Fun new tools

In class, we were presented digital resources like WordCloud and Voki to make English lessons funnier.

For what I have searched, Voki is a character that can be customized according to the students´ preferences. As the website provides the information (you can have access by clicking the previous link) in a clear and easy way, it is really simple to create your own Voki.  They can be used to engage students´ attention and to make English lessons not that monotonous by making students participate more actively. It is not only useful for students but for teachers as well. Teachers have a whole section called "Voki classroom" (unfortunately you have to pay for it), where they can check their students´ improvement and homework, a kind of Edmodo Platform. But if you cannot pay for it, you can create Vokis anyway and share in different websites such as Facebook, Blogger, Google, etc.

I also wanted to go through the experience of having my own Voki so I couldn´t resist and I created a new one.

Try to create one!!

Wordcloud, on the other hand, is not a character but a tipography tool instead. You can create one by counting words in some text. This could be a Microsoft document, a pdf one or you can introduce the words by tiping or pasting a text. It is a really interesting way to grab students´attention by using something new to teach vocabulary, for instance, and not the typical pictures posted on the wall. The one I chose is free and easy to use.

Source:
Voki
WordCloud

Web 2.0

As I had to leave early when this topic was introduced and I am in the mood to keep on learning everything related to digital technologies; I decided to do some research on Web 2.0.

According to Tim O'Reilly (2003):

"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform:

• delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, 

• consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others,

• creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences."

  

We are not supposed to know or to use all the new digital tools, the idea is to make use of the Web as a Platform where you can control your own data and not only by publishing it in websites but by participating as well (as we are intended to do when posting something and then commenting on another classmate´s blog, for instance). Some examples of websites that belong to the Web 2.0 era are: Google, Wikipedia,YouTube,Flickr and the one we are using Blogger.

When it comes to Education, Web 2.0 is absolutely necessary since students now work collaborativelly and they are sharing information all the time. If you want to know more about how Education is now seen by using Web 2.0, I recommend you to watch this link: Web 2.0 For Education.

A really interesting webpage is OEDb (Open Education Database) where you can find almost any Web 2.0 teaching tool and its use in Education. There are classroom tools and collaborating tools. The former includes resources such as Teacher Planet in which you can download lesson plans and the latter includes pages like Emodo which is used to share content not only between colleagues but with students as well.

Source:

Tim O´Reilly Webpage

Selfies...what are they?

Having been invited to a workshop on "Selfies" coordinated by Mathilde Verillaud, I first thought "Oh no, here we go again with senseless photographs taken by teenagers" and "Is there even a workshop on how to take selfies?Come on!" I could not be more mistaken. It actually made me think totally different of what selfies are and why adolescents take them, what they may represent in their lives and the importance they might have for most of our students, even though our students cannot realise the importance of taking photographs and uploading them to the web.

Social media and the mobile web have given rise to a strange phenomenon called the selfie, which is a picture of yourself, usually shared on any social networking website.

As Mathilde told us, some selfies are extreme close-ups, others show part of an arm held straight outward and others feature the subject standing in front of a bathroom mirror so that they can get a full body shot of their reflection. There are lots of selfie styles, and these are some of the most common.

There are several reasons why people take selfies, and these reasons were the ones that made me change my opinion regarding this new way of photography. Some of the reasons are:

• To get attention from as many people as possible,
• To get a self-esteem boost,
• To show off,
• To show a message into the Mobile Social Networks.

How can we use them in the classroom? Since selfies are something in which our students are really into, we can come up with different activities so as to engage them and make English lessons funnier. We can also teach them that a selfie is not only a photograph and that it shows a lot more to the eye. We can help them to discover what it actually shows and make them feel free to express themselves through their selfies.

I will leave you with this selfie...what do you think this teenager is thinking of?

Sources
- Verillaud, Mathilde, "Selfies in the Classroom, Really?", presentation at Alicana, Santa Fe, August 2014.
Picture: creative common license