It's time to say goodbye... My final reflections

Good afternoon readers, it is time to say a final goodbye. It was a pleasure to write during this time and I hope that you also enjoyed reading me. The ICT subject is finishing, but everything that I have learned will be always with me. Being honest, when I heard at first that I had to take an ICT subject I felt not very happy, because my general skills with technology are limited. But now, four months after that moment, I do not regret anything.

As I final task our teacher asked us to create a presentation in which we must put our reflections and impressions of the whole course. So, I opened the campus to see all the tasks that I have done and I started summarising all the ones that I liked the most and one that I found interesting but not as much as the rest. I have to say, that even from those that I didn't enjoyed that much, I have learned a lot. It is good to be critical and adapt your learning to what you think that must be useful for your teaching daily life.


So first of all let me speak about the tool I have used for the presentation, present.me. As the title in itself says, it is a tool to present whatever you want. In my case I decided to create a presentation with power point and later on, with the tool, put my own voice to the slideshows.

To use the tool the steps are easy:

• First you have to sign up or create an account, I used my own google + account.
• Then the options to create your presentation are wide, I decided to record my voice but you can also include videos.
• I recorded my voice but I wanted to have pictures at the sime time and one of the options suggested is a ppt so I created mine with the Windows tool, PowerPoint.
• Once that I had my ppt I uploaded it and I recorded the voice. You can also upload a voice file that you have created before.
• The tool is very simple, you speak and at the same time you are passing the slideshows.

Now that you know how to use Present.me, which is a really nice discover is time to show you the presentation I have created. Thanks to it you will see and at the same time listen to all the reflections and the good moments that I keep from the ICT subject.

What do you think after watching it? As you can see I have included possitive aspects but also things that I prefered in another way. I wanted to say thanks to my group and also to the teacher because they have helped me a lot. And when I had to say goodbye I felt real sad because it has come to the end.

So, thanks for everything readers and please, leave a comment if you feel you must say goodbye too. But this is a goodbye to the subject, my ICT journey just has started and it is only the beginning of something. Learning never ends, specially for teachers.

THANKS FOR ALL!!!

Happy World Book Day

Happy World Book Day to everyone!! The 23rd of April many readers around the world celebrate this magic day in which everybody takes into account the importance of books in our culture, history and also in our daily lives. It is a day to celebrate that we have a treasure. It wouldn't be possible for me to explain in only one post everything that books mean to me, but I promiss you that they mean a lot.

 

(Only Harry Potter fans will understand the piture)

I started reading when I was able to, around the five years old. But before that, my mother used to read me books such as The neverending Story and I loved it!! Soon, I started to read books by myself such as: Harry Potter, Kika the Witch, The Lord of the Rings, The chronicles of Narnia and much more. It is not casual that all the books I have mentioned are Fantasy books, since it is my favourite genre!! By reading Fantasy books you can live adventures, meet fantastic and amazing creatures and travel through new worlds and realities.

So even if I have chosen one book my video is dedicated to every Fantasy book that has made my life more beautiful and full of dreams.

First of all let me tell you that the project I have created for the World Book Day has been done with the help of two amazing tools: Piktochart and Aurasma.
  

• Piktochart is a tool by which you can create your own pictures or collages. Before the tasks in the Master's Degree I have never used it, but I found it quite simple and interesting at the same time. When I was a teenager I used photoshop, wich is far more difficult than Piktochart, so I learned how to use it fast. Piktochar allows you to create your own picture by adding images, backgrounds, cliparts and more. Under the explanation of Piktochart and Aurasma you can find my picture, do you like it?

• Aurasma is a fantastic tool that allows you to create an augmented reality project. I have spoken about Aurasma before, so I won't write much more again. Only to tell you that it is a fantastic tool by which you take a picture and overlay a video, so when you put the mobile phone over the picture you can see my video. The result is amazing and I really liked watching my video like this, I felt so proud of myself. Just in case you want to use the tool, I put you here again the post of the tutorial that our group created.

• Moviemaker is a tool I have used before when I created the video for my e-project "Money, money". As I have described then, I love the programme because it is easy to understand and you can add many effects to decorate your video. I recorded myself explaining you some facts about me as a reader and I really enjoyed it.

I know you cannot wait to see my Aurasma project but first of all you have to follow me if you want to see my aurasma, the name of my channel is Mara Domínguez:

And after that there is another step you must undertake, download the Aurasma app for your phone and then open the programme. Once you have opened it, you just have to click on the button to pin up the trigger and then you will see the video. My trigger is this one. Click on the picture to see my pin on the wall:

Besides, our teacher created a Book Day Wall in Pinterest so all of us can post our picture and the project. There all the students posted their pictures and you can see all the videos. I have written about Pinterest before, when I started using it. My perspective now is much more better since thanks to Pinterest I have found many resources, ideas and more to use in my classroom. I have never imagined how useful Pinterest resulted to be.

This project has resulted very funny and also a good tribute for all of us who love reading and books. In my video I want to reflect only a small part of how important is reading for me, but I hope that you would feel more interested for Song of Ice and Fire or reading in general.



Thanks for reading me and Happy World Book Day to everyone!!

My First Choco-talk!

Hi everyone!

Today I would like to explain you my first experience with a challenge I have never taken before, a Choco-talk (Yummy!). And you must be asking yourself... What is a Choco-talk and what does she mean? 

SOURCE CANDYGIRLSWEETHEART.TUMBLR.COM 

It is a proposal by which us, as students taking a Master's Degree in the Rey Juan Carlos University, developed an open live talk in which we spoke about CLIL in general and the e-projects we have designed and created. It sounds exciting, don't you think? (And full of chocolate, of course)


And you might be thinking... When was the Choco-talk? It was the 7th of April from 19.00 pm to 20.00 pm Spanish time. Our group and I were pretty nervious that day and we had prepared many things to make our first Choco-talk a perfect event. Now you can see an example of the promotion we have created for our group, using Sam as a funny way to motivate people to join us:

The talk was carried out by one (in some groups two) members and they had to speak in front of a camera about some interesting topics about CLIL such as Advantages and Disadvantages of CLIL, ICT's and its paper in education, the educational emotion in our system and finally they spoke about every project. They also spoke about a part of ICT's that I like a lot, videogames. The debate about videogames made me think and in my following class I tried it, my students were so motivated... I promiss you, you must try it!


Now I would like to introduce you my team peers, who are Neus, Marta, Álvaro and Paula had different papers relating to the choco-talk:

• Neus and Álvaro were in charge of a very important paper, the speakers. They did a really good job when they spoke and they main paper was to outline what the whole group wanted to add to the talk, to speak in front of the camera defending and debating with our other peers and above all, promoting and speaking perfectly about our e-project!

• Marta had another basic paper for the good development of the Choco-talk, the disseminator. She had spend the whole hour promoting the talk, adding pictures, twittering, blogging and everything related to the Social Media. What an interesting part, don't you think?

• Paula and I were the content curators. We had to collect all the information during the Choco-talk for what I did many things, do you want to know more about it? Continue reading.

My experience as a content curator was funnier than I expected, at first I had to fully understand what a content curator is and what I was suposed to do. After checking that information I had to decide how would I take the notes and everything so I decided to use my laptop and my ipad at the same time; one for writing and the other one for watching the video. During the whole hour I wrote almost every word they said so at the end I could summarize and remember exactly what they talked about. After that, Paula and I put everything in common and we created another documment that we used lately for creating a visual explanation of the talk, a Genially documment.

My experience as a content curator was very enriching, I enjoyed the talk, I had taken the notes and I created a visual and nice presentation containing the most important topics of the talk. To be honest, I thought it was going to be the worst paper of the Choco-talk because you had to pay attention to many things, but I found myself having fun watching and writing at the same time.

Would you like to know more about the presentation created with Genially? You can see it here, but... Please, watch the Choco-talk before!!

I hope you enjoyed the post!

Welcome!

Welcome everyone! This blog called "The lighting of a fire" was created for educational purposes. It will be dedicated to show you all my progress and steps during this long way which is teaching in general and also teaching through ICT. I have chosen this name because few years ago I read a quote which said "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire" by William Butler and it impressed me much. I hope you will find my blog interesting and full of inspiration.

Thanks for reading me!