The final exam is coming!

Hi everyone!

Next week, I'm going to sit for ECO II final exam, together with one of my classmates, Melisa.
I feel rather nervous because we have to make a presentation called Pecha Kucha (20 slides in 20 seconds) including images.

This short video will help you clear your ideas about Pecha Kucha!

I'm already feeling nervous with any final exam, but I can't cope with nerves thinking about this ECO II exam, I need to manage time to say everything in 20 slides and avoid overlapping my voice to that of my mate. Also, memory is a key factor to be coherent when saying the texts of the slides, That's why we have been rehearsing together with Melisa so as to feel more relaxed, anyway, I will try to enjoy this experience!

Goodbye!

The importance of Blended Learning.

Hi everyone! 

Nowadays, we are getting used to hear about this new term in the field of learning and teaching... but What is Blended Learning? Let's just say it's the mixture between online and in-person learning experiences when teaching students. Students might attend a class taught by a teacher in a traditional classroom setting or independently completing online tasks and working at home, both experiences would parallel and complememt each other. 

Here I attach a short video showing some important aspects of Blended Learning, of course, there are many others, always taking into account the context in which we are teaching. 

During this year, we have learnt a lot about including technology in the classroom, and the benefits we can find for our students' learning. Blended Learning goes beyond all we have seen and a key factor of this kind of learning is 'collaborative work', since teachers can ask students to do some research about a certain topic at home and then share it online or during the lesson, promoting interaction among peers to accomplish specific purposes. 

I strongly recommend teachers to do some research on this new field of teaching and generate online activities for students to complete at home. You can post your opinions about B-learning below. 

See you!! 

WEB 2.0 - Didactic Sequences

Hello!

Some time ago, our ECO II teacher asked us to create an imaginary didactic sequence including one or more web 2.0 tools. We organized the sequence around a central task and then we presented the outcomes to our classmates during a lesson, showing what we would ask our students to do. The grammatical contents to revise were Simple Present, there is/there are and has/have. The vocabulary was 'places in a city' and the functions to teach were describing a city, convincing, inviting.

My mates and I thought about including videos in the lessons, so we came up with the idea that students, in groups of 3, would have to create a video showing their imaginary favourite city. The aim of the video would be to convince their mates to go to that city by describing it. 
After researching into some web 2.0 resources, we found 'Stupeflix', an interesting tool to create videos using photos and adding special musical effects or songs. 

We started the lesson by showing students images of Santa 

Fe city and  describing some places, so as to activate 

squemata, they had a worksheet to match the corresponding 

pictures to the names of the places as they listened to us 

describing those places. We checked comprehension by 

asking questions, for example, Is there any bakery in Santa 

Fe?.
Then, we presented posters of places that are and are 

not present in Santa Fe and in pairs, students had to write 

sentences telling what places there are and there aren't in 

the city. The pair who wrote more sentences in 5 minutes 

was the winner of the competition. We checked by having 

the pairs reading their productions and asking their mates to 

say whether those sentences were correct in terms of grammar and meaning.

To finish the lesson and introduce the final task, we showed students a video about our own favourite city; a city we have created with all the places we like.We showed them our production on stupeflix while telling them about the city. Then, we asked them comprehension questions, for example: how many churches are there in our city?.We also asked them if they would go to our city, what they like/don’t like about our city. After that, we told them they would have to make a similar presentation but with their own imaginary favourite city. We asked them to make their city interesting so as to convince their partners to visit it since once presentations were over we would vote for the best city to go to.

Our city was called PARACITY, a city to spend our holidays, and this amazing resource allowed us to create a video using text and photos... you can try this tool www.stupeflix.com and tell me what do you think...

See you!