Createch-ing

This year the CBE created an Office 365 environment for all the teachers and students. Different applications started to be available during the year: OneDrive, Sway and OneNote amongst others. As a Surface user, I already knew and used OneNote for personal purposes and soon I started to play around with it and discovered a myriad of possibilities for my lessons. I started to use it and soon it became an essential in my class, especially since I do not have a textbook for Mathematics or Spanish. From all the technological tools that I have used in my career, this one has been the most transforming. These are the main 3 reasons why I love it: You can create a Class Notebook for each of your classes. In each class you have, by default, a "Teacher Only Section",  a " Collaboration " section and a "Content" area ( shared with the students in that classroom), and a Notebook for every student. Each student Section has already these sections "Ha

This week I had planned to participate in the  #hourofcode with the school. I had everything organized but, boom! The Flu came in the way and we ended up doing two days instead of four. Two days were enough though to get a glimpse of the interest amongst students about coding and computer science. It turns out that the opportunities for jobs in computer science is not levelled with the amount of students taking computer science as a Career.  The hour of code is an event that tries to bring this our attention and encourages more presence of computer science in schools. Because, actually, everywhere we go and almost everything we do has a computer software behind. The need is huge and the possibilities are endless.  As a math teacher also, the connections with computer programming are tremendously strong. The designers behind the hour of code also did a great job to present it in a game-like way. For instance, in the Frozen tutorial, our first two math units this year in grade 7 got

Esta mañana he presentado en las jornadas de orientación para los profesores visitantes de Alberta hoy en Telus Science Park, Calgary. Ya no estoy en el programa de PPVV pero continuo trabajando en una ISA y colaborando con Alberta Education de vez en cuando. Animo a los nuevos profesores!

This week we have been practicing robotics in Room 10.  We first brainstormed what do we use robots for in everyday life. We discovered that robots are often used for dangerous or difficult tasks for humans.  We then  decided our project : we will make a map of Alberta's  Natural Regions and we will make our robot tour around some landmarks in our province.  We did a couple of challenges to practice and refresh our memory before our expert, Richard Gaskell , came to our class. We also learned decimals in class because we are going to need them to program our robots. Estimation has also been a handy strategy to figure out the # of rotations needed. Today we were doing an advanced challenge. The students drew some letters with tape on the floor and the robots had to trace them. It was not easy, that is for sure, it involved decimals, angles moving backwards... but there was lots of determination and engagement and the results started to appear just in time. It was so

My class  has been designing a Minecraft town garbage detector robot. The presentation will be on May 5th. I will be showing pictures of their creations.

We have finished our unit about India this week with an iPad activity.  After studying about India and its quality of life and guided by Srta.Palma, students created this beautiful hand art. It turned out much nicer than I thought initially, given the difficulty of the art.  I like to use iPads at the end of a learning unit as a recap or reflection of what they have been learning. In this case, we put everything together using the app "Popplet" that functions like a mind map. It is very easy to use, students just tap the screen twice to add a "popplet" ( box) and then write, draw or add a picture inside.  I introduced the terms "fact" and "opinion" to summarize the information they learnt about India and add their thoughts too. They wrote five or six sentences that had different facts and their opinions about India . Then they put it all together in a Popplet.  As a visual learner, I love this mind maps to summarize a learning un

Created with Padlet

In the middle of the frenetic report card period, I had an a-ha moment today and I just had to share it. Every end of the week I usually create a big paper chart with assignments due and students' names so that they can check them off when they are done. That is nothing new, I know, but here comes Evernote and it's magic checklists. I created a basic checklist with students' names and four basic tasks , that I change depending on what I am doing. Today was just one of those busy days with a trillion tasks to finish and that every student is at a different stage. One of those days that they come to you to ask what's next at least three times because they have to finish little activities that are done in minutes.  So I gathered them up, opened on of my class checklists on Evernote, changed the headings for my tasks at hand, and ask the students to make a checkmark every time they finished a task using my funny hand(which they love to play with). It was like magic words

I presented yesterday at SLIC Conference 2013 "iPads for bilingual education" in Canmore, Alberta. There was a lot of interest in the topic. It seems many schools are planning on purchasing iPads and teachers want to be prepared to know how to use them in a purposeful way.  This is a graphic that shows iPad content creation according to Blooms' Taxonomy. The creation would be the higher order thinking skill according to this classification.  All the stages are interconnected and according to the revised Bloom's taxonomy, they do not have to happen in a  determined order. But creation would be the most complex one. I advocate for the use of iPads as a tool, not as an end or as a repository of apps that substitutes teaching/learning time or that is understood as solely a game tool. I believe it is the task that generates the app, and not the other way round.We first need to think what do we want to do with our class, and then, think of the app that coul

Last week I tried using "Aurasma" in the iPads. Aurasma is an augmented reality app that uses a trigger image to show a 3d object, video or whatever you want to appear. My goal was to make a worksheet alive. As we work in a bilingual setting and we teach math in spanish, explanations are very visual but not all the students pick it up at the beginning. Some of them need further explanation, of course , whether it is their mother language or not. But I was thinking about homework and that moment when you are trying to recall an explanation but you do not remember exactly what the teacher said. And here is when the "virtual teacher" in a form of video appears when you put the iPad over the worksheet.  The application could seem very complicated , but in fact, it was easy to deal with since it guides you al l the time. You can create use one aura form the database, but I created my own one. I first did a video using "Doceri" explaining the

NUEVO CURSO, NUEVOS RETOS Hacía mucho tiempo que no escribía en el Blog, he estado haciendo algunos cambios y escribiendo en otros blogs. Este año he incorporado algunas técnicas para ir poco a poco , dejando el papel a un lado . Me he "evernotizado" y ahora voy haciendo todas mis lecciones en Blendspace ( antes Edcanvas) . Blendspace me parece un sitio perfecto para crear muros digitales donde guardar y compartir todos los recursos que se utilizan para un tema. He estado también probando varias apps para crear screencast en el iPad. Para los profesores, me gusta mucho Doceri. Para los alumnos, Educreations o Showme me parece mas fácil de utilizar, aunque estoy por ver cual permite compartir en nuestra wiki con mas facilidad. De momento ahí va un ejemplo de un screencast sobre el Redondeo con Doceri .

Yesterday , around 100 teachers of Spanish form Alberta gathered to share experiences in our schools and celebrate Spanish learning. I presented some of the things we do in class with our technology. Here is the link to the presentation  Creación de Contenidos Digitales . Melissa Valdés , our Spanish Program advisor was there also representing the Embassy of Spain and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Spain . You will have the opportunity to meet her in June when you receive your award for having completed the bilingual program in an ISA ( International Spanish Academy) . I have to tell you that the audience was surprised with the things you do in class ( ebooks, podcast, your wiki pages, the videos....everything!) and I am very proud of the hard work that you do every day to learn Spanish. So pat yourselves on the back! You are amazing!

Mi investigacion de la trucha arcoiris por Jessie by Jessie Jensen . grade 4, Sra Molina - read or download the free ebook online now from ePub Bud!

Mia investigacion sobre latrucha arcoiris Mia by Mia Calmusky - read or download the free ebook online now from ePub Bud!