Friday 10 February 2012

What would you look like as a super hero?

Answer ten questions and find out! This is me! I love it =)


Create your own at What would you look
Find other great ideas at The generator blog



Have fun!

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 5

Well, we reached Week 5! It's been 5 weeks of great learning and sharing!

In our Digital Tools for the Classroom group we worked on reading and writing this week. We read some articles on technology and education and our task was to choose one of them and explore several tools to summarize the article and use our summary to write a newspaper page, a magazine cover, a brochure, a newsletter or a booklet. You can read the article I chose here.

These are some of the tools I tried:

ReadWriteThink
It's a great page for kids to create simple newspapers, flyers and brochures. I created a newspaper page (which looks rather childish I must say =), the problem was that I didn't find the way to upload a picture; apparently you are supposed to actually stick a picture once you print it.


Fodey
This an amazing page! You can create a newspaper (which actually looks like an old one) and other fun things like talking flowers or tomatoes. Unfortunately, the image of my newspaper wouldn't download, but it's a tool worth trying!

Big Huge Labs
I also loved this tool. It's great to make posters and magazine covers. This is the magazine cover I created with the information from my summary.



The last step was to publish an e-book, using epubbud. I haven't had time to do it so far but I promise I'll give it a try soon! Sounds like a great idea for a classroom project!


In our Digital Storytelling for kids group we had to choose one of the tools we'd tried before and prepare a presentation on one person we admire. I loved doing it, looking for the pictures and thinking of the text. The most difficult part was to actually choose the person! Finally, I decided on Borges, he's one of my favourite authors in Spanish (just one of the many writers I admire, that's why it was so difficult!).

Jorge L. Borges by Barbara on PhotoPeach


Well, I guess that's the end of the journey. It's been an amazing experience!!! I hope you find the resources I mentioned as cool as I did (all these are included in my scoops, on the right-hand column of this blog)! And remember EVO is held every year, starting the second week in January. I highly recommend the ride!


Thanks a lot to all the moderators, who have worked so hard, 
and to all my co-participants for sharing this experience with me!

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Sharing the EVO experience - Week 3

I just loved being part of EVO this week! I discovered tons of interesting tools to make animated videos and work on listening-comprehension. Have a look!



Week 3 at Digital Storytelling for kids


This week we explored some tools to make video stories for children. After a great introduction to the topic by Dave Dodgson, we had a look at some essential tools, like Animoto and Photopeach, and then we plunged into animation. The moderators suggested three tools, which participants used to create some pretty impressive videos!

Go animate
Domo
Dvolver

This is a video my ten-year-old daughter created in just five minutes. She was thrilled!



Also, have a look at these great videos by some of my fellow participants!



Week 3 at Digital Tools for the Classroom


We worked on listening-comprehension this week. The moderators organized a fantastic "Listening Treasure Hunt" in which we had 30 minutes to explore 12 amazing websites and then choose at least two of them to create a lesson plan. The time was short, so I must admit I "cheated" and spent a lot more on each tool, really enjoying them! 

Movie segments to assess grammar goals
This is a very interesting site which I've used before (actually this blog's been in my blogroll for a while). You can find short sections taken from well-known movies and exercises to work on grammar. It's an incredibly job carried out by Claudio Azevedo, the blogger behind it.

Smories
Stories for children told by children. Great idea! The only problem I found is that, while the stories are intended for children, kids in Argentina rarely reach the level of English to understand them (except for bilingual school students).

10 questions
A selection of reader-submitted questions on Time.com serves as a basis for a candid interview with major entertainers, business leaders and other influential personalities from around  the world. Really great authentic input!

Listen and write
A dictation site organized by level. Great source for listening material.

Am New York
A sample of speakers from New York talking about their lives and thoughts. Great to work on accents.

Backbone
Pretty much along the lines of AM New York but with speakers of British English.

Teaching with TED
This is an awsome wiki with tons of ideas to use TED in the classroom. Although I've used TED many times, I didn't know this site. Very useful!

Wordia
Wordia is a site where you can search for specific words and find videos related to the topic of your interest. Some of the topics also include educational games.



Hope you enjoy going through all these 
great resources as much as I did!