Createch-ing

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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...

Last week we started with our evaluations ( it seems unreal but report cards are coming sooner than we think...) . One of our evaluations for Spanish was done using the iPad app "Showme" . Students first wrote in their notebooks six sentences using the verbs "ser" and "estar" and after they were corrected, they created a recording using pictures , their voice and also writing them on the screen. This technique known as "screen casting" is one of my favorite for content creation in a second language. It motivates the most reluctant writers to write well, because otherwise they are not able to go on the iPads... They used their creativity to the max, they were engaged and also they were collaborating to create their productions. And of course they're more knowledgeable about the difference in use of the verbs "ser" and "estar" in Spanish.  What more can I ask from one activity? Students using "showme" to demons...

CHICOS! Nuestra clase ha salido en la televisión de España! Ha sido muy cortito y no salís todos pero estoy contenta de poder haber compartido con mi país como trabajamos en Canada, mis alumnos, mi aula y mi escuela. I am thrilled to be able to see you on tv. I hope you enjoy it. http://www.antena3.com/programas/ciudadanos/momentos/cmo-hacen-pases-dnde-presumen-sistema-educacin_2013100800090.html