martes, 20 de enero de 2015

Newsletters

Newsletters are a resource for all. I have subscribed to one about Elementary Teacher Resources. I have found it very attractive for teachers because there are many topics related to the professor day to day (how to motivate our students, how to praise them or how modify their behaviour). I strongly recommend it because here we find the opinion of a colleague, a teacher who spends most of the day in class facing the same challenges and problem that us.

Here I attached also one refreshing publication: ‘Talking in the Classroom



Fascinating Apps!

Duolingo is an attractive app to learn different languages. You can have a profile where your progress will be saved. Also, you can do a level exam to know your level and then you don’t have to start from the beginning. Children can work by their own, in class and at home, being that it is very easy to use. We can use this app at the end of units for checking our knowledge.


In this page we can find appropiate lesson plans. These detail all the activities and the time we have to spend. I will implement it in the classroom for explaining the verb Can for ability.

In this page we can find a lot of colourful and interesting lesson plan for whiteboards.
I will take the one explaining healthy habits. In my opinion it has the perfect elements to create a motivating atmosphere in the class. First of all, we will see the food pyramid with all the nutrients and then to assimilate contents we will play in the whiteboard the games that this lesson plan offers.

This link offers a huge amount of reading resources and activities.
Once in a trimester children can download an e-book and read it by their own at home. At the end of the trimester each student will share the impression of the book to all the class. They will be able to share opinions and may recommend the books among them.

Lino

In this link you can find many apps to use in class!

martes, 13 de enero de 2015

Visual and Practical Differences among Websites

Having seen all the websites of schools I must say that some of them seem that are under construction, other lacks elements. As well, most of them are very simple or have many distracting elements.
I have chosen the link of IES Cavanilles because it looks to be very orderly and clear. All the elements follow the same theme and there is nothing that stand out more than another. Nevertheless, what has struck me and that other webpages do not have are the icons that each sections include. These icons help us to find what we want without having to read all the sections. For instance, if you want to know where the school is located, next to the name there is an icon related to that. This feature is the main reason why I chose IES Cavanilles.

Joomla

Before describing Joomla, we must know what content management system is. CMS is software that keeps track of all the content in our web; it doesn’t matter if it is a text, a photo, a video, music…
Knowing that, Joomla is a well known content management system (CMS) that enable us to create, organize, manage and publish content for Websites in an easy way. You don’t need to be an expert in ICT considering that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage.
Another point to highlight is that Joomla is free, open and available to everyone. Some features to call attention to are that it is multilingual (offers more than 64 languages), has more than 8.000 extensions available, keeps our information up to date, and it allows us to manage the users of our site.
Searching different extensions, I have found this one that I consider very practical to use in class. This extension allows us to introduce a calendar in our website, displaying our events.
Hope you find it useful!