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In The Practical Ed Tech Handbook you will find resources arranged in different categories: communication with students and parents, web search strategies, digital citizenship, video creation, audio production, backchannels and informal assessment, and digital portfolios.

All you need is to enter the vocabulary or questions and answers and Educandy turns your content into different interactive activities. Once you have created an activity, a unique code is generated. Simply share that code with your students so they can play the game on their own device. Or you can embed the game into your own website. Students can also play the games you have created on their own device by visiting the Educandy website or downloading the Educandy app on their tablet. The games can also be played on the interactive whiteboard. We created our own activities! To play them use these codes on this site. Euge : The city! (2d5b)   Verb list   (2d5e)  Frankenstein  (2d60) Noe : Clothes  (27be)    Halloween  (2d62)

During the previous classes we`ve been discussing the importance of active and egaging learning via TV and educational apps. How can we as teachers make the most to put of this new tools? Click here to read the article. We made focus on the “ “minds - on” learning in television” section of the article. We’ve formulated some questions, can you answer them?  Here they are : 1- When do children learn best? Why do you think the title says "leaning in television" ? 2- What is Attentional Inertia? 3- Which aspects of a program may attracted children to stay engaged? 4- Can children learn from TV shows then? What´s the professionals opinion? And yours? Click here to see the answers .

Researchers found that the vast majority of educational apps are untested and unregulated, and there is no clear rating system to determine how truly effective the app is as an educational tool.  Although several groups have compiled helpful lists of apps that they consider to be educational, there is no standardized tool to evaluate apps educational value. Hirsh-Pasek and her colleagues use data from years of research on the science of learning to create four principles, or pillars, that provide a new basis from which to evaluate existing “wave one” apps, and from which to develop new “wave two” apps. The four pillars of learning put forth by the researchers are: active involvement, engagement with learning materials, meaningful experiences and social interaction. Find more information here .

The use of ICTs in educational environments has been incorporated in the curriculum design.  It starts on page 31 (Spanish).

Genial.ly makes it possible to create fully interactive and dynamic slide presentations, infographics, posters, digital magazines, surveys, postcards, microsites and catalogues. Any kind of digital resource can be created with Genial.ly, easily and for free, and with interactivity, dynamism and performance measurement as distinctive elements. According to its developers, Genial.ly intends to make easier the production of appealing resources that will stick out before the huge current amount of contents, and to be a tool used to teach or communicate efficiently. The multidisciplinary crew of this startup located in Cordoba, in the South of Spain, is formed by designers, programmers, developers, biologists, journalists, publicists and engineers. Our own Genial.lys: Jean Austen: Life and Works https://view.genial.ly/5d6c330a6e51fb0fe249f21e/presentation-jane-austen Pride and Prejudice: Courtship, Marriage and Social Class. https://view.genial.ly/5d6e71680355470fc73a097e/

ChatterPix Kids : It is a free app, where students can create talking pictures. It is a photo-editing app through which children can change their photos into moving, talking messages. Students open the app, snap a picture or import it, draw a mouth on it and then record themselves talking for up to thirty seconds. It was created by Duck Duck Moose. It encourages kids to explore and learn in a safe and fun environment. They work with educators and do lots of play-testing with kids to ensure the apps are frustration free for little fingers and full of whimsy and wonder for all to enjoy. Children can make objects, people, animals, characters, drawings to talk by creating recordings. It can be useful for children that feel ashamed of speaking. It encourages communicative skills. Communicative tasks can be asked by teachers for children who will have fun and will be encouraged to develop speaking skills. Socrative :   Created in 2011 by the MIT in the States. The main aim was t

Mobile learning apps or digital tools enhance language learning in engaging, interactive environments. The Argentinian Journal of Applied Linguistics published a paper in which three apps are suggested to try in the classrooms:  Kahoot,  Edpuzzle and  Audioboom. These digital tools provide students with the opportunity to work on a variety of  language skills independently, and also interactively. Every app is suitable for any level of proficiency in English and can easily be adapted to meet individual learning differences and styles. We have already presented Kahoot , so now we will introduce Edpuzzle and  Audioboom. Using the first one you can turn any video into an interactive and engaging lesson. While AudioBoom is a voice-based, audio podcast and social sharing platform that allows you to record, listen to and publish unlimited podcasts or audio files. You can find more information, tutorials and examples of using them in the complete paper published in The Argentinian Jou

Throughout the second part of the year we will be hosting our own sites. We are working with GoogleSites   which is a very useful Google tool. Euge´s site is called: HowToBakeIt   . It deals about world wide recipes. How to convey measurements. How common and normal meals were done in the past and how can someone make pre-made or store bought meals from scratch on their houses! Noe´s site is called ClassMate. It discuss and gives excellent tips for those who are taking "Practicas discursivas de la comunicación escrita en inglés" at the Instituto Superior Palomar de Caseros. A very useful site if you are looking for the experience and guidance of and old student and a mate! ;)

If you are looking for an easy learning management system for your classroom, then consider Google Classroom. It is web service that makes it easy for learners and instructors to connect, inside and outside of schools. Google Classroom is available for free for anyone who uses a Google  account. You will simply need to go to classroom.google.com . Here you can find a tutorial to learn how to use it and take advantage of it.

Moodle (acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is free and open-source learning management system (LMS) used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other e-learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces. It is used to create private websites with online courses for educators and trainers to achieve learning goals.

Microsoft Partners in Learning (PiL). Now called Microsoft Education  its a platform ready to help students and teachers to reach and overcome harsh subjects with technology. Within the teachers community it is divided into a few sections. Resources : Free tools for new classes, forum of diferent teachers sharing different projects and ideas. New topics: To stay tuned with the latest news of the teaching enviroment. Professional development: Unesco certified courses are held within the platform so teachers can wide their knowledge. Platform participants are awarded by microsoft. For schools: Schools access to new technologies so they can improve their learning methods. There you can find Mentor schools which are schools that work with new technologies. Their function is to be a role model for institutions seeking new ideas and tech based projects.

Alice in Wonderland Webquest By Noelia Corral Age: 16 Level: Upper-intermediate Book : Alice in Wonderland Author: Lewis Carroll Type Of Work: Novella Genre: Fairy tale; children’s fiction; satire; allegory Date Of First Publication: 1865 Setting (Time): Victorian era Setting (Place): England, Wonderland Film : Alice in Wonderland (2010) Director: Tim Burton Writers: Linda Woolverton (screenplay), Lewis Carroll (books) Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter Alice is seven-year-old girl protagonist of the story. She believes that the world is orderly and stable, and she has an insatiable curiosity about her surroundings. One day she follows the White Rabbit down a well and pursues him through a strange world ruled by imagination and fantasy. Wonderland challenges and frustrates her perceptions of the world. Activity 1 :  Choose your favourite Alice in Wonderland Quote and explain whose quotation was, in which context was said and which

Use your creativity! You can build your storybook,  add characters, pictures, drawings, and writing. Stories can be shared and also they are printable (not for free). This is the link to begin your story.

WebQuest are an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all of the information that learners work with comes from the web. Sources are pre-selected by the teacher, who usually selects the resources students can use ahead of time, which takes the focus off of finding information and moves it to how that information is used and interpreted. WebQuests specifically ask students to be critical of the sources and analyze them based on what they already know, or to use them in clever and creative ways. The vast majority of WebQuest assignments are group projects where individuals are given specific tasks and roles to complete. In this way, WebQuests help show people how the internet can be a tool that brings people together and facilitates communication and discussion. This is an example:  Shakespeare WebQuest

Transforming children's learning across the curriculum Introduction and Summary of Week 1: This MOOC is a suitable first approach to technology in the curriculum, digital tools and resources, teacher development, and developing the digital infrastructure.  It  explains why we should consider using ICT in the 21st century primary school and it is meant to be a way of enabling the community of teachers to learn from each other.  Technology changes all the time and teachers all over the world are constantly discovering new ways of using technology to improve their student's learning. This course shows many different ways in which ICT can be used, and the different kinds of tools and resources which are now available on the web for use in any curriculum area, as well as in the computing curriculum for primary schools. Those free digital tools make teaching and learning so much more interesting and rewarding for teachers and children. The purpose of this MOOC is also to demo

In one of our classes we had to explore some tools to use in our classroom!  This were the ones that we chose :   - Wordle  : This toy generates "word clouds" from a provided text. The cloud gives greater prominance to the most frequent word.  - Checkology : A key tool for students and teachers of journalism. It helps you differenciate between trustable sources from those who are fake. - Toontastic :  This is a story telling app. It motivates children to create characters and give their characters life!  - Rewordify : Excelent tool to understand text better. It adjust wichever you are reading to your language level.  - Easy note card : A tool to create flashcards with your students. It also provides games, quizzes, puzzles and printings.  - Alternatives for YouTube: SchoolTube and TeachersTubes are safe sharing video platforms.  Both are similar to YouTube but their aim is to be manipulated only by people in the educational enviroment.  - Trad

How to apply the learning types in our classes using technology.  The first thing to do on our check list is aim a goal.  Let´s assume our goal will be for the students to write a day in the life of a successful person. What do we have to teach them? How can we make it memorable?  Our first step (following the learning types (find it on our blog)) is remembering .  We have to construct based on the students previous knowledge. Ask questions like "What is success?" "Who is successful?"  In this step you can use apps such as AnswerGarden  * Second step is understanding .   Depending on the students age, you can give them exercises to fill in the blanks. "All successful people (have) (haven´t) (are) (aren´t) ____________."  In this step you can use the app Hot Potatoes   *  Applying is our third step. We have worked a lot during our last classes so it´s time for an assigment. Advice someone who is not successful. Teach "shou

Flipgrid is a video platform that allows teachers to create "grids" to facilitate discussions. Each grid is like a message board where teachers can pose questions, called "topics," and their students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display.

You can try numerous Kahoots in your classroom to test your students or to fix knowledge through games! We have used this tool to make new games for children. This are our Kahoots: Beatles Quiz for children   How well do you know The Beatles? Test your knowledge of one of the world's greatest ever band. Survey: Tourism in Argentina Know more about Argentina´s attractions. Sports Jumble Find out what you know about sports & international sport events.

VoiceThread  is a collaborative online tool that incorporates voice to the plain text. Documents can be uploaded from different sources and can be convined to create one file. This new file or folder creates a dinamism between the sources because information is constantly changing. As teachers we can use this tool to held conversations about a topic with our students.

We have started a new MOOC !  It is called ICT in Primary Eduaction: Transforming children´s learning across the curriculum. On our first week, we learned about the definition of learning types.  1- Aquisition : Learning through the senses (Listening, reading, action). Link listening with knowledge. We use this type of learning in formal educations.  2- Discussion :  Build ideas by expressing them with answers and questions (online tutorials, students seminars). As teachers we can challenge our students to answer ours or its classmates questions.  3- Investigate : Learnning though guides the learner to explore, compare and critique what she/he is being thaught. (Online resourses to compare data, books. field trips) 4- Practice : Enables the learner to adapt their actions to the task goal. This is called "Learning by doing" ( Do practice based projects, digital tools like simulators or digital games)  5- Collaboration: This type of learning embraces dis

What is an hipertext ? This is a very useful tool to find information. When we read something online and click on the blue word, we are making use of the hipertext. The user is an active reader because it interacts with the text. On the possitive side, one has the option of choosing the information the one needs. However, it is very likely to loose track of the main purpouse of the original search.   Transmedia narrative - Interactive games or movies   Lineal narrative - Several paths to read.   Visual narrative - Text is supported with an image.   Multimedia narrative - Get information though different sources (BBC) .   Audiovisual narrative - Text is supported by videos and images.

The Scoop-it site enables professionals and businesses to research and publish content through its content curation tool. ' Emerging Technology Enhanced Learning Tools'  could be useful for your own teaching.

Classroom collaboration is an area that benefits directly from today's Internet experience in that students can develop their potential for learning by becoming more actively involved. Indeed, they can learn to approach and solve problems by collaborating with other students and their teachers. Social bookmarking websites give them opportunities to discover and organize information. While many social bookmarking sites offer some collaboration opportunities, Diigo (Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff) combines a user-friendly social platform with bookmarking features and functions that make it useful for the classroom, giving instructors tools for setting up groups of students, highlighting key information, and commenting.

Coursera  offers massive open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and degrees. It works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, specializations, and degrees in a variety of subjects, such as engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and others.

Creative Commons licenses work as “Some rights reserved” rule instead of “All rights reserved” rule.  It offers a diverse set of license conditions – the freedoms and limitations. This allows the author to define rules on which he or she would like to share his or her creations with others.  At the same time users gain more rights to the use of his or her works.

This is a glossary of educational terminology that can be used as a guide for teachers who want to keep up with the latest trends in  pedagogy and educational technology.

                                                Kahoot is an online platform which purpouse is making learning fun! How does it work? Easy, teachers create their own kahoots. These are games or quizes that students have to answer, they can play once they have the pin that the teacher is given. This is a very useful tool to use in our classrooms and test our students throughout games!  We, as students, have worked on and with kahoot.  Here is a link to a very useful tutorial for us, the teachers to be! 

A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course that has open access and interactive participation by means of the Web. Introduction to Cyber Security by The Open University This online course will help you understand online security and protect your digital life, whether at home or work. Guided by Cory Doctorow, you will learn how to recognise threats that could harm you online and take steps to reduce the chances that they happen to you. The course will frame your online safety in the context of the wider world, introducing concepts like malware, viruses, trojans, network security, cryptography, identity theft and risk management. *You can find a wide range of online courses of different categories in Future Learn.

Glogster Edu is a creative online learning platform where students can express themselves and show their knowledge. A glog is a multimedia digital poster where children can  embed text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings hyperlinks, animation, documents. Click to get ideas to start using Gloster!

Padlet   is an interactive noticeboard. It is tool that allows learners to collaborate online and share images, links, documents, videos and voice recordings. And it’s free!  It can be used to connect students (and also teachers) to other grade levels, schools and communities. Click to find out some ideas !

Liveworksheets allows teachers to transform the traditional printable worksheets (doc, pdf, jpg) into interactive online exercises with self-correction. Students can do the worksheets online and send their answers to the teacher. This is motivating for students. Besides, it saves time of teachers and it is ecological (save papers). The interactive worksheets take full advantage of the new technologies applied to education: they may include sounds, videos, drag and drop exercises, join with arrows, multiple choice. Moreover, there are speaking exercises  that the students can complete using a microphone.

The purpose of this site  is to share information about free resources that teachers can use in their classrooms. Author: Richard Byrne        A former high school social studies teacher. He taught for eight and a half years at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in South Paris, ME. During that time he piloted 1:1 laptop use before the program went school-wide. He coordinated a "laptop squad" to support teachers' use of laptops in their classrooms. 

The SAMR Model is a framework created by Dr. Ruben Puentedura that categorizes four different degrees of classroom technology integration. It was created to share a common language across disciplines as teachers strive to help students visualize complex concepts.

It is an educational platform , social and free, that allows virtual communication between teachers and students. It works as a social network, where you can exchange information, messages, files, calendars, and schedule activities. Students' parents can also participate.