Silvana's Box

Hello guys! I can say that I'm finishing my Master in Bilingual Education (I still have tasks and exams but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. LOL). Definitely, I'm not sad but to be honest I have mixed feelings because our ICT adventure  #ictclil_urjc  is about to finish and I don't want to! I started to create "My Final Artifact" with Genial.ly   but soon I realized that I couldn't add music or voice records. So, I had to start again. My final choice was  Powtoon  because it gave me the possibility to create a video by using images of  "Miss Smurfette"   and adding pieces of my favourite songs in every slide. I also added comments expressing my feelings regarding to every tool that we worked with during this adventure (nice and funny comments mates!). Honestly, I spent one day creating my artifact with Powtoon but I cannot regret anything, I really love the final outcome!. Powtoon has an ample amount of  backgrounds, tem

Hello guys! How are you? I'm so happy because I had the opportunity to see one of my teachers doing a great Webinar for the University of Barcelona . The webinar was called   "Mobile Learning and Digital Competence for Education" . In this webinar, Mª. Jesús García San Martín spoke about why the Digital Competence is vital for teachers and students.   Digital Competence is essential for learning, work and active participation in society. In other words, it refers to the confidential and critial usage of the full range of digital technologies for information, communication and basic problem-solving in all aspects of our lives. This sounds simple but to be honest, we don't  have a good level of Digital Competence. Online Learning  has not only one definition but it includes learning with the assitance of the Internet and a personal computer. So, Online Learning brings technology and social media together into a learning enviroment that allows for

Hello guys, I know in one of my latest posts , I told you a secret regarding to the final outcome of the Chroma Project😉 but before watching "Channel 4: The News" lets talk a little bit about the video production process. Last thrusday, we were really happy because all of the students of the Master in Bilingualism visited the "Future Classroom Lab" and it was a great and enriching experience for us. We were in the Future Classroom Lab ! Can you believe it? 😎 We were able to develop our Chroma Project there and even if we had to record some scenes twice or three times (now we are proficiency reporters) we did a great job. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the editor in this awesome team, my dear friend Soraya.  She had the patience to edit and tune the video. So, Soraya you are a star! She cut the video and she used the tool  iMovie  to mix the clips with the music and the backgrounds. The backgrounds came from  Pixabay   (we alway

Hello guys! How are you today? I'm so happy because I will be able to share with you a story wich is really special to me.😍😍😍 As all of us know, that there are many kind of stories: stories can be sad, stories can be funny, stories can have a happy ending...stories can help us to change our lives, etc. There are motivational stories, stories that make us stronger and stories that encourage us. As I said before, today I will share with you one of the most special stories of my life thanks to "#twima8" . "Twima" means The World is My Audience and through this  Flipgrid   I recorded my story and opened my heart while I was remembering the best year of my youth. My experience using this tool was really good because I could speak a little more about me and I could also watch other teachers' and students' stories. The tool is also pretty intuitive and easily allows you to answer to other stories. I genuinely enjoyed the experience bec

Hey there! Today I want to talk about how to use videos with Educational Purposes. There are many benefits of  "Using Videos in Education " as shown in several decades of research: Facilitating Thinking and problem-solving. Assisting with mastery learning. Inspiring and engaging students. Learning resources for the future. Enhanced learning experience. Enhanced team working and communication skills. Deeper learning of the topics. What does it mean "To Flip the Class" ? The Flipped Classroom is a blended learning strategy with the aim to improve students' engagement and outcomes. It's key purpose is to provide a greater focus on students' application of conceptual knowledge rather than straight transfer of information. So, my fabulous team and I decided to start a new project based on "The Flipped Classroom Strategy" and we though about an attractive topic:  "The News".  In our project every membe

Hello folks! I've been away for a while! I enjoyed the Spring Break but finally I'm back!  In this new entry , I want to show you an astonishing resource for our CLIL Lessons : Podcasting !!! Podcasting in the classroom is the latest trend because it stimulates learning through creative means. Some of the benefits are : Creative learning. Learning on the go, with podcasting learning is no longer a sedentary activity. We can have an online archive of lessons. Easy an accessible. One of my collegues and myself decided to create a new project based on podcasting. The first step to create a project is to think about an attractive topic and also t o think about a trending name. The name of our project is   " Book Race!"   and its main aim is to promote reading not only in the classroom but also outside the school.  But before starting any project we have to  adapt it  according to the age of the pupils and also make sure about the sudents' saf

Hi folks! Are you ready for the Spring Break?  I'm sure you are!. But before our holidays start, I want to speak about an awesome resource for the classrooms and very useful for the students. It's name is "Infographic" . An Infographic is a visual representation of information and data. By combining elements of text image, chart and diagram. It's an effective tool to present data an explain complex issues for better understanding. Some of the benefits of using Infographics are:  - Infographics are more "eye-catching". - Infographics help to connect with the audience. - Infographics allow us to be more creative. - Infographics create context. I decided to design my first Infographic using  Canva . This poster was created in order to help students to express their emotions and feelings. It's intended for first graders and the topic of the English Lesson is "Emotions" .  Emotions are something that people ex

Mindmaps are diagrams used to represent and outline information . It's a dynamic graphic technique we can use to translate what's in our mind into a visual picture. Since mind mapping works like the brain does it allows us to organize and understand the information faster and better. Furthermore, mind mapping enables us to sort through different details a recognize relationships among these details. In this entry, I am going to speak about my experience using  Creately .  First of all, I decided to develop a Geography Project intended for 6º graders. After putting in order my ideas, I arrived to the conclusion that it would be awesome to use a Mind Map   in order to explain to my students the aims of the project and it's procedures. The project is based on the topic  "The 7 New Wonders of the World" and the students have to work in different teams and each team is going to make a 3D Display and they will present their displays in the classroom. By using t

Hey yaaa mates! You right? It's always a pleasure to share my resources and discoveries with you. In this entry, I will speak about Comics as Educational Resources in the classrooms.  In my opinion,  Comics are useful in the classroom due to three main reasons. The first one, is " Engagement" , students can create characters for their own comics and readers follow a story so we can see a real reading engagement . The second reason is "Efficiency"  , because it gives a lot of information in a short story and in a short period of time. Last but not least, "Effectiveness" is also important because with Comics students not only learn the material faster, they are also learning contents and values better. I used   Storyboard That   for my first creation. I chose this tool because is easy to use and suitable for the students to work in our classroom' projects and they can share and personalize their presentations with the whole class. Of c

Exploration and creation are good, aren't they? Today, I want to talk about a site that I've discovered just one week ago, its name is  Genially . I discovered Genially when I was thinking to make a presentation for my Second Grade students'. I wanted to keep their attention and innovate a little bit more in the Science Classroom   .So, I decided to find and use new tools in order to make a different presentation instead of using the common presentations made by using  Power Point . The topic that I developed it is mainly focused on "Vertebrates" . I created an account in just a few minutes and  I was there exploring Genially .  I realised that  is an easy-to-use and free web tool used to create interactive visual content and this content can be used to enhance websites/blogs or as communication tool ( i.e. to make presentations, reports, posters, guides , etc . ). It also gave the ability to integrate many different types of third-party content suc

Today let's talk about Content Curation. So,what is Content Curation ? Content Curation is the act of discovering and presenting digital content related to a specific subject matter. In other words, it's an awesome resource for teachers and students because it's a time-saver. Through Content Curation we can find and share just the valuable content with our colleagues and with our students. So... How teachers can use Content Curation Tools in their CLIL Lessons? I opened "My cool CLIL Bank of Useful Resources" using Pinterest  which I would like to share with you . This is a Bank of Common Knowledge. I decided to create some different boards which in my opinion are really helpful for our CLIL classrooms. The "pinboards" that I created are: Science Projects , Literacy , Music , Photography for kids , Literature , Social Science and P.E. All the boards have some interest activities, posters, vocabulary, displays and projects that can be usefu

Hi guys!           Today let's talk about how to take advantage of banks of common pictures in our CLIL' Lessons. I chose three pictures to develop a topic related to "Puppets" 😃😃😃 . For example: In Literacy , we can practice the grammar structure "Have you ever..."   " Have you ever played with puppets?" "Have you ever seen a play perfomance?" "Have you ever created your own puppet?" . So, I found some funny pictures in a bank of common pictures in order to design my own flashcards to rehearse the vocabulary of this unit. Also, I thought that it would be nice to link the Puppets' Topic with other subjects such Arts  developing a small performance with a little help of the Music Teacher. We can prepare some funny dialogues and songs in which the whole group of students can participate....it sounds like a plan, isn't it? Pictures from  https://pixabay.com/es/  Picture by Gellinger .  CC0 Creative Com

Hello guys!!! Lets talk about an useful resourced called "Learning Journals" . Learning Journals are collections of notes, thoughts , observations and resources over a period of time. The aim of a Learning Journal is to improve our learning through the process of writing and thinking about learning experiences inviting the reader to take an active role in order to create new resources, get new and better ideas and to share useful information. Why is useful to use a Learning Journal? - Because they provide us a picture of our growing and understanding of a subject or experience. - They help us to  demonstrate how our learning is developing. - They allow us to record our thoughts and ideas throughout our experiences of learning. - Learning journals also help us to reflect our teaching and learning process. - They allow us to communicate our feelings and our thinking process. - Last but not least, Learning Journals help us to teach and share information

Today let's talk about creating avatars. I decided to create my own avatar using "Voki" . First of all, I registered myself following just a few simple steps: writing my email, choosing a password and then activating my user. Once I finished the registration process I choose a character for my avatar and I change some features such the color of her skin, the length of her hair and also I put some ornaments to my avatar such glasses and then I changed her clothes. After I've tuned my artifact, I recorded a short welcome message with my voice. Finally, I added a wallpaper related to the character that I've created. So, I chose a picture from the "Banco de Imagenes y Sonidos"   and I couldn't believe because now I have a second Me! And the result was absolutely brilliant!!! Nickname: Sil. Gender: Female. Occupation: English Teacher. Age: I am in my 20's Languages: Spanish, fluent in English and Italian. Currently improving my Portu