In this subject, -Digital competence and ICT competences for future teachers-
we have worked on a lot of different resources that we shall use in the future
in our schools.
It´s clear that in the future (and in the
present!) technology is going to be decisive in education. In our case,
especially, working on Primary School, where it is so important to catch the attention
of the kids, technology will be a decisive tool for us in the classroom. That´s
why I think it is important to take a tour to different programs and digital
resources which will be useful for us in the future.
Let me mention what I think it is more
important of each of that resources revised in class:
Wikis:
I think this tool is interesting for teachers,
and we might use it with students from the last years of Primary School. It is
very easy to work with, and allows us to share documents that can be edited from
different computers, in a collaborative way. For example, we could tell the
students to investigate an item -whatever- and share the information in a
unique wiki document.
For younger kids, I think it won´t be that
useful, as they are not so used to work with this kind of documents.
PLE:
As in the Wikis, I find PLE very useful, firstly for teachers -and people in general-, as it is a very clear way to see the
different websites we usually visit at a glance, and secondly, for
late-primary students, who can find in PLEs like Symbaloo a tool for
organizing their things.
PLEs, despiste being very easy to use, are
not that popular among average people and students. Also we learnt the
difference between PLE and VLE, but
I will talk about VLE in the second reflection.
BLOG:
In my case, unfortunately I didn´t find
many new things as I have already had a blog before.
Also, we have had a look at different storage
webs like Google Drive and Dropbox:
Both of them are useful to save documents
in the cloud, so that they are accessible from any computer with Internet access.
Nonetheless, as they are actually very visible in our daily lives, almost
everybody already knows them and knows how to use them. I am not pretty sure about how to use them
with kids in the future, but it´s clear that I can use them on my own.
Another day, we worked on the Microsoft Word options (images, charts,
...). As we have already worked with Word lots of years, we did have a good
base of Word understanding, however we learnt an important resource:
-the correction tools: it´s important to use them properly, and we have learnt to use them in that way, so that it will be very useful in the future for us in the school.
-synonym-antonym resources are also very
useful for the academic area, and will be worthy for us.
- Mendeley:
this is not explained on the documents, but we have had a look in class about
it, and I found the citation tools really interesting. It is very worthy,
especially for the final grade essay
Another program we have learnt something
about was the Power Point. The
general options of this program are known for us, but what was interesting and
we didn´t know about was to insert videos there. That is clearly a good tool
for using in the class with the kids.
About the video-programs: we had a class of
Movie Maker that was useful, but as I have already used it, I did have some
background of that. The greatest importance of this program is to know how to cut the
scenes. Similar is Real Player,
which is considered to be less safe so I won´t pay more attention to it.
In this program, Movie Maker (and also in
the web dotsub) we have worked on
creating subtitles. I think we will use this in the future, as it is an easy
way to work songs with kids, or conversations in a foreign language.
One of the most important programs we have
worked on this subject is the HOT POTATOES.
This is a basic program for a teacher, as we can create different kind of
exercises for kids, very fastly, and very simple. We can create exercises of
matching, quizes, and so on.
I consider it very important to have
discovered this program, as I think I will use it lots of times in the future.
It´s really comfortable being able to create a kind of exercise at home and
save it on the cloud so that we can take it later from the school (on the Internet). So it´s a great tool.
Quizlet is another important web, where we can create different exercises
of several types: matching, mixing, listening, and so on. This is a good tool
that will be used in the future too.
Another program I have already worked
before was WebQuest. It is useful
for creating tests and different tasks for the children.
Mindmap was another interesting program, but maybe for older students, in
my opinion, and, of course, for teachers. It allows us to create mind maps
online. Very useful.
And for finishing the tour, let´s mention
the last important program we have worked on: Story Jumper. We used it for creating digital stories. Its use is
quite simple, and we have learnt its general use by creating our own stories
(this is one of the compulsory activities we have published on the blog).
In general, I think It has been useful to
learn those many different programs, as they will be tools we will really use in
the future, unlike other subjects where we have the impression that what we
have learned will never be used.
If I had to improve this part of the
subject I would suggest dealing less with common programs such as Word,
Powerpoint, ... and focus more on programs like Hot Potatoes or Quizlet.
