CONTENT CURATION TOOLS

We are teaching in the twenty-first century and our students must be prepared to face a modern society that changes at a very fast pace. One of the causes of these rapid changes is the use of new technologies. Although most of our students are already familiar with these technologies and are naturally interested in them, they need to be trained in order to improve their skills in the use of computers and different programmes. Furthermore, the information that we may find on the net these days is overwhelming, so we as teachers should learn how to filter, organize and curate it and teach our students to do the same.

In this lesson Mª.Jesús has showed us different tools to start curating content for our lesson. Here are some of the tools: Pinterest, Symbaloo, Pearltrees and List.ly.

I have started using Pinterest and I love it! There are millions of teachers sharing resources and ideas! This social platform is used as a means for people to save website content. Users can choose to share the content with other followers and/or look at what other people are saving from around the web. This app is highly recommended!

Here is my Natural Science board! But you can find more about my account by clicking on it. In my desk I have added some interesting resources to work in the the subjects of Natural and Social Sciences, Arts and Crafts and English.

 
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Image attribution for a CLIL lesson about light

Hi you all!

Today I would like to share with you what we’ve learnt with M.Jesús in class. We have learnt to respect copyrights and to identify where we have found images. We have also learnt how to cite the sources of the images that can be used.

This lesson was very useful for us as teachers, as we have to teach our students to be respectful with copyrights. They cannot use any images they find on the internet and use it in their own projects or assignments without giving due credit to the owner. We must teach them to cite, attribute and licence usable images. Digital citizenship implies the responsible use of online images or videos, among others.

There are two main advantages of using visuals in the classroom. The first is that visuals clarify the material being taught and the second is that visuals make learning more permanent. Seeing is a dominant sense from which most of our learning comes. So this tells us that the most effective way to clarify and bring understanding to what is being taught is to actually show the children.

M.Jesús asked us to propose a CLIL activity, and here it is mine. This activity will be used after a video presentation about ‘Reflection,’ ‘Refraction’ and ‘Dispersion’. Students will have to classify the following pictures into these three categories. 

Photograph by DasWortgewand. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Skitterphoto. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Dirty Opi. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Valeria Boltneva. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Stux.CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Berkanbicakhan. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Stevepb. CC0 Creative Commons

Photograph by Go_see. CC0 Creative Commons

These pictures were taken from ‘Pexels’ and ‘Pixabay’.

Students will do the classification individually. Then, in pairs, they will discuss possible answers (they will try to reach an agreement. To do so, they will use the functions and structures of agreeing, disagreeing and giving an opinion). Finally, students will share their answers with the rest of the class and the teacher will correct the exercise. This activity follows the following strategy: Think-Pair-Share.

I thought that using pictures for this topic, related with the light, was engaging as well as necessary for understanding.

After watching the video and classifying the pictures, students will know that:

The reflection of light is a phenomenon wherein beams of light strike an object and bounce off them, changing direction.

Light dispersion is an optical phenomenon wherein light is separated into colours when it passes through certain media.

The refraction of light is a phenomenon wherein beams of light change direction when they pass from one medium to another, such as from air to water.

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Let's start!

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY AVATAR

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

• Avatar's name: Captain Jason
• Age: 25
• Gender: Male
• Occupation: Pirate
• Interest and talents: travel, learn from others, and teach and help teachers around the world.

Today, I have posted my first entry in my blog! This blog is going to be used as a learning journal. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Lorena. I am studying a bilingual Master’s Degree in Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid) and our ICT teacher, Maria Jesús, has just taught us how to open a blog.

The first activity we had to do was to create an avatar. The activity seemed simple, but it wasn’t at all. Many apps weren’t free; others did not have very interesting avatars as they were too simple or couldn’t talk or move.

Finally, I found ‘Plotagon,’ a marvelous app that I recommend to everybody. Plotagon is fantastic because it lets you create cool avatars that move and talk with different emotions in many different settings. It also gives you the option of using subtitles. It is a free app and I find it very useful for educational purposes as students can create their own plots in English. It is great because students don’t need to record their voices; they just have to type the text. In this way, they can practice their listening skills by listening to their avatars (that can have different accents) and their writing skills. Teachers can also use avatars as teachers' helpers (as I did with this avatar) or to flip the classroom.

From my point of view, there are two drawbacks of using Plotagon. The first one is that a mobile phone is required to create the avatar . The second one is that when you want to share your video, an embedded  code is not generated.
Having said that, I am sure I will use this App many times.

I hope you find this post useful. If you liked it, don't forget to follow my blog!