The Earth's adventures interactive infographic

Hello everybody!

For this task we had to work in groups to create an InfoEdufoGraphic. The members of my group are: @lainez_ortega, @cristinarisueno, @celiagon92 and @gonzaalo10. To do this we surfed the InfoEdugraphic Project Site to look for tips, instructions and ideas. 

Since all our e-projects (Landscaping, Planets in the solar system, The Hydrosphere and The mysteries of the Earth) are connected with Social Science (planets, Earth, landscapes and so forth), we decided to make an infographic as an introductory tool for a common topic. Our main learning outcome is for our students to know about the planets of the Solar System, The Earth`s layers (Hydrosphere and atmosphere) and landforms as well as environmental care.

First, we assigned the roles:

- @gonzaalo10 was the supervisor and he was in charge of controlling the creation process and remembering each person's task. They also had to take notes of everybody's ideas. 

- @lainez_ortega and @cristinarisueno were the secretaries. They made and create the InfoEduGraphic using Piktochart and Thinglink.

- @celiagon92 was the speaker. She spread our work by Twitter and blogging.

- Finally, I (@GMEstrellaa)  was the coordinator. I had to direct and check that each member did his part of the job. I also encouraged them to keep working on the infographic.

To accomplish this, we had to face two problems:

1. How to link all our e-projects' contents: After thinking about it for a while, we decided to structure the infoedugraphic from the most asbtract content (the space) to the most concrete one (landforms). This way, we could include all our Social Science contents in a structured and well-organised way. In order to motivate the students, we added a badge that they could get once they finished the learning process.
2. How to adapt the contents to the different school's levels: this challenge was harder to face but finally we though of making an interactive InfoEduGraphic. What does this mean? We did not only a infographic (which is an image) but also an interactive image. By doing this, we foster an active learning and allow students of different grades to access to different activities of different difficulty. The teacher could guide all this learning process to do the activities corresponding each course. 

How did we create our InfoEduGraphic?

We decided to use Piktochart due to the fact that some members of our group had already used it and they said that it could fit the purpose of the project perfectly well. It gives you the possibility to create infographics, posters, presentations or reports depending on what we need. The one we chose is an infographic as it is divided into different blocks which were suitable for each difficulty level. The quality of the pictures and icons that the tool offers is quite high and very attractive, exactly what we were looking for: to captivate students’ attention. Finally, we would like to highlight that Picktochart would be perfect if it offered the possibility of making those graphics interactives (pictures with movements, sounds, link to other webpages and so on) instead of being just an image. 

Once we had our infographic finished we went to make it interactive to promote active learning and to increase pupils' motivation. We did this part of the project using the online tool Thinglink. With this tool you can make an interactive image by putting links in small spots inside your picture. Therefore, we included a video to expand knowledge, interactive activities to review each content and an Arts and Crafts activity about environmental care.

As you can imagine, this tool is inreadibly useful to create you own CLIL materials because, by linking resources, you can work the 4Cs. However, I think this tool would be nicer if they offered a wider variety of forms to insert the links, not only spots. 

Our final artifact is this amazing interactive InfoEduGraphic to introduce and learn different contents about our planet. Click on the spots to see the activities:

My CLIL eproject Prototype

Hi bloggers!!

I have news for you!! As you know, we are going to create an eproject but first of all we need to have in mind the CLIL syllabus for Primary Education, a Table of Skills our students must accomplish and the Goals they must achieve.

Based on these guidelines, I have created a basic prototype of what information, topics and activities I'd like to include in your CLIL eproject. Please, take into account that this draft is not definite, it is a first approach,

You can find the prototype of my eproject in the following link in Google Docs where I explain my unit briefly.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_qDfpcqifAX2VRUWUzTkYwN1E/view

I have followed the pieces of advice given by María Jesús (@mjgsm on Twitter) regarding the outline.

I would like to say that as you can read in previous posts, I was thinking about storytelling for my eproject a few weeks ago  but I changed my mind because I think that recycling and the maintenance of our planet is an essential issue that students of all ages must keep in mind. That topic has to be comprehended as a continous learning and carried out in a cross-curricular way at schools. For that reasons it has to be present in formal education as well as informal education. By doing so, we will also help our students to be autonomous learners.

The videoclip that presents my outline has been created with PowToon. This tool offers many possibilities to design videos using a variety of pictures (you can also upload your own images), text effects, animated characters and images, backgrounds, music... Also, you can use a template from a list of different ones, as I did with my video, or you can start creating it by yourself. Here you can see my presentation:

Videoclip

I hope you like it!

My edesign evaluation of a CLIL eproject

Hello everybody!

Before creating our own CLIL eprojects is essential to know some examples created by other teachers and evaluate their work to appreciate what are the strong and weak points ot them and what would we do to improve them. The ebook design that I have evaluated has been one of the previous students of this Master (@somar0209 in Twitter) because when I did that I was thinking of doing my eproject about storytelling or something similar to that and that person had dealt with it before. We can find content related to the mobile e-library that he created with other companions here: http://bookme-library.blogspot.com.es/

This person has selected different stories (some of them are well-known stories, other are invented) and has presented them in different ways. All of them are related to ICT. I have enjoyed exploring that blog because I think that all the posts are meaningful, enjoyable and very well developed.

You can find my ebook designs’ evaluation in this presentation: http://www.genial.ly/View/Index/56dc73ed1561e8074081ef82

 Finally, I have created my edesign evaluation of this CLIL eproject with Genially. This is the first time I use genially but I have chosen it because this tool supports teaching materials which include elements that catch the audience’s attention (i.e. we can add audiovisual features, etc.), and that is one of the reasons why teachers are encouraged to use it in class, simply to engage.

My webmix for CLIL e-projects!

Hello everyone!

I am here again with a curating mission! It is essential to curate in order to have materials at hand at any time. To do that, I have choosen the website Pinterest because I am familirizated with it due to the previous challenge.

I have created a board with the title Storytelling resources taking into account that the title is part of the URL, so it must be illustrative of the resources and topic I am compiling. Finally, I have filled my board with useful links, for my eproject or for anyone who is interested in that topic, taken from the collaborative bank we compiled together in the previous mission, and adding additional content that I feel like it.

I find this challenge really useful because I usually find resources that I would like to use in class but perhaps, I don't find them at the right moment so having a place to compile them around different topics can be the perfect solution for me!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

My viewpoints on the Bank of Common Knowledge

Hello everybody!!

I am here again to talk about a new mission that we have had!! We have created a bank of common knowledge for CLIL e-projects on Pinterest!! Each of the 32 students of my Master's class has posted 6 free resources and without copyright on a common board of Pinterest. 
It has been a really good way of knowing a bit more about Pinterest. I hadn't seen a bank of common knowledge like that before, so, in my opinion it has been a meaningful challenge and I like it! We have also taken into account that the resources we post don't have copyright and we can share them as we saw in the previous challenge.
I think it is good to give it a try at school and we, as teachers, create a bank of common knowledge with our students. By doing that, they will have the opportunity to add resources as valued as the teacher's ones.
The six resources that I have chosen to post are:
- How to make a minibook: "The very hungry caterpillar". A good story to review the days of the week, the fruits or the life cycle of a butterfly in Sciences. The kids will retell the story with their own minibooks!
Click here for more details

- The ultimate list of Educational websites! You have there a list of links about courses, language learning, books, videos, programming, music, documentaries, random knowledge and so on and so forth.
Click here for more details

- 6 Storytelling Apps That Get English Language Learners Talking. Digital storytelling can be an effective way for ELLs to practice speaking English without the stress of being  “on stage.” Apps and tech tools allow students to practice in the comfort of their own home by themselves or with a caregiver.

Click here for more details

- Create Interactive Stories in Book Creator. This video demonstrates how students can 'gamify' a story in Book Creator where the reader can choose the plot. Find more tutorials at www.ipadteachers.com
Click here for more details

- Organize research while creating slides on Buncee! A good way of integrating ICT and CLIL.
Click here for more details

- Learn English Idioms: hey you! are you As Cool as a Cucumber? Enjoy Arfur the Cucumber.
Click here for more details

Thanks for reading me!

Creative Common License

Hello again!!

I have a question for you! Do you know why should we write a © copyright notice? Other more specific questions related with the present learning process that we are having as we go with our e-portfolio are:

- What does our license allow others to do with our CLIL e-materials?

- What are good ways to motivate our students to use Creative Commons material and attribute properly?

I have created a Creative Commons License for my e-portfolio which will cover my CLIL materials and eproject too. You can see it at the bottom of my blog. 

All the terms and conditions of it are available in: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

You can also create your own licence with the conditions you think that are more suitable for you. Just click here: http://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en 

The reason why I created it is because I think it's good to share on sites free and people are welcome to download resources for their personal and/or classroom use only. However, design and all contents shouldn't be reproduced in any format or placed on another website without permission. 

As for the question what does my license allow others to do with my CLIL e-materials? The answer is my licence allows people to adapt my work and share it with others but they can’t use them for comercial purposes. In my opinion that’s fantastic because we can save much time by using lesson plans that people have already created but, as in everything, we have to recognise people’s effort and work so if they don’t allow us, we shouldn’t use their work to earn money.

Regarding the last question, what are good ways to motivate our students to use Creative Commons material and attribute properly? I will work on the importance of respecting other people in a cross-curricular way at school. We will read a story about feelings and the students will create their digital stories based on the story read before but they will have to create a new end too. After that, we will discuss and we will share opinions about how we would feel if someone use our stories to earn money. Finally, we will learn how to cite, attribute the information and create a Creative Commons license for our digital stories too.

My PLE and PLN for CLIL

Hello everybody!

 I have made my current PLE and PLN for CLIL. First of all, I want to say that I didn’t know much about CLIL before starting this Master in Bilingual Education. I knew that some subjects are currently taught in English in Bilingual schools but I didn’t understand very well how, when and why. However, I think that the learning process and the discovering that we all are doing help us much to know new things.

I created my diagram with Easelly http://www.easel.ly/create?id=https://s3.amazonaws.com/easel.ly/all_easels/1488523/1455975180&key=pri . 
I usually use a wordle creator to do online spider diagrams but I feel that tool is less sophisticated than Easelly and we don’t have the possibility of including arrows to connect words. Because of thaose reasons finally, I have tried a new one that is Easelly as I have mentioned above. I like this tool because it lets us choose so many options. During or after using it, we have an option that is to download our diagram in a PDF document too, so we can save it and have a look at it without internet connection.

I have distributed my diagram in two big sections that are interrelated:

My PLE (Personal Learning Environment) that it is based on the searching that I do to know more about CLIL. I want to highlight the following sites:

- TEDtalks: I use it to watch fascinating short videos about a huge variety of topics.

- TES: I use it to find resources that can be applied in a CLIL class.

- Digital newspapers and magazines: I listen to interviews or read interesting articles, news, etc. about CLIL.

- Google: That is one of my favourites, with a simple click I can find relevant information. I can read and investigate all the new CLIL aspects and theories.

- Word Reference: I use it when I am reading something about CLIL and I am not very sure about the meaning of a word or concept.

- YouTube: I use it to find audiovisual information about whatever.

- Blogger: I enjoy reading blogs and find other points of view, materials, resources, data, etc.

- Pinterest: I use it when I want to find practical ideas, resources, etc. for lesson plans.

Having explained my PLE, now I am going to point out my PLN (Personal Learning Network). In this section I have included the following ideas:

- Moddle: I use it to exchange personal information with my partners.

- Twitter and Facebook: I use these social networks to read about CLIL and to share my knowledge about it.

- Gmail and Dropbox: I share and post information about CLIL lesson plans, activities, information and more. It's the perfect place to organize my staff online.

- Whatsapp and forums: I use it to exchange opinions and discussions.

That is my present PLE and PLN for CLIL, Perhaps you want to help me continue working on it. Please, don't hesitate to contact me. I am looking forward to hearing from you!!