATION IS A TEAM GAME

Hi, everyone, welcome back to my blog. This week I am going to share with you some interesting information related to COOPERATIVE LEARNING.

Many research experiences show how competencies and life skills can be improved by working in study groups through forms of cooperative learning. To overcome obstacles, relying on team play may be the right move. A rule that is certainly also valid at school. 

Studies show that results are improved significantly in the study and workgroups in which forms of cooperative learning are used.  Cooperative learning, with its flexibility characteristics, is well suited to respond to specific needs and local contexts. Thanks to a pact on mutual trust, people learn from each other, developing opportunities for growth and new educational tools. Everyone is responsible not only for their own learning but also for that of the other members of the group. 

Characteristics of the cooperative learning group

It is not enough to bring together several people to create a group of cooperative learning.

·    There are precise organizational practices to be followed so that we can speak of cooperative learning and among these we can highlight:

·        the composition of the group based on the criterion of the heterogeneity of personal characteristics and skills possessed

·         the active involvement of all participants

·         a real positive interdependence between group members

·         the commitment of the children to ensure mutual help

·         the sense of responsibility expressed with a view to a common goal

·     leadership distributed on the components who therefore assume different management roles based on situations and objectives

In cooperative learning, the student has the opportunity to experiment in a learning space in which, thanks to mutual collaboration, it is easier to develop strategic and transversal skills, links between contents and insights. 

Advantages of COOPERATIVE LEARNING

The positive impact of cooperative learning on learning outcomes is therefore reflected at different levels:

           motivation to learn

the development of self-esteem

the achievement of operational skills

the enhancement of communication skills and working together

the development of empathic capacity, self-control and self-regulation

The advantages affect both the individual components and the group as a whole: 

• Each member contributes to the learning dynamics of the group to achieve common results. By doing so, they raise awareness of their positive role in the community
• The skills, abilities and knowledge possessed at an individual level are expressed for the benefit of the group, which therefore always acquires new ones
• Comparison with others helps develop critical, creative and divergent thinking and facilitates the production of innovative ideas
•  Exchange and dialogue activate positive interdependencies, a spontaneous passage of behaviours and practices based on emulation between group members aimed at developing their own well-being and that of others and overcoming conflicts

• Cooperation between group members leads individuals to greater responsibility and to proactively and dynamically transform the classic student-tutor-teacher relationship
• The bidirectional, group and individual assessment for each component constantly exercised on the results achieved, and the systematic use of feedback on the progress of the relationship activates improvement strategies and corrective educational actions

Cooperative Learning in distance learning 

It is no coincidence that in this last school year of educational challenges and closed schools,  the cooperative model has been a tool used by many teachers to overcome the difficulties of distance learning and maintain a good relationship between pupils. An entire network of relationships between parents, teachers, tutors, school directors, institutions, associations and volunteers came into play. Everyone has worked hard to make an educational experiment born out of an emergency work.

Personally speaking, I didn't like group work at all, even now I have my own doubts. I have always liked to work alone, to be in charge of all the work that has to be done. However, I must admit that when I have worked in groups everything has gone well and I have had so much fun. 

Considering all of these, in societies like ours that are affected by rapid technological, social and cultural evolution, cooperative learning can be a strategic ally of the School. To go deeper,  when pupils work in groups life seems much better.

Thank you for your time, happy holidays!😊Ⓜ