A couple of extra tools

Last month we had the chance to enrol on a course on ICT in the classroom called "TIC y Lenguas Extranjeras - Relaciones de Colaboración y Autoría". It was carried out by the teachers Flavia Bonadeo, Viviana Basano and our ECO2 teacher Letizia Russo.
We shared these meetings with people from Profesorado de Francés. We did this in the computer lab, though one of the lessons was held at Centro de Idiomas. We had to go there in order to be able to learn how to use the interactive board.

We were able to communicate with each other through the Edmodo platform, just as we do it in Eco. We have learned how to create new posts, upload links, etc. It was no news for me thanks to Eco, but then I (together with my classmates) could experience working with some new software.

One of the lessons was about ExeLearning and Foxit Reader. Both of them are software that are included in the netbooks from Conectar Igualdad (yes, those netbooks that maybe we will never get to see!).
ExeLearning is somehow similar to a web page. It is an open code edition software for web pages without having to be an expert in HTML code. It has very attractive options for you to design tasks and exercises. You can even insert videos and images.
Foxit Reader, also taught in Eco2, is the alternative PDF editor to Acrobat Reader.

Another lesson was devoted to the Mimio software for the interactive board. Viviana showed us all the features that this tool includes and we followed her with our notebooks.

Finally, on the last lesson, we had to present (in groups) a didactic sequence that would include at least two of the ICT tools that we saw in class.
We planned a lesson that involved the using of three of them: Mimio, ExeLearning and Edmodo.

First, we used Mimio and the interactive board for presenting "the possessive 's".

Then we went to ExeLearning for a "filling in the blanks" exercise in order for the students to revise the family members.

After that, we went back to the interactive board with the idea of creating the Simpsons family tree. In order to do that, we first have to show the students the complete family tree with the character's names and then we ask them to build it themselves, giving them guiding questions.

The final task: homework. We used Edmodo to create a quiz where they are supposed to complete sentences that include the relationships between the members of the Simpsons family. Once they have completed them, the answers would be automatically sent to our email address (and even the correction can be automatic!).

I personally believe that this course was very enriching and our teachers were great at showing us how to take advantage of these tools. Maybe we won't find easily many schools that have the infrastructure to use the software, but just in case we did, we will be perfectly prepared.