My predictions for the future

 Hello everyone!

Okay so I see we're approaching the end of the semester. 

For today's topic we are describing how we think our future class will be. If I start to work in my profession in the future I want to begin will early teens, like 8th or 9th graders. I want them to enjoy my class and have fun on it. With the techno tools that we have learned I want to make fund presentations and projects with them. 

After creating that useful experience in teaching I want to work also with high school students. The English language class will be fun for them. Many teens get bored in classes but I don't want them to get bored. The books will be worked in the best ways possible, not just reading and doing the exercises but creating a warm atmosphere in class. I also like to have a foreign language lab in the school where I'm going to work. In this way the students will have the possibility to do listening activities and put in practice what they will learn from classes. 

I like to have cooperative students, but there may be that kind of student that does not want to learn a foreign language or simply just does not like it. For these students I like to prepare some activities that will encourage them hard work and make them at least prepare for the class. Foreign language is more like a passion, but also a necessity nowadays. I want them to know this.

Most of the classes I'd like to start with useful presentations, or short videos related to the topic. So, they develop the listening & speaking skills, which for me are very important in the learning process of a foreign language. 

Now that you are a little familiar with my expectations for my class, I wanna show some expectations for me as a good teacher. This has always been my dream job and I'd always "use" my brother and sister as my students (don't laugh about this).

I like my students to trust me. I believe I've always had good communication skills and I value this because I want my students to feel free and talk with me freely. I don't want to be that dull teacher that just comes to class, gives the lesson and leaves. 

Patience! Most of the time you see me very calm and patient, and I know that working with students, especially teens, needs a lot of nerve. I want to stay like this in my class and not be "provoked" let's say by my students. The beginning is the hardest and for sure it needs a lot of patience. 

Another skill that I have and I wanna use the most is the organisation skill. My class will be the most organized, always on time and prepared. I like to think the day before what I will present for the next class, so I can be organized and prepared for the class. 

In conclusion, for me is very important to have a class that will have fun with me and will be collaborative. I also want to put in practice the skills that I already have and why not to learn new skills that will be useful for me.

I hope you like it and see you in the next class!

Outline of a class lesson

 Hi everyone! Welcome to the next blog!

In today's blog I want to talk about my experience on Widgets. The gadget I used is BookWidgets because the other platform that the teacher had suggested I couldn't access. 

First I want to paste the link of the outline I have made, supposing i will explain an English literature class. 

https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/WZIulo0D-iQAE6bG7vAAAA/FCGRMFV/outline-of-a-cl?teacher_id=5109632967114752

https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/t:O3lbX2i9BlNi9qSX9dO-YI2ATYXzK3rgTBuBcrLv509GQ0dSTUZW

Second, as for my experience I found it quite  easy to work with. BookWidgets was an easy platform to work with. At first as with every new thing that we access in this subject, I thought it would be hard and not understandable. 

Although, the platform made it very easy for me. It showed a how-to-start tutorial on how to use it. After watching the tutorial  I started to work on the  outline for which I shared the link. Doing the outline was easy, you just have to be prepared for what you are going to share with your students and let the platform do the rest. 

Out there are thousands of useful tools teachers world wide can use to make their classes more interesting and fun. Below I want to share some tools teachers can use and which are free.

Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers 

1. amCharts Visual Editor This editor allows you to use amCharts as a web service. This means that all you need to do is to configure the chart and paste the generated HTML code to your HTML page.
2. ChartsBin Create your own interactive map. It's free for now.
3. DipityCreate an interactive, visually engaging timeline in minutes. Use dynamic visualization tools to display photos, videos, news and blogs in chronological order.
4. Easel.ly Create and share visual ideas online. Vhemes are visual themes. Drag and drop a vheme onto your canvas for easy creation of your visual idea!
5. Gapminder Gapminder is used in classrooms around the world to build a fact-based world view.
6. Gliffy Gliffy.com is a free web-based diagram editor. Create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs and other drawings online.

Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers

1. OdiogoOdiogo's media-shifting technology expands the reach of your content: It transforms news sites and blog posts into high fidelity, near human quality audio files ready to download and play anywhere, anytime, on any device.
2. PediaPhonLearning during jogging and driving! E-learning and m-learning with MP3 players and mobile phones! A podcast and a winamp play list will be generated too. MP3 files, play lists and podcast automatically generated from Wikipedia! Let your computer read out the Wikipedia for you!
3. PowerTalkPowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.
4. QR voiceQR Code allows users to converts text-to-speech, generates QR Code for speech URL and Simplifies share text-to-speech files.

Free Podcast Tools For Teachers

1. PodbeanPodbean.com is an easy and powerful way to start podcasting. Easy to publish your podcast in 3 steps. No tech to learn. Powerful promoting tools, iTunes Preview, Statistics. Wonderful income chances with ads, paid subscriptions.
2. PodOmaticRecord video and audio podcasts. Receive in-line calls from listeners.
3. SoundCloudShare Your Sounds. Capture a voice, moment or music in seconds or upload audio you’ve already created. Everyone has sounds to share. Now you can share yours. Publish to social networks or embed your sounds on your site.
4. StudioRackStudioRack is a modular live audio and video production system for the Windows O.S., intended for the more demanding podcaster, audio and video producers, DJ’s, radio stations, tv stations etc.

Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers

1. addpollThe easiest way to create polls, surveys and html forms... on the web. Find out why we're the greatest online survey and poll software in the world with integrated form builder.
2. AnswerGardenAnswerGarden is a new minimalistic feedback tool. Use it as a tool for online brainstorming or embed it on your website or blog as a poll or guestbook.
3. Google Forms (part of Google Drive)Collect RSVPs, run a survey, or quickly create a team roster with a simple online form. Then check out the results, neatly organized in a spreadsheet.
4. Surveys EngineSurveys Engine is lightwheight online surveys server software. This tool enables you create various surveys and questionaires, from small and simple to large and complex. Surveys are hosted in our site so you and survey respondents don't need any software or server, just Internet browser.
5. SurvsCreate online surveys with simplicity and elegance. Survs lets you create, distribute, and analyze online surveys and questionnaires with a friendly interface and powerful features. Survs gives you everything you need to gather feedback.
6. Vizzual FormsVizzualforms is a web based service that will let you create forms and surveys, publish them online and see the results!
7. Web Form FactoryWeb Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. By generating the backend code for you, WFF saves you time... time you could spend doing more interesting stuff.

Free Testing and Quizzing Tool For Teachers

1. ClassMarkerClassMarker's secure, professional web-based testing service is an easy-to-use, customizable online test maker for business, training & educational assessment with tests and quizzes graded instantly - saving hours of paperwork!
2. ClassToolsCreate free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!
3. Easy Test MakerEasyTestMaker is a free online test generator to help you create your tests. You can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections.
4. Hot Potatoes You can choose from the following six types of questions to create your interactive quiz: crossword, multiple-choice, short-answer, gap-fill, matching/ordering and jumbled-sentence.
5. Quiz RevolutionMake Free Facebook Quizzes and Free Online Quizzes. Interactive Multimedia Quizzes That Can Be Embedded On Any Site.
6. YacapacaIf you are a teacher you can use 15,000 quizzes in every subject or you can create quizzes, surveys, tests, eportfolios and more.

There are many more helpful tools for teachers everywhere. Being a teacher has its difficulties, but with the help of technology there are a million ways to make it easier.

Thank you!!! ☺

Questions to answer

 Hello everyone

Welcome to the new post for this week. 

As we already know we have to answer two questions regarding technology tools we can use in our future classes. 

1. What technology tools are important for your students to know how to use? 

2. What technology tools will best enhance your students project work and presentation of the results? 

So as for the first question, one of the tools I consider important is blog. It is a fun and interesting way to keep in control your students wile they learb new things and prepare for the assignments. Differently from the others, I was kind of familiar with using blogs for assignments and ever since my first contact I wanted to include it as a way of helping me teach in my class. Different blog addressees include Blogger, Tumbrl, WordPress etc. Some of them are really familiar to me because I use them as a social network to keep contact with my followers. It is easy to control if one of your students has posted the assignment on time, or if they have enough creativity in their work and so on. Also it is kind of fun. You can post writings, videos, articles, different links, everything that is necessary for the topic. 

Another important tool for me is Google+ Hangout. You can have virtual meetings with your students and also communicate easily. Multiple participants can interact with each other and with the teacher also share their assigned works, videos etc. You can trach attendance, can check if every homework is done and hand in in time and so on. Especially in times like this, it is a very helpful way to keep doing your work but also protecting yourselves. 

I did a research of mine in the most used technology tools in 2020 and one of those that liked me was trello.

Trello

Technology integration requires multiple teams and people to coordinate and collaborate across a district on various initiatives and projects. Trello is a classroom technology tool that has revolutionized project management and communication and can be applied directly to education. The app allows you to create boards, cards, and tasks that solidify timelines and communication plans, allowing you to assign specific tasks to people in your district. Not only will it help you communicate more effectively, but it will also save time.

If it is going to be necessary I would use one of these apps and the one that I like mos is blog. It's just my favourite but it doesn't mean the all the other million tools that exist out there are not important or necessary. Technology is always advancing so with the development maybe my preferences will develop too.  

As for the second question, I sad with technology changing the helpful tools also change and improve. I would dissociate prezi as one important and easily usable tool. It is great for the students to free their imagination and create everything they like. 

Also in another research of mine for best presentation tools in 2021 that can be used I found out seven tools.

Google Slides for collaborating on presentations

Canva for a free presentation app

Ludus for creative presentations

Beautiful.ai for AI-powered presentations

Prezi for non-linear, conversational presentations

Powtoon for video presentations

Genially for interactive, presenter-less presentations

PowerPoint for Microsoft users

To conclude, technology will always be around us so introducing it to our students helps both sides reach their goals. The development counties and it will bring more and more inovative tools for us to use. Until then, the abovementioned as my favourite tools, I would love to include in my classroom in the near future.

Cooperative Learning

 

In human societies the individuals who are most likely to survive are those who are best enabled to do so by their group. 

Reading different articles and doing some research, I discovered that the focus of most teachers is in relating the students with the materials they give. Until mid sixties cooperative learning was unknown or just ignored by the teachers. This is such a pity now that I know how many benefits has cooperative learning in students

Cooperation is working together to accomplish shared goals.  Within cooperative situations, individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to themselves and beneficial to all other group members. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.

In cooperative learning, students work together in small groups to complete a structured task or goal.

Types Of Cooperative Learning

1. Formal Cooperative Learning

2. Informal Cooperative Learning

3. Cooperative Base Groups

4. Integrated Use Of All Three Types Of Cooperative Learning

One example of cooperative learning

Jigsaw

An example of a very popular cooperative learning activity that teachers use is jigsaw, where each student is required to research one section of the material and then teach it to the other members of the group. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece or section is put together at the end, and only then does the entire picture make sense.

For example, imagine you've been placed in a group that has been tasked with researching the life of a famous scientist. In jigsaw, you and the members of your group would each be responsible for researching certain periods of his life. Let's say there are four members of your group. You are responsible for researching his childhood, and the other members of your group are responsible for other periods of his life. When you are finished with your individual research, you report what you've learned to the other members of your group. Once everyone is finished with their reports, you have a complete picture of his entire life.

In this way, jigsaw activities are specifically structured so that the only access any member has to all of the information is through the work of other members. So, if you don't listen to someone in your group, you won't know the information and won't do well on the test that follows.

As a cooperative learning activity, jigsaw provides a very efficient way for students to learn. Cooperative learning also has a number of other advantages. For example, as they work together, students learn how to socialize, solve problems, and handle conflict. Additionally, learning to cooperate with others is vital for success later in life. Almost every company that a student will work for is likely to require them to work in a group at some point.

Basic Elements of Cooperation

The first and most important element is positive interdependence.

The second essential element of cooperative learning is individual and group accountability.

The third essential component of cooperative learning is promotive interaction, preferably face-to-face.

The fourth essential element of cooperative learning is teaching students the required interpersonal and small group skills.

The fifth essential component of cooperative learning is group processing.

Research shows cooperative learning helps to produce:

Higher achievement.

Increased retention.

More positive relationships and a wider circle of friends.

Greater intrinsic motivation.

Higher self-esteem.

Greater social support.

More on-task behavior.

Better attitudes toward teachers.

Better attitudes toward school.

To conclude, I am very happy that we had such a topic for this week's blog. Searching for one thing led to another related with cooperative learning and I really like to use this way of studying in my classes. After all, the students not just socialize but they learn so much from each other in a way that will help them for the future.