Final reflection

In this entry, I am going to talk about the different things that we made during the second part of the subject New Technologies for Language Learning and I will give my opinion about them.

First of all, I am going to talk about the different webpages that we learnt to use in order to make quizzes in a more enjoyable and entertaining way for our students.
We learnt to use Quizizz and Kahoot!. 

Quizizz Logo

The first one, Quizizz, is a webpage where you can revise for exams by playing quizzes related to the topic. To play, the creator of the quiz has to give the players a code, which will be used once to play that quiz. In this site you can set different aspects of the quiz such as if you want to have a turn to answer the questions, if you want the questions to be mixed, if you want to show the answers, etc.

Kahoot! Logo

The second one, Kahoot!, is a webpage with the same function as Quizizz but with a different organisation of the contents of the site. The difference is that Kahoot! allows you to choose the way you are going to play: Player vs Player or Team vs Team. To play, it works as Quizizz, you must introduce a code that the creator of the quiz will give to you. You have to enter that code here.

The one that I liked the most was Kahoot! because I think that its webpage is organised in a way that our students will understand easily how it works and also the appearance of the site is quite colourful what motivates and attracts them more. In addition, for me was easier to work with Kahoot! than with Quizizz.

Talking now about PLE and VLE, as I have written in the previous

entry, PLE stands for Personal Learning Environment, and it refers to all the tools, services and connections that we use to achieve different goals related to competence development. Its main advantage is to make our students aware of their own learning process; and VLE stands for Virtual Learning Environment, and it refers to a virtual space that was designed to develop different ways of learning between the people who is allowed to enter the virtual space.

In the next image you would be able to see my Final PLE, the one that I have updated with some new applications that I did not use before and deleting other that I do not use anymore.

Final PLE

Comparing it to the previous one, you can see that the background has changed into a colourful one. Another change, is that the application related to Pokemon Go has been deleted because of disuse. On the contrary, I have added some more applications that are Apple Store, Amazon, Ali Express, Ebay, Play Station and Game.

The Apple Store application was added because now that I have learnt to use an Iphone 6S, I use it daily.

Amazon, Ali Express, Ebay and Game were added because I started to buy online and this Christmas I have learnt to use this applications to purchase things.

Play Station was added because this Christmas I played that console and I also joined its community of players.

Moreover, in this second part of the subject, we have learnt to create podcasts. First of all, we create an account in the website Podomatic, where we were able to upload our own recordings as podcasts.
In my opinion, this webpage is quite simple, I mean, it is easy to understand and to look for podcasts that I really think that it would be a good resource to use in the classroom with the students because you can upload different types of podcast: songs, conferences, a discussion, stories, etc.
If you click here, you would be directed to the podcast that I have created, titled Letter of goodbye.

Podomatic Logo

Another website that we learnt to use was Edmodo. This page is a free educational, social and technological platform that allows the communication between students and teachers in a private environment, created for a specific educational purposes.
In Edmodo, each of use have created a group and as if we were teachers, we have set a subject and a topic related to it. To work with that topic, we have uploaded different resources that our students might use: a power point, a PDF document, a video and some pictures. 
In addition, we have set two different assignments that our students have to do and two different types of tests.
In my case, the topic that I have chosen was Animals in a classroom for second year of Primary Education. To set the contents, the activities and the tests, I have based my work in the Spanish Primary Education Curriculum  (LOMCE,2013).
If you click here, you would be able to join my group and see all the resources and activities that I have created.

Edmodo Logo

Furthermore, in one of the last classes of the subject, we used Microsoft Excel. 
Microsoft Excel is a tool that allows you to organise data in a spreadsheet. With this programme, your posibilites go from simple calculations to complex operations. Its use can be difficult at first sight because it has a lot of commands that you are able to use, but when you understand the basics, it turns out to be quite easy to use.

Microsoft Excel Logo

If you click here, you would be redirected to a Microsoft Excel in Google Drive which contains an evaluation of some students.
As I have explained, at first, I find it difficult to use this tool, but when I understood some of its basic functions, I started to comprehend how Microsoft Excel works. I think that this tool is very useful in the Education area because it helps you to organise data of all kind. Also, you can use it to create graphics and maths activities.



To conclude, I would say that with all the different websites that we have seen during all the subject, we are quite prepared to introduce ICT even more in our Primary Education classes.
I strongly believe that these are the first steps  to a better Education, because nowadays is quite strange to find a class without a computer or a IWB so this means that ICT are so included in our schools, and if we want it or not, new technologies are the future of our world.
As I have said before, the first steps to a better education have been made but there is still a long way to continue.

To achieve this goal, all the educational community should work in the same direction, taking into account, not only technological advances, but also the difficulties of our students, their opinion, their interests, etc., and everything that is necessary to make them critical an analytical people in order to create a better society.

Reflection

In this entry, I will show my opinion about the contents that we have seen in the first part of the subject New Technologies for Language Learning.

First of all, we learnt to redirect all the messages we could receive in our university platform (MiAulario) to an usual account we use. This was quite surprising because after use this platform since our first course in the university, none of us or most of us, didn't know that we could do that or and even how to do it.

Coggle Logo

Secondly, we talked about the digital competence, what it is and which are its dimensions (information, communication, content creation, safety and problem solving). Our next task was to made a mind map about this competence, specially one dimension of it. My group and I made our presentation about the information dimension and to show to the rest of the class what we have done, we used Coggle.

In my opinion, Coggle is a tool which we can use to make mind maps, but the only problem that I found, is that is better to use specific words or concepts with this tool because it is quite simple.

About the digitial competence, I think that this competence should have more importance than the one it has now because nowadays  everything goes online (information, social relationships, entertainment, etc.)

On the next session, we created a wiki. First, we created our own wiki and then we joined to the one of our professor. Moreover, each group wrote an entrance in the teacher's wiki about the advantages and disadvantages of the tool that we have used to made our mind map, in our case, Coggle.

From my point of view, this session was quite chaotic because of the problems we had with the webpage. All the groups were uploading their work as the same time so this make the webpage fail.

The next thing we learnt, was about PLE and VLE. PLE stands for Personal Learning Environment, and it refers to all the tools, services and connections that we use to achieve different goals related to competence development. Its main advantage is to make our students aware of their own learning process.

On the other hand, VLE stands for Virtual Learning Environment, and it refers to a virtual space that was designed to develop different ways of learning between the people who is allowed to enter the virtual space.

On the next image one could see my initial PLE. It is composed by different apps that I usually use on my daily life.

Initial PLE

In addition, in this first part of the subject, we have learnt to create different activities for our students with Hot Potatoes and Quizlet.

            Hot Potatoes Logo                                                                              Quizlet Logo

 Hot Potatoes is a tool that allows you to create different types of interactive activities: multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill.

Quizlet is a webpage where students can learn by playing quizzes and they can also test themselves.

In my opinion, both are useful tools that teachers can use in their classroom to make different activities and tests that may motivate learners because they include new technologies in their learning process. The one that I like the most was Quizlet because it has more interactive way of learning. In other words, it has games that make the children think that they are playing and not doing an exercise to learn, this is learning by playing.
If you click here, you would be redirected to a document in Google Drive that you can download and check a Hot Potatoe created by me. It was created for a first Primary Education classroom with the human body topic.
If you click here, you would be redirected to a Quizlet created by me for a first Primary Education classroom with the human body topic.


Finally, we made a digital story with Story Jumper. This webpage allows you to create a digital "book" with your own characters and scenes.Moreover you can choose your front and back cover and you can dedicate it if you want to.

Story Jumper Logo

If you click here, you would be redirected to a story titled "Two little fishes" that I have created with this webpage, Story Jumper.

I personally think that this website is a very motivating tool to make our students develop their imagination and creativity while learning and playing, creating their own stories because it is very easy to work with. I really like it and I would use it when teaching.

To conclude, I would say that all this websites that we have seen are useful, for us as students and as a teachers. The webpage that I liked the most as a student was Symbaloo because this site help you to organise all the sites that you visit and use daily in a unique webpage. As a teacher, I liked the most Story Jumper because, as I have said before, it helps to develop our students imagination and creativity by making them the authors of their own "books". In addition, it is easy to work with, so it can be used in all Primary Education levels.