GoogleDoctors

As I said in one of the entries of the blog (May 9th, to be more precise), I will tell you about my experience with GoogleDocs. 

Having worked with it for the last few weeks, one may wonder if the "Docs" are actually Doctors... because not having to deal with long e-mails, private messages on Facebook, etc. is so good for our health!

I am using it now not only in Eco2, obviously, but also in Eco1, Dicción, Taller3, Language and Literature. Do you think it is useful? I KNOW it is, especially for group work. We don't have to see our pretty faces (though, from time to time, I miss you a little) and editing the text in a collaborative way is almost as if we are together in the same room.

I already shared some documents with friends. Nothing to do with Profesorado! So you can use it in many different ways, for many different reasons and with many different people. Just like the "Docs".

So... GoogleDocs: so far, one of the best, new online experiences of the year.

Practical Work using Presentations

It's time for a new practical work (unfortunately?). This time we will be dealing with presentations such as Power Point and Prezi. These presentations will have to be part of a lesson plan.

It's going to be in groups of two or three people. I didn't like much the random organisation of the groups. Of course, that's only natural, we are taken outside our comfort zone, which is working with people you really know. (Agos, don't take it personal! I'm sure we'll do it alright!). ;)

As regards the presentations, I have had some experience working with Power Point. When we were taking Literature 2, we had to present a topic to the class. The group in which I took part was in charge of "Alice In Wonderland" and Lewis Carroll's life.

We used this presentation (I attach here only an image to give you an idea) to highlight some important parts of our speech, also to show photos and pictures and to show music videos inspired by Alice, as well as fragments of films.
About the design, it was a background image downloaded from Google Images and we put the main characters of Disney's film as animated GIFs.

When we were taking Didactics 1, there was another instance of group presentations. This time, our group was in charge of two topics: Content Based Learning and Task Based Learning.

This time the presentation was much simpler than the one for Alice, because it was a short speech. Besides, those topics are not so artistic and that gives you little freedom to create something more eye-catching. What we used is simply a background colour and the only animation (besides the occasionally appearing arrows) was an animated GIF of a teacher that constantly moved his pointer to attract your attention.

The third presentation in which I was involved was a speech about Democracy and Argentinian History between 1983 and 1999. We had to present this topic, again in groups, for EDI, in the third course.

In this case, the presentation had a background image (again from Google Images) and we used it only to show images and fragments of documentary films. Most of them downloaded from YouTube. The idea was to talk about some topics related to those years (in English!, of course) and, from time to time, to play the videos, in Spanish, just to make sure the audience have perfectly understood it.

Now, a new way of using presentations is approaching (at least for me!). So, we'll see what happens! (Right, Agos?).

A blog list

In this short entry I would like to share a tool for all of us who are attending ECO 2 and have created our blogs. One way of keeping track of what our mates are doing is Google Reader, but Blogger has also something similar.

In order to follow your favourite blogs (in this case, all of them) we should go to the design section of Blogger, and add a gadget. One of the gadgets available is "Blog list". Through this option, you can add the addresses of all the other blogs or even import them from Google Reader.

Te result: you will have your mates' blogs listed in order of publication (if you want it that way!). Everytime one of them submites an entry, it will be placed at the top of the list.

Cool, right?

You can see it right here, on the right bottom of this blog (please, let me know if I missed someone's blog!).

Google Reader: how to keep track of your favourite blogs

Another wonderful tool that our teacher Letizia has introduced to us is Google Reader. It is useful not only for academic purposes but also for anyone that follows blogs or web pages that are updated constantly.

The great thing about it is that you won't spend time surfing the internet, looking for the blogs you daily visit to see if they have been updated. Instead, you will access to just one site (Google Reader) and there you will have, in chronological order, all the entries of your favourite blogs that have been published lately.

Almost everybody is acquainted nowadays with Facebook and the way it works. Well, Google Reader reminds me of the Facebook home, where you see a timeline in which the new stories are put at the top of the list. This is exactly how Google Reader works.

I'm posting here a video about this matter

Personally, I think the design of the site is not so great. It's not that appealing. But anyway, it is a very useful tool and I find it highly profitable, specially when it comes to time saving and organization.