Sunday, February 12, 2012

The beginning of a PLE?

EVO 2012 - PLE & PLN for Lifelong Learning

EVO 2012 has come to an end. But I have decided that this will be only the first of my EVO sessions. This blog has worked as my e-portfolio so far and it will become (or already is?) part of my PLE.
As I could not take part in the PLE & PLN for Lifelong Learning course final webinar, I decided to embed here the final presentation that Letizia, one of our moderators, kindly shared with us. It will help me to wrap up this amazing learning experience and I will thus be able to share it with other colleagues who could not join the session.

Thanks to Letizia, Daniela, Susan and Sandra. You've been great moderators ad mentors.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

My first e-book

Classdigitools - Week 5 - Final task

Publishing an e-book

That's the final task. I'm a bit sad because the course is getting to an end. I must admit I became addicted to the tasks and the daily contact with all the teachers taking part in this wonderful experience.

I chose one of the activities proposed and this is my first e-book: 4 things I'm sharing with you

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Working with plays

Classdigitools - Week 5 - Task 2

Using Plays to teach about characters, plots, setting and conflict in Dramatic Tragedy

Instructions for this task:

1. Read through this wonderful lesson plan Happily Ever After? Exploring Character, Conflict and Plot in Dramatic Tragedy.
2. Think of you own teaching contexts. Which story would you choose to work with your students?
3. Share with the group how you'd adapt the original lesson plan to use with your students. Include in your post the plot you'd choose, and how you'd carry out the reading/writing activity with your students.
 
This amazing lesson plan provided a lot of interesting tools to be used and activities to be carried out in class but most of them are not suitable for my lower secondary students whose skills range from elementary to pre-intermediate.
If I were to adapt this lesson plan, I would choose Macbeth.
I would have my EFL pre-intermediate students read the tragedy - an abridged version adapted to their level – together in class. Each of them would have to play a character of the play. 
Then I would probably have them watch together the BBC animated version of the play. Images could help non-native speakers to better understand the plot and the audio could give them a hint of the musicality of Shakespeare's language.

  
After that, I would divide the students in groups of five and ask them to:
  • create a timeline of the play’s main events with ReadWriteThink Timeline interactive tool.
  • work on the Plot Tree worksheet; they would have to determine the plot turning point, discuss alternative outcomes and choose one by one the outcomes that lead to a different ending.
As their final activity, they would produce a comic strip of the play’s revised version using ReadWriteThink ComicCreator interactive tool or another tool of their choice (Pixton, Toondoo, Bitstrips, etc.).

Monday, February 6, 2012

Virtual newspapers and magazines

Classdigitools - Week 5 - Task 1

Creating magazine covers to summarize texts

This week we are exploring new ways to enhance our students' reading skills. After having analysed this amazing lesson plan, we had to choose an article from a list provided by our moderators and summarize it in a magazine cover, newspaper page or brochure.

The articles were taken from Edutopia, a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. I chose The virtual classroom redefines education and got really caught by the nature of the subject matter and the multimediality of its presentation.

I tried to summarize it using some of the tools suggested. First I used Fodey which allows users to generate a newspaper clipping image. Today's edition of The Blabber contained the following article:


Then I tried with the cover of a magazine using Big Huge Labs:


The third digital tool I used was ReadWriteThink. I created a flyer and loaded the pdf file on Google Docs.


Saturday, February 4, 2012

It's time to speak!

Classdigitools - Week 4

Exploring online tools to enhance learners' speaking skills

This week we have been asked to explore many digital tools which allow people to create audio recordings, some of them associated with pictures, and video recordings.

As I usually work with young learners, I tend not to use video recordings or photographs unless they are shared in a private secure learning environment. That's why I particularly appreciated Educreations which is a sort of whiteboard on which you can draw, insert a picture and record your voice.

For our task 4 with Educreations or Sketchcast, we were supposed to draw our family. Here's what I managed to produce:


Task 5 - Explore and create - Lesson plan

We have been asked to explore over 10 tools provided by our helpful moderators and choose one of them to devise a lesson plan to practise speaking skills.


I usually have my teenage students practise speaking in class with the activities I used for the lesson plans, so I adapted these simple tasks and added the digital element which could boost the students' motivation to speak.