task 2: My experience with the Smartboard

There is no best way of learning that by doing, that was I thought when I was supposed to start making my Smartboard presentation, but at the moment I started doing it...  I was a bit stressful because I didn’t know what to do, though I knew how to use the program thanks to the class with the two teachers, I didn’t came up with any idea. So I was struggling with myself to come up with some idea until I finally got it!

I can’t say that it was easy, I spent lot of time creating it but I would say that it was a “good” way to spent some time haha but at the end when you see the results of what you have created, it’s great, and is great especially because I imagine myself doing that activity in a real class and that make me feel like a real teacher.

When I finally finished it we were supposed to present it, and as I was so proud of what I have done I wanted to be the first, and I must say that I felt  very good doing my class using the Smartboard, and I liked very much the feedback of the evaluators, because I think that it’s a good tool to improve. 

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Albert Einstein

Task 1: My expectation for this class.

Now a days, technology takes an important role in the learning process of many students, especially because most of the students at the primary, high school or university level are surrounded by technology always, that’s why I founded completely necessary to implement this kind of subject to our education process, because we need to be able to handle technology and we need also to use this new technologies as a tool for teaching and not as a threat.

So by saying that, my expectation for this class is to practice using technologies and mostly to get related to the new software that we can find at schools in order to use them and make of my English class  a super fun class in which you can learnt by doing, listening and watching. I also hope that and the end of this class is to be able to manage the different problems that may arise in the process of using these technologies as well as to be capable of prepare a good class using different software, because we can now how to use, for example, the Smartboard, but the idea is to do it in a good and accurate way.

As I already know the aim of this course I hope to be able to produce, create and present good manage of the programs that we are going to be working with. 

“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.”

― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Task 2

I have to admit that I was sceptic about how to use of the Smart Board, but then I  did a deep reflection and I realized that I have to enjoy the things that I create and  my personal duty  is to transmit and project that vision to the rest of people otherwise there is no point  on doing new things with the help  of technology.

 Also about the two presentations that I did ,I consider that they were dinamic and creative because  the topics were selected  carefuly  and I saw all  this reflected  in the  positive response of my classmates: like in the way that they were working, without presion they decided When and How to participate, and I really enjoyed  the process of creating and putting the contents into context.  

However ,there are many external factors that I have to re -consider because that day the condition  of my computer was miserables and the functionability of the informatic system was awful too and this triggered an incorrect use of technology, for this reason it is important the maintenance of your laptop.

All in all I have been learning through errors and  I discovered that I need to improve many things and that I have many things to learn , because that will make the difference inside the classroom.

Judith Solis.

Task 2

"Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."

— George Kneller

This was the second time presenting, and the fact of using the Smart Board was pretty cool. At least for me, this was the first time that I could use it and work with it so I have to say that it was very interesting and innovative!
I think I should have worked more in some aspects, specially with the attractiveness of the presentation, since I mostly like to work with material that can be fun but also not a distraction.
Something that I definitely need to improve is my patience when working with the students, mostly in the aspect that I have to speak slowly and calm.  Yet, something that went very well was the participation in the activity and also the motivation of the students with the presentation.
I think that we will learn and improve a our skills this term!.

Task 2

"A good teacher, like a good entertainer first must hold his audience's attention, then he can teach his lesson."  John Henrik Clarke

This experience using the smartboard and the softwares related to it, was so new and nice. Once you learn how to use technologies you are able to let your imagination create amazing lessons for your students. That's the positive aspect of using these tools. On the other hand, there are many details to pay attention to. I've realized that is really important to learn well and practise a lot to avoid inconvenients. And that's not all, you also need to improve your skills in classroom management;if you are not able to get your students' attention, your supporting material takes a second place. 

The creation of the material is fun, but it takes a lot of time. On one side you have many options and tools to use and create a good lesson, but that could be done if you have a plenty of time available. After being able to do the microteaching, you realize which tool works better during the class and what your students like the most. Finally, as I mentioned before, the practise part is really important. That helps to improve the teaching skills; to manage the environment, the time of the activities, the kind of activities you could use, etc. 

Task 1 - My expectations

The only expectation I have for this class is to be able to use technologies correctly, in order to, improve my skills in classroom management and to be able to manage some unexpected situations in the classroom. I hope to learn how to manage some technical problems to be always prepared. I think it is really necessary for a teacher to get involved to the new technological advances. The idea is to be always improving our skills and this subject will help us a lot ;)

Task 1

My expectation for this class is to acquire new methodologies in order to use them in the classroom. Specially this term, when we can use all the skills and ideas that we have been taught in our practicum! Nowadays is very important to find some kind of direct ways so we can get to our students; the use of technology will help us to get that. Students are open to learn new things as long as we make them attractive. 
So I'm looking forward to learn and practice!

"Learning will follow the Web 2.0 paradigm: instead of being mostly read-only environments, learning will evolve to a more natural participatory process, where the boundaries between content creators and consumers disappear…. It is obvious that in 10 years, we will not speak of 'e-learning' but of 'learning' - ICT's will become ubiquitous and often invisible to end-users. It is remarkable how horrible our current technologies work" W. Haddad, in the book 'Technologies for Education'

Even though sometimes I can really struggle with technology, I am really happy with the opportunity the University is providing us. Education for the last couple of years has not been at the same level society is, falling behind and becoming a less nurturing and motivating instance for our students. The fact that the University is actually showing concern about such topics is a small step of major implication, but that would mean nothing if we do not apply all our knowledge in the classroom. 

I can see within my class great potential, and I would like to invite my classmates to never stop believing in all the wonderful things our students may be able to accomplish, despite the different labels they may receive within their institutions, it is our duty to keep them interested and help them develop in every single way possible.

So thank you Victor, Miguel and Miss Valentina for the time and effort invested to provide us with the necessary tools to carry out this great task ahead of us.  

Task 2

I believe that in this kind of activities, reflective observation is totally the most important aspect in terms of Kolb's Model. This is whole new world, considering that we are the "transition generation" inside technologies, so bearing in mind that new tools will be always more attractive to students (any kind of students) our domain in these field should be competent.

As I said, reflective observation is the principal characteristic. There is a sort of double process inside both activities previously done, where we learn while we "teach". So after the "abstract conceptualisation", perhaps is necessary Watching again, because as this is a new place where we have to develop more competences, we are not certainly sure about what we have to reach. Definitely, the great domain is again related with practicing.

I felt comfortable presenting these activities but in some way I thought about the posibilities of using what we are presenting. Are we going to use these new elements? What about school's resources? Will all schools have these technologies? I believe in this resources but I also believe in the quality of using my abilities as a future teacher and using them with or without technologies.

I could have done better things, using more tools or being more creative. But I felt the control of the situation, even though I had some technical problems, I felt in control.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

Microteaching

Task 2: Smart-Board


When the Smart-Board appeared as a new tool for education, I found that it would be an excellent idea and it would change completely my view of the classes. Now that I have the opportunity to teach and learn the perks of it, my point of view is the same. It has many benefits for the students who don´t have motivation inside of a class or are disruptive. The Smart -Board has the virtue of converting a boring subject into a comfortable moment to learn.

Despite of this point, there are some details at the moment of applying a lesson with this tool. Sometimes technology tends to complicate simple things. Everybody knows that if a part of the projector doesn't work, if we don't have Internet or even electricity, everything goes wrong. For this reason it can convert in a self-defeating tool in a class.

Teaching Principles - Reflective Practice

A teacher's "good practice", whatever the methodological approach, would mean that language lessons will be balanced (include a range of skills practice), varied (include different types of activities to appeal to different learner styles), communicative (give learners opportunities to practice communicating), creative (give learners the opportunity to develop their own ideas) and encourage learner independence (the possibility for learners to make their own decisions in learning), in order to be effective. It is also very important that teachers should reflect on their learning in order to develop their own knowledge and skills more effectively.

D.A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, Prentice Hall, 1984. 

Reflective practice entails reviewing one’s own teaching, evaluating it and using the results of the evaluation in future teaching. In this way, the teacher builds effective professional development routines and internalises a process by which s/he continuously improves. Kolb sees this as a Learning Cycle comprising four different stages of learning from experience and can be entered at any point but all stages must be followed in sequence for successful learning to take place. The Learning Cycle suggests that it is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn. It is necessary to reflect on the experience to make generalizations and formulate concepts that can then be applied to new situations. This learning must then be tested out and evaluated. The learner must make the link between theory and action by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating experience back to the theory. 

Taken from: Teaching English CiSELT Handbook, British Council

Task 2: Considering the two micro-teachings that you have presented, make your own reflective work following Kolb's model. Think of what you did, what you could have done, something to improve, something that went better than expected or any other aspect that you may find important. Follow each part of the model. Include your ideas in relation to Kolb's work and the key elements for a teacher's "good practice". Feel free to search for more sources, quotations or any other element that is worth sharing.

Make it as a NEW ENTRANCE. Use the label "Task 2". Reply to your classmates comments. 

"We are inclined to think of reflection as something quiet and personal. My argument here is that reflection is action-oriented, social and political. It's "product" is praxis (informed, committed action) the most eloquent and socially significant form of human action. "

Stephen Kemmis, "Action Research and the Politics of reflection"

Task 2

I wanted to use Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle in order to briefly visualize my metacognitive process about the two workshop presentations in this class.

In order to start, I would like to develop in a deeper way my views about the presentation with the use of “Quiz Creator”. Those 10 minutes in front of the class were quite comfortable for me. I also felt that my activity was well organized, applied and understood. The atmosphere was calm and I was very confident about what I was doing. For that reason I could realize that when someone is proud about his/her performance at dealing with something new, it is easier for him/her to present and explain it. Concluding, it was a nice workshop that I am definitely going to use in the future, and I will try to improve my weaknesses in terms of classroom movement, use of the computer and pitch.

Now, describing a bit more my perceptions about the second task, I must admit that it was a veeery huuge challenge for me. I spent hours and hours trying to create something worthy along with the use of each of the “elements” that were shown in the class. I did around five improvements to the same presentation and then I started a new one. I truly believe that that indecision was caused by my insecurity towards my “pre-presentation” performance. As I was not sure about what I was doing, I always found that my job was awful, but finally I tried to cheer myself up and calmly present my work. During the presentation some drawbacks appeared: I mistook one cable, the audio did not work, and some others that took minutes from my presentation. Unlike my first presentation, those 10 minutes were infinite. But the good thing is that, after all, I could manage everything, and it was not that awful as I had in mind. To end up with, I am really grateful for the opportunity to use this innovative technological resource, because now I know how it is to present with this kind of activities. For a future task, I will join all these reflection for keep on improving my role as a student, so as a future teacher  J .

Ps: I found this quote that may wrap up all what has been written here: “Experience is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards” (Vernon Saunders Law)

Task 1

        My expectations with this subject are not too ambitious , for me the main goal is to learn how to use in a correct way the technological devices but only if it is necessary or mandatory. I consider that they have an antagonist purpose because it can become in a distractor inside the classroom if you are not able to connect the main ideas of a class.

      On the other hand, we do not have to forget that the main characters are the students and the teacher and that the smart board is just an extra ingredient to present different topics in a dynamic way.

     To be honest I am not a fan of technology ,I consider that this kind of things are like a heavy weigh for the mind, perhaps you  think that you can test creativity but is just an illusion and in my humble opinion (becasue I do not want to sound arrogant ) but you cannot put limits ,time or rules when you are creating.

       To sum up, I am in the process of learning and as I said before the idea in here is to learn the steps (by heart) of a dynamic tool and how to use it and , I will try to follow the steps and rules in order to create an acceptable product.

Judith Solis M.

Task 2

I would like to start by saying how much I liked the last two micro-teachings. It is really revealing to start getting familiar with advanced technology and there are different ways to start putting these ideas into action.
I must confess I was very disappointed with my first micro-teaching; I had various problems concerning the installation of the software and I felt very frustrated.
In the second micro-teaching I felt more confident, due to the fact that I did not have technical problems and I could use it without any problems. At the moment of teaching I had only 10 minutes to present and that made me feel very nervous, that is why I had some problems at the moment of doing the activities. I understand that time management is one of the most difficult things of being a teacher and I recognize that I did not managed it great. Also, I had some problems with the board and I did not resolve it in an easy or more effective way; this was another reason why I was so nervous.
Even though I had some problems, something went better than expected. When I have to be in front of a group and try to teach, I always feel that I have the courage to do everything and that feeling gives you the strength to ask the students to be quite and make them participate. I did not know that I had that virtue to transform all my energy to good skills to teach.
As a  conclusion, I do know that there are thousands of things that I have to improve, in order to be a good teacher; but I also know that I really want to learn them and that I will.

Task 2 "Reflection"

First of all, I would like to say that I did really enjoy to have the opportunity of "teaching" something by using the Smart Board. At the very beginning, it was a bit complicated, for the reason that I am not that good at technology and for me, it represents a big challenge.

In the actual "microteaching" I felt quite comfortable and I think I did not have many problems in terms of using the language or applying the stage, which was drilling; However, I think I should have mentioned which my students' level was and that I should have written the instructions in each exercise I presented. 

In addition, I tried to have a good timing (actually I do not know how much time my presentation lasted) and I think I could manage it a little bit, yet once you are in front of the class, time "flies" and you do not realize how long an activity can last, so It is important for me to start working on that.

Also, I realized that creating an activity by using the software "Smart Board 11" can be very helpful for you and your students, not only for its amazing characteristics but also, for the things THEY can do when using it in an actual class. Notwithstanding, It takes you A LOT of time, and as you may know (and as I have been realizing recently) teachers do not have a lot of time and these kind of tasks (creating a presentation) can be time-consuming for teachers who do not know how to use this software.

Furthermore, I learnt that next time, I will have to prepare my material with more time, in order not to make the same mistakes and also to have a more "interesting" presentation. Pedagogically speaking, I learnt that by using these wonderful implements (the board and accesories) you can catch your students' attention way faster, which is quite good, because you are sure that they are going to pay attention to the contents you want them to learn and also and most importantly, it helps you improve your students' learning and acquirement of the language.

In conclusion, by using this teachnology, I could realize how hard a teacher's task can be, not only for the subject's contents but for the time you, as teacher, have to devote in order to create a nice and good presentation, because the idea is to create good material for our students. Also, I learnt that I can do way better next time, for the reason that I know I am good at this and most importantly, that I do really want to be a teacher and that motivates me to do anything to achieve my goal, so If I have to work harder, be sure, that I will. 

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” 

Aristotle

Task 2

My impressions about the tasks: 

In my opinion these kind of activities are really useful, but once you have a complete control about what you are using. 

In my first micro teaching I had some technical problems since I couldn't work with the software as I wanted to, but in general I found it an easy task to do. 

On the other side, create my micro teaching with the smart board was much harder. First, I needed to learn how to use all the tools in the sofware. Second, my creativity was awful, I found myself struggling to create an interactive activity with it. I had the tools to do it, but it was hard to find how to use them in actual contents. At the end I think I could do it, but it was harder that I thought. 

Another thing that caused me troubles, or rather than troubles, I was scared about, were the possible technical problems. I don't have the best computer, so I didn't know if my activities would work perfectly while I was presenting. I think that that distracted me a lot while I was doing my micro teaching. I was more focused in the use of the smart board than in the actual class or in if the students were taking attention or not. Anyway, I think is a thing of practice, probably if I keep doing activities with the smartboard I will focused better. 

Carolina Ulloa

Task 2

   When I realize that this subject will be based on the use of technologies and tools to be more effective in the class I thought to myself "Well Johnny this will be easy, so easy", but I wasn't being realistic, I know how to use technology to my favor, but I didn't knew how to use them to teach or what to teach to my students so I was in a kind of bind, so taking my expierence at high school  I decided to use my favorite sport (for the knowledge and passion) for the first work assigned (create a quiz using Quiz Creator) and I was thinking what if they don't like the sport? or the activity?, so to engage their attention I put a really good video to keep them motivated during the activity, but I focus so hard in doing my quiz interesting that I forgot to made it clear with easy instructions (problem solved during the second activity) and during the second the second activity I forgot to made a closure a minor problem I think, but not for this less important, now as I already had previous knowledge from previous experiences it was easier for me to do this activities. concluding with this I can say if you want to do an activity using technology try to do something never seen before something new in simple words, with easy tasks and easy instructions, try to keep in mind that Internet have lots of resources to use in your activity and with a bit of creativity your activity will be the best tool to teach a "boring" content like grammar or vocabulary in my case.

   Finally don't be scared of critics from your teacher or classmates, remember that this is the moment for experimentation, in my case I only have good critics until now, but I think that my two works weren't the best for my skills and I need to focus more on the stages of the activities to be sure that my students will learn the content also I have in mind that not all the students like the English class and not all of them will work in it. is something unavoidable even with this activities.

How to post

First of all, log in with your gmail account, at the top where it says "Acceder". After that, come back again to the blog and click where it says New Entrance (Nueva Entrada, It is marked in the picture). It will take you to a new page to create your post. Then you publish and that's it!

Teaching Principles - Reflective Practice

A teacher's "good practice", whatever the methodological approach, would mean that language lessons will be balanced (include a range of skills practice), varied (include different types of activities to appeal to different learner styles), communicative (give learners opportunities to practice communicating), creative (give learners the opportunity to develop their own ideas) and encourage learner independence (the possibility for learners to make their own decisions in learning), in order to be effective. It is also very important that teachers should reflect on their learning in order to develop their own knowledge and skills more effectively.

D.A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, Prentice Hall, 1984. 

Reflective practice entails reviewing one’s own teaching, evaluating it and using the results of the evaluation in future teaching. In this way, the teacher builds effective professional development routines and internalises a process by which s/he continuously improves. Kolb sees this as a Learning Cycle comprising four different stages of learning from experience and can be entered at any point but all stages must be followed in sequence for successful learning to take place. The Learning Cycle suggests that it is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn. It is necessary to reflect on the experience to make generalizations and formulate concepts that can then be applied to new situations. This learning must then be tested out and evaluated. The learner must make the link between theory and action by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating experience back to the theory. 

Taken from: Teaching English CiSELT Handbook, British Council

Task 2: Considering the two micro-teachings that you have presented, make your own reflective work following Kolb's model. Think of what you did, what you could have done, something to improve, something that went better than expected or any other aspect that you may find important. Follow each part of the model. Include your ideas in relation to Kolb's work and the key elements for a teacher's "good practice". Feel free to search for more sources, quotations or any other element that is worth sharing.

Make it as a NEW ENTRANCE. Use the label "Task 2". Reply to your classmates comments. 

"We are inclined to think of reflection as something quiet and personal. My argument here is that reflection is action-oriented, social and political. It's "product" is praxis (informed, committed action) the most eloquent and socially significant form of human action. "

Stephen Kemmis, "Action Research and the Politics of reflection"