My e-project prototype!

Good afternoon readers!

Today I would like to talk to you about my e-project prototype which has been created by using MovieMaker and posted on Youtube. And you may ask... What is an e-project? An E-project is a digital artifact and in our case we had to create a CLIL e-project so I have chosen the Economic first steps for 5th grade in Primary Education.

Why Money? Because I think it is a very interesting topic and not many people want to create a project about it. Despite I think Money is one of the most useful and realistic topics to be worked and the possibilities are wide.

But first of all... Let me show you my video.

But... The video looks easy, but the process of creating it wasn't that easy. The first thing I had to do was dealing with a Lesson Plan. I have taken a concrete design by Isabel Pérez Torres.


What tool did you use?




The video was created with MovieMaker since it is a tool I really like and enjoy using. It is very simple but at the same time it allows you to do many things such as adding effects or music by your own. I hope you all will enjoy it and you will feel more interested in my e-project. If you have never created a video using MovieMaker I recommend you to do it because it is very simple and neat and the same time and the results are awesome. It is the tool that our students sometimes use when they have to create a video or a presentation so it is a good idea to know it to give feedback to our students.


Thanks for everything and hope you will like it!

Evaluating an e-project

Good afternoon everybody! It is the first time I had to face the task of evaluating an e-project. Being honest I did not know much about e-projects so the first I had to do was analysing and reading what an e-project is and how to do it. Do you want to know the results?

My edesign evaluation has been done of an e-project called "Arts and Music around the world" which was created in 2014 by four of our Master's students. The reason that made me choose this eproject is because I am very interested in Arts and Music and I think they are basic subjects for our children so they help them develop their brain, attitude and feelings. Our partners did a good job two years ago. Here you have the link where you can check it: 

http://artsandmusicaroundtheworld.blogspot.com.es/

The first step for analysing the project was selecting the tool by which I would evaluate the project and I selected the "Evaluating Ebooks design" rubric because I consider that it gives you the keys of the exact elements you have to analyse. Thanks to this, it is easier to score since it is very clear what you are taking into account at every moment. The rubric is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4tYc2LUEOmadVk2M0tBcVlyR0E/view 

Finally I would like to introduce the tool I have used to explain my evaluation which is Biteslide. It was the first time I used it but I discovered a neat, colorful and at the same time intuitive tool. I easily understood how to use it and the final result is very beautiful and dynamic since the tool allows you to use many possibilities such as changing the background, fonts, pictures... Biteslide is a good discover and I think my evaluation is very clear and well developed through it. Here you have the link to my evaluation: https://www.biteslide.com/albums/view/ryntG5oKYUG

Hope you liked my first evaluation of an e-project and I hope you will all like it. Soon I will post you my own e-project trailer... You just have to wait a bit ;)

Thanks for reading me!

Organising my Resources

Hello everyone! I came here now to talk to you about Organising tools. As I have told you the last entry, I have participated in a bank of resources by using Pinterest with my mates and creating a board. Nevertheless I have decided to use another tool for organising my webpages different to Pinterest: Symbaloo. 

Why Symbaloo? My teachers taught me how to use the tool when I was in first grade at the University and I instantly liked it. I always taught it is a very visual tool, intuitive and neat And also very colorful so it can be used with our students and learn them how to create a bank of webpages useful for their suties. If you have curiosity and you want to take a look, here you have my CLIL webmix: 

http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/myclilresources  

You can also find other webmixes by using the search option, so you can create your own one but also benefit from the boards that other people have created and posted.

For all of you that do not know Symbaloo, it is an organising tool by which you can create webmixes. A webmix is a page with many cells in which you can create small images that are a link to a webpage. This images are called tiles and you can create your own tiles by adding a picture or letters or you can search for the tiles (I have done so for the social media tiles). In addition, you can classify the tiles and make groups so all the tiles about the same topic can be grouped and easily identified.

If you liked Symbaloo you can post a comment. Thanks!

A Bank of Common Knowledge: Pinterest

Good afternoon readers! Today I would like to explain you my first contact with a wide known social media: Pinterest. It is weird but I have never used this webpage until our TIC teacher told us it was a good idea for creating educative boards. I have heard about pinterest before, but I was not very sure of what the social media could offer for educational purposes. If you do not know Pinterest I recommend you to take a visit: www.pinterest.com

If you want to add me my account has my name: Mara Domínguez. Our teacher has created a board for all called "Open CLIL" in where all the partners that are taking the Master's are adding CLIL resources.

Pinterest offers you the possibility of creating boards, which are kind of pages in which you can add pines; links to pages, videos, pictures, resources... Moreover, Pinterest let you save all the pines other people have posted so you can have all the resources you like. You can create your own boards or ask for permission to be added to other boards.

Pinterest has resulted a very useful tool that I never taught it could be used for enriching my methodologies and techniques about CLIL. But do not worry if you would like to access to some of the resources, in the next entry I have included a Symbaloo link where you can find a resume of many pages.

Thanks for reading me and see you on Pinterest!

A Creative Commons License

Hello Everybody! I hope you liked my last entries, today I would like to talk you about the new Creative Commons button I have included on my blog (You can find it on the bottom part). After doing so I will like to share with you some reflections that made me take the decission of including it.

The license I have chosen for my blog was Creative Commons for many reasons that I would like to explain now.

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

The first thing that made me chose Creative Commons instead of any other tools is the fact that it is a very well-known license, respected by many people around the world so I could have the security that all my work is well protected. The first thing I had to decide was if I wanted my material to be of public domain or to have it with copyright. I prefer my materials to be public since we are all living in a world where communication is easier than ever and helping others is enriching our society. I would like teachers from around the world to see or use my material if they can find them useful. That’s why I have chosen Creative Commons, it is a way to show my work and at the same time allow other people to use it.

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

The first we must do with our students is to explain them what creative property means so they can understand at first what they are protecting. Once we have explained this, it is the time to give them examples so they can identify with people whose creative property was stolen by others without giving them proper credit. We can make an example in class, a simulation, so they can fully understand what it means. The best way of motivating them to use it is to try to make them aware of how important is creative property and that one day they could be the person whose property has been stolen.

I hope you liked my reflections!

Learning by Twittering

Hello! Did you ever hear about Twitter? It is one of the most powerful social media today and it is being used for many influent personalities, including teachers and other educational experts. My experience in learning by twittering started recently, but I'm finding it absolutely enrichment.

Do you want to follow me? Just add me: @maradominguezgo

Learning by twittering is relatively new for me but I have discovered it can be a really useful media for educational purposes. By twitter you can keep in touch with teachers from all the world and realise about many conferences, talks and programmes. I follow some educational accounts and also my peers accounts by which I also get so much information.

Since we are taking the Master's Degree we use a hastag for writing comments which is: #ictclil_urjc. There we comment about CLIL but not only about this, also about other approaches or interesting topics for Education.

Now I would like to show some examples of the educational tweets I've been posting through these days but you can see more by entering to my account.

Thanks for reading me and see you on Twitter!

My PLE and PLN for CLIL

Hello dear readers. Some of you may know what PLE and PLN mean, but just in case I will briefly explain what are these acronyms. PLE means Personal Learning Environment and it is every tool or source from which you take information about a topic, in my case CLIL. By the other side, PLN means Personal Learning Network and it refers to all the ways by which you share the knowledge you have obtained about the topic.

Picture taken from pixabay.com

As I told you my PLN and PLE have been created for CLIL, so first I will explain you what I found positive about the tool and then my previous experience with the approach.

My PLE and my PLN created with the tool Mindomo. Before starting to create the Mindmap I decided to write all the ideas I had about the topic on a paper so I could think over my CLIL experiences so far. Focusing on the tool before analysing my CLIL environment, I would say it was the first time I used the Mindomo but I found it very easy and intuitive. I sooner learned how to use it and I will choose it in the future for other possible Mindmaps.

https://www.mindomo.com/es/mindmap/b6b2c06930ea43fa9920ea4b17677662

Coming back to CLIL I will explain how I have acquired knowledge about CLIL:

-Where have you gained that knowledge? My first steps in CLIL started when I was studying my degree in the University so the people who taught me about CLIL were my teachers. Nowadays the Master's Degree I'm taking at the Rey Juan Carlos is being a high learning source . I keep my CLIL knowledge up by using many Internet tools such as Google, by which I can read and investigate all the new CLIL aspects and theories. Also using Youtube by which I've just watched a Kay Bentley video last week so I can learn about CLIL at every moment. All the tools I've included helped me to expand my knowledge about the approach.

-My CLIL connections are wide, even though my specific training about the approach is not as wide as I would like, I'm on it. My English level is not at a proficient level but I have the English Certificate in Advanced English by Cambridge so I'm an advanced user of the language. Anyway, all my peers through these years and also my job partners have contributed to expand mi CLIL environment and network a lot, not only my teachers or the instruction, as well as I contributed to expand theirs through many tools such as whatsapp, facebook, twitter...

-About organising information the main tool I use is Dropbox. By this page I use to share and post many information about CLIL lesson plans, activities, information and more with my job partners. Also my blog is going to be another tool for posting information about CLIL through the following months.

I would like to end up by saying that I have never though before about my Personal Learning Environment and Network untill this moment and I realised I had learned from more places than I expected. It is completely positive to see all the elements that helped you and that will contribute to extend your information and training on this method so important to our future.

Thank you for reading me.