COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS

MY FUTURE CLASS 2.0

 Os quiero presentar la "maqueta" de mi futura clase. Al final me he decidido por el programa que podréis encontrar en la esta página web:

• http://www.teq.com/classroom

En clase Julio nos propuso un par de programas, http://kaplan.floorplanner.com/start#details y http://classroom.4teachers.org/, y nos dijo que había muchísimos más, así que me puse manos a la obra a buscar y encontré éste otro. Me decidí por Teq por que refleja de una forma más detallada la presencia de las tecnologías de la información en la educación. He de decir que no tiene mucha variedad en cuanto a inmobiliario, a mí personalmente me hubiese gustado incluir un par de estanterías y un par de taquillas al fondo de la clase para el alumnado. finalmente me decidí por éste programa, y en mi clase podéis ver que la distribución de la clase se hace a partir de grupos de cuatro, grupos que no siempre estarán compuestos por los mismos miembros sino que irán rotando después de la finalización de cada unidad didáctica, atendiendo a un test sociométrico previamente realizado a la clase analizando las relaciones sociales que se establecen entre los miembros del grupo, en concreto tres aspectos: el nivel de afectividad, el liderazgo y el rechazo, y los subgrupos. La clase consta de ocho mesas, una del profesor, tres redondas con una Tablet para cada alumno en las que los alumnos trabajarán utilizando Internet, otras tres rectangulares en las que los niños tienen elementos para jugar con los que también aprenderán cosas muy valiosas y dónde también tienen un sistema de respuesta para comunicarse con el resto de la clase y participar a pesar de estar un poco más alejados de la clase. Entre ambas líneas de trabajo podemos ver dos pequeñas mesitas interactivas donde podrán consultar sus dudas acerca del tema. A la derecha de la mesa del profesor podemos encontrar una mesa de debate en la que los alumnos que tengan algún problema, irán a solucionarlo pacíficamente con la presencia de un alumno que actuará de juez, y dos alumnos que actuarán de letrados de los alumnos que participan en el conflicto, siempre bajo la supervisión del profesor.

La clase consta de dos pizarras digitales, una que utilizará el maestro y la otra que la utilizaran los alumnos ya que se trata de una pizarra en la que pueden interactuar varios alumnos a la vez, una televisión para analizar contenidos televisivos en algunos momentos y una pequeña pizarra digital en la que los alumnos tendrán puestas las normas del aula. Y en una clase así no nos puede faltar una pequeña zona verde donde encontramos plantas y un pequeño acuario con una mascota que la clase se ocupará de cuidar, para desarrollar así un sentimiento de responsabilidad bastante bueno. Y bueno con tantas cosas tan buenas ya sólo hace falta una maestra que se haga cargo de utilizarlo de manera que repercuta de buena forma en el alumnado y que trate de enseñar, cuidar y ayudar a sus alumnos lo mejor que pueda.

DISTRIBUCIÓN DEL AULA

DISTRIBUCIÓN DEL AULA

El día a día va avanzando a una manera brutal. Tenemos que adaptar este rápido avance de las tecnologías al aula, debido a que por un lado, a los niños de seis a doce años les motiva el saber que van a aprender de una manera dinámica y divertida, y no de la manera monótona que habido en el sistema educativo español durante varios años. También (bajo mi propio punto de vista) pienso que es necesario realizar este cambio y adaptarnos, debido a que no nos podemos estancar a la hora de trabajar y educar a los niños en cualquier área de conocimiento. Debemos avanzar y cambiar la manera de educar para poder asegurarnos que los niños vuelven a sentir ganas por aprender y, con ayuda de las Tic, se puede lograr.

Uno de estos pasos para lograr el "cambio", es modificar la distribución de la clase (Clase 2.0). Muchos colegios y escuelas aún tienen la llamada "aula del cogote" en la que los niños se sientan uno detrás de otro individualmente y atienden a la cabeza pensante, que es el profesor. Pero en mi opinión este tipo de administración de alumnos sería mucho más eficaz trabajando cooperativamente y sentados en grupo, ya que así se pueden ayudar unos a otros.

SECURITY

Security over the internet:

FOLLOW ME

Follow Me! was a series of television programmes produced by the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in the English language. It became popular in many overseas countries as a first introduction to English; in 1983, one hundred million people watched the show in China alone, featuring Kathy Flower.
The British actor Francis Matthews hosted and narrated the series.
The course consists of sixty lessons. Each lesson lasts from 12 to 15 minutes and covers a specific lexis. The lessons follow a consistent group of actors, with the relationships between their characters developing during the course.
Different varieties of English are presented.

HOT POTATOES EXAMPLES

JCloze.

JMatch

JQuiz.

JCross 

JMix

FIREFOX ADD-ONS

Each add-on specifies which applications and versions it works with. These add-ons are really interesting and we can use them for instance to download videos or  mp3 (easy youtube downloader) files from youtube; and many other interesting actions.

HOT POTATOES

HOT POTATOES SUITE

Hot potatoes includes six applications.

These applications enable you to create interactive:

Multiple choice

Short-answer

Jumbled sentences

Crosswords

Matching and ordering

Gap-fill exercises.

They can be uploaded to the World Wide Web.

Hot potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project.

Jmatch: matching and ordering.

Jcross: crossword

Jmix: jumbed sentences

Jcloze: fill in the gaps

Jquiz: multiple choice, true or false, text entry or short answer.

Hot Potatoes suite: the masher

The masher is a tool for automatically compiling hot potatoes exercises into units.

Imagine you have five hot potatoes exercises that form a single unit materials and you want to build HTML from all the exercises, with the same colours and appearance settings; you also want to link the exercise together using the navigation buttons, and create an index file for the unit. The masher will do it for you.

SHARED ASPECTS

Files designed with HP should be saved in two different formats:

HP FILE (extensions: jmt, jms, jqz, jcl, jcw)

HTML FILE (to be used with any web browser)

JMIX

A Jmix activity produces a jumbled word or sentence activity.

Letters of a single word may be jumbled, or the words of a sentence.

Jmix uses the standard and drag-and-drop types of output files should be saved in towo different formats.

JQUIZ

Jquiz can create four different types of questions:

Multiple choice

Short-answer

hybrid (a short-answer question that turns into a multiple choice questions after several attempts), and

multi-select (in which the learner has to choose several of a set of options, then check the choices).

JMATCH

The Jmatch program creates matching or ordering exercises.

A list of fixed items appears on the left (These can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right.

This can be used for matching vocabulary to picture or translations or for ordering sentencesto form a sequence or a conversation.

MULTIPLE CHOICE JQUIZ

The learner choose an answer by clicking on a button.

If the answer is correct, the button caption will change to a smily face :-) and if it is wrong, it will change to an x.

In either case, the student will see the feedback specific to that answer, explaining why it is right or wong (assuming you write the feedback when you make the exercise!).

If the answer is wrong, the learner can continue choosing answer until a correct answer is selected.

Once a correct answer is chosen, the scaring is “frozen”, but the learner can still click on buttons to see the feedback for other answers without penalty.

JCLOZE

Jcloze program creates gap-fill exercises.

Unlimited correct answers can e specified for each gap, and the student can ask for a hint and see the letter of the correct answer.

A specific clue can also be included for each gap.

Automatic scoring is also included. The program allowa gapping of selected words, or automatic gapping of every new word in a text.

REMEMBER

Files should be saved in the same folder.

HP does not include software for the edition of images, sound or video.

Suggested software: Gimp, Youtube editor, Audacity,...

Use long names, without spaces.

Browsers read spaces as : 20%

There may be naigation errors. Reading_in_English …..Reading in English.

LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

INTERACTIVE WHITE BOARDS, FOR OR AGAINST?

Reasons against using interactive whiteboards

 Tight budgets

Interactive whiteboards are not cheap, and many educators believe that students are better served by allocating funds to teacher salaries.

Traditionalist educators

According to Education Week, one of the biggest complaints about interactive whiteboards is that they are often underutilized by poorly trained or technically-challenged teachers.

Reasons in favor of using interactive whiteboards

Powerful visual tools for teachers

Using interactive whiteboards, teachers can create lessons that incorporate video, moving diagrams, and online content to help explain difficult material and to keep students engaged.

Ability for students to interact

Students can interact in a variety of ways with whiteboards, including writing on them, manipulating objects in matching or sorting games, or voting on answers with the help of handheld devices.

Display student projects

Interactive whiteboards allow teachers to showcase projects that students have created using software such as PowerPoint. These types of projects may look more impressive on a big screen, and most students enjoy seeing their work displayed in this fashion.

IWB

An interactive whiteboard is an instructional tool that allows computer images to be displayed onto a board using a digital projector. The instructor can then manipulate the elements on the board by using his finger as a mouse, directly on the screen. Items can be dragged, clicked and copied and the lecturer can handwrite notes, which can be transformed into text and saved.
They are a powerful tool in the classroom adding interactivity and collaboration, allowing the integration of media content into the lecture and supporting collaborative learning. Used innovatively they create a wide range of learning opportunities. However, in many environments they are not being used to their full potential, and in many cases acting as glorified blackboards. 

Connecting the IWB

-           Video connection (photos of each type of connection)

·         HDMI 

· RCA

· VGA

The usage of IWB in primary education.

HOW TO TEACH THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE

• The knowledge children have of the languages they know has essenially been acquired through its use.
• Therefore, this is the way it should be followed in the foreing language.
• For that reason, the didactic approach should be focused on the use of the target language in the class.
• The essential condition to facilitate this process is to focus the didactic intervention on a real and continuous use of the language, which acquires more importance if we consider that, in most cases, our boys and girls do not have more possibilities of contact with the foreign language than the one they have within the school framework.

• The fact of starting from a very limited linguistic competence in most pupils, makes necessary to guide educational practice more to the establishment of this competence that to its developmente to improvement.
• At the same ime, the communicative context should be used a as a support for the verification of the hypotheses formulated through the use for the verification of the hypotheses formulated through the use of the expressions and the positive or negative feedback that the context can provide.
• Pupils should be given the opportunity to put into practice what they have been exposed to.
• How can they learn a foreign language if they are not given the opportunity to practice it?
• As a general rule, we can say that, at the beginning, most of the class time should be devoted to listening to an intelligible input and speaking (by repaeating, asking and answering questions, drilling, etc.).
• Once they gain confidence (not acquire) in speaking adn understandig messsages in the foreign language, they can begin the process of reading and writing in that foreign language with vocabulary, set phrases,... they are familiar with in the FL and also in their mother tongue. “Do not introduce any concept which has not been acquiered in their mother tongue”
• Summing up, following a Communicative Language Teaching Approach, the time the teacher is speaking, explaining, .. should be reduced and, the time the students are producing the foreign language increased. “The time the teacher talks should be reduced dramatically”.