Elevator Pitch with WeVideo

Hi everyone!

On this post I am going to continue talking about Collaborative Projects. If you do not know what I am talking about, you can go to my previous post to see it.
Today, I am going to choose a Collaborative Project to collaborate with. When I started to prototype my Educational Project I make it thinking only in use it with my class children and later, I discover the collaborative learning so I make some activities for the children to collaborate between them.
This is similar, but not the same, that is, now I am going to collaborate with other people's projects, sharing my own Project and adapting it to accomplish all the requirements.

The first thing that I made, was visit lots of Collaborative Projects to chose one. This is not as easy at it sounds, because there are several project that have something that I like. The Project that I like the most is "No me cuentes historias, ¡dibújamelas!". What they do, is explain the content by using draws or ask for the children to draw what they have learnt from the explanation, so they can see the content. I like this the most because we learn 80% of what we see, and it is important for me to motivate the students and make the lessons easier for them. Here you can see their Project:
http://dibujamelas.wixsite.com/dibujamelas

Once I know which project I am going to collaborate with I made an Elevator Pitch, this is a short video (20 seconds) in which you have to explain your Project in order to sell your product, find financial support or like me, explain how my Project could contribute to "No me cuentes historias,¡dibújamelas!" Project, by using WeVideo, you can see here the result:

This new tool is useful to create videos because you can upload or record a video or audio, ad text or transitions and finally, upload the result where you want, that is, dropbox, YouTube, Facebook and so on, or download it for you and your students. Before recording the video, I made a draft to know what to say in my elevator pitch:
- Hook: Do you know how difficult can be motivate our students?
- Problem: Nowadays, children have lots of distractions so, motivate them to study can be difficult for us.
- Solution: With my Poject, I am going to motivate and make them love Science, by using visual tools.
- Close: So I hope you accept me in your Project and I hope you like it. Thank you.
Finally, I recorded the video by using my Smartphone and as I said before, I modified it with WeVideo.

What have I learnt?
Thanks to this challenge, I know new amazing Open Educational Projects that I will take into account in my future clases. I recommend you to look for them because they are very interesting.
In addition, I am developing myself as an innovative teacher, something that seems crucial to me these days.
At the begining, I thought it would be a difficult challenge, but finally, and once I have my Project in mind and what I want to say, I set about it. What I found more difficult was the reording, because it made me nervous and could not explain me. Despite this, I managed to finish it and I think it is a tool that I will use in the future, since it is important to be able to explain and symmarize what you want to express, so I recommend you to try it and tell me.

If you have any doubt or you have tried it, leave a comment. I hope you find it useful and you like it.

Designing a visual metaphor for my Collaborative Educational Project.

Hi everyone!

Today I am going to show you an online visual metaphor of how I am going to turn my Open Educational Digital Project into a collaborative one. I have chosen collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning, that is, the children have to collaborate between them to learn new things through an activity.
I have used a new tool called Pixton to make the visual metaphor, and here you have the final result.

This new tool is similar to StoryboardThat that I explain in the previous post, this one is a bit more complicated, but you have more freedom to move the characters and express their feelings, that is what I like the most.

What have I learnt with this resource?
I knew this tool from my degree and I like it so much because I can move the character and put it in the position that I want, that allows me to express better what I want to say with the character (how they feel, what are they doing and so on).
Something that I have learnt wihle doing this visual metaphor, is that there are different ways to make an Open Digital Educational Project into a collaborative one. For instance we have:
- Collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning (I have chosen this one).
- Collaboration out of the classroom, connecting with other classes, other communities, with the real world.
- Collaboration back to the classroom, involving external agents in the learning process so as our classes become a real learning community.
I found this information in my URJC's Aula Virtual.


In my opinion, the easiests is the first one, but collaboration back to the classroom could be interesting to try, so maybe I use it on my lessons. I also think that, doing an Educational Project can be very beneficial, not only for our students, but also for ourselves, since socializing with other people and learning from their ideas is important today. We can learn a lot from other classmates, from other classes and even from other schools, so I encourage you to do Collaborative Educational Projects.

If you have any doubt or you have tried it, leave a comment. I hope you like this new tool and find it useful.

Prototyping my Open CLIL Educational Digital Project by using different tools.

Hi everyone!

Last day, I showed you a deep analysis of an Educational Project and today, I am going to show you my Project Prototype.

First, I want to explain how I have created my Project and later, I am going to tell you some descriptions about it.

1. Creating my prototype:

First of all, I have completed a template to have a first approach to the Projet (what is my Project about, the aims, the roles of the children and the teachers, the methodology and so on). I am going to upload it for you with a new tool called Issuu. This is an online tool that allows you to upload documents and create new ones by using different formats and it is easy to use. I have taken the template from my university URJC's Aula Virtual:

This could be difficult to do because you have to think, before doing it, about your Project and the final result that you want, and also, because I want to improve children's knowledge by using games, songs and other funny activities to motivate them. On my Project, as I said before, games and songs are going to have an important role, this is because it helps them to acquire the knowledge easier and to achieve the aims. I decided to focus my Project on the "Animal kingdom".

In addition, this Project is going to follow a cross-curricular line with other subjects. The Project is for Natural Science, but there are other subjects connected like Physical Education (where they can make some exercise related with the animals), Music (where they can hear some animals' songs) or Arts and Crafts (where they can create some posters related to animals).

When I finished, I started designing a short presentation to show you my Project. I have made it with StoryboardThat, in order to show you a new interesting tool. This is an online tool so useful to make stories or comics. I have chosen it because it is more atractive for children if you explain the content with this tool, or they can use it to make their own comics.

2. Creating my prototype:

To create my prototype I have followed the next structure:

- Title.

- Students level.

- Number of sessions.

- Areas.

- Teachers' and students' roles.

- Aims.

- 4Cs of CLIL.

- Key competences.

- Skills.

- Resources.

- Setting.

- Challenges.

Here you can find my final prototype. To make it, I have use again Issuu, but with the document modified.

The Project that I have made, is for a standard class of second grade without any problem, but if we have any child with special needs, we can adapt it. We have to take into account also, the necessities and personalities of our children, to modify the content and the activities for them. I have used also visual support to make it easier to understand and more atractive for the children. You can see here a short presentation made with StoryboardThat.

Made with Storyboard That

3. Self-reflection and conclusion

What I have learnt is how to use different online and free tools to make the activities and explanations more atractive and funny for the kids. We have lots of easy new tools that we do not use, maybe because we do not know them, but from now on, I am going to use them in my lessons.

I have realised that it is not easy to design a Project because we have to take into account different elements and when you do it with the children, they can make different things that you do not expect, so you have to be prepared for everything.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I like to motivate the children to learn new things, so I consider crucial to adapt the content that we have to teach by using these new tools that are so creative and interesting, in order to make the lessons more interesting and dynamic.

If you have any doubt or you have tried it, leave a comment. I hope you like it and you find these tools useful.