Ted Talk Review

How to escape education's death valley 

by Sir Ken Robinson 

     Sir Ken Robinson is a British educator, writer and speaker. I have always enjoyed Sir Robinson's talks since he has a very particular sense of humour. Thus, this video is not the exception. He starts by saying that most American people do not understand sarcasm making a reference to the American law No Child is Lef Behind. At the same time, he also mentions that there is a high percentage of students who drop out school because they find it irrelevant, boring, and meaningless. Therefore, the question that we all should be wondering is what are we doing wrong.

     In order to answer this question, Robinson explains that are three basic principles that have been forgotten. The first one refers to the fact that all humans beings are naturally different and diverse. He exemplifies this by saying that even if you have twins you will know that they are not alike. So the problem relies on the issue that our current education system is planned far away from this conception. In fact, the reson why maths is more important than any other subject affirms that the possibility to be good at something else is nonexistent. Therefore, Sir Robinson states that a real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, physical education, and so on. By doing this, students can prosper since the curriculum integrates every aspect, and different talents that students have. The second principle has to do with the term curiosity. It seems that during our adulthood we stop questioning or wondering about things, we just accept them without hesitation. In this sense, Robinson explains that children are natural learners and that part of being a child has to do with being curious. Thus, teachers should mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage this important aspect in their students. Being teaching a creative profession, teachers need to be supported in their labour in order to make the best out of education. Sadly, an important part of the concept of education is learning and we tend to forget about it. This means that it doesn't matter if a teacher is teaching in a particular class, if there is no learning then education is not present. The third principle is based on knowing that human life is inherently creative. For all of those reasons, it is important to understand that we need to individualize teaching and learning accepting that we all are different and unique. At the same time, we need to acknoledge that teachers matter and without them education will never improve. Finally, we need to remember that education takes place in every classroom of this world and not in some legislative building. 

     Let's set the conditions that will change the present and our future in the education field.

 

Pixton: Creating your own comic book

Hello everyone!

     One of the things I really like are comic books and mangas. Thus, Pixton really caught my attention. The description is quite simple, Pixton allows you to create your own comic books since the characters, the background scenes, and the speech bubbles. You can sign up to the website using your Google account or creating a Pixton account as well. 

     If you go to the link, you will see that Pixton was created by a marriage couple. Their names are Clive Goodinson, and Daina Goodinson. Both of them combined their abilities in order to deliver this amazing website to all of us. 

These are the founders' descriptions shown on the website. 

Once you enter the website, you need to choose among these options.

After you sing up, you need to choose among these options.

     Later you need to complete some details about your own class, activity, people, and create your own avatar. Once this process is finished, you are ready to go. 

LANGUAGE LEARNING  

     Comics are really attractive to the humans' eyes, since they have a vast amount of drawings. Therefore, they catch the attention and interests of learners (Yang cited in Yunus, Salehi & Embi, 2012). Comics can provide to the classroom the necessary motivation for the reluctant readers, while the experienced one gains confidence and inspiration. (Yunus et all., 2012). At the same time, students can also develop writing skills by making their own stories, and then creating the illustrations. This is an important factor, since some students really enjoy reading comic books or graphic novels, but they struggle when they are asked to write something. Moreover, they need to use images in order to organize their ideas properly (Yunus et all, 2012) In this regard, websites such as Pixton can really motivate students to learn English while developing their reading and writing skills. Furthermore, is a creative way to connect the English subject with the Arts. For instance, they can work in the English class in their speech bubbles, and in their Art subject they can create illustrations that can be later transform into digital format. At the same time, you can ask students to do a presentation or even a play of their stories, which allows you to foster the English language in several and entertaining ways.  

LIMITATIONS

     The only limitation I can think about, as always, is the Internet connection and the lack of necessary supplies to do the task. However, the good thing about this website is that even when you do not have the resources to apply it, you can do it either way. You can ask students to bring materials in order to create their own comic books. They can watch tutorials on how to do notebooks on their own and then present their stories as actual comic books. It is always important to have in mind a Plan B, that can allow students to have fun when technology fails. 

     I hope this brief review was helpful to all of you. As for me, I would love to use this website with my future students. 

REFERENCES 

     Yunus, M., Salehi, H., & Embi, M. (2012). Effects of Using Digital Comics to Improve ESL Writing. Isfahan.

Playing with Kahoot

Hello everyone!

   Kahoot caught my attention immediately when it was presented by our teacher. In fact, my classmate and I used it in our practicum with our students. Most of their classes were based on using their English books, thus creative activities were almost nonexistent. Therefore, their motivation and interest towards the English language was not the best. Although, their behavior was not horrible the felt bored while doing the activities. When we got the chance to do the classes, we wanted to introduce this technology to students, and to our pleasant surprise the students' response was extremely positive. 

TALKING ABOUT KAHOOT

     Kahoot is a tool based on gaming. You can do different kind of quizzes related to the topic you want student to learn. Since it has gaming aspects, students feel more motivated to work. If you do a quiz, you can create as many questions as you want, with their respective alternatives, adding pictures to help the student choose the right answer. Moreover, you can decide the time that each question will have depending on the level of difficulty. At the same time, you can keep track of the students' results which is helpful to know their strengths and weaknesses. Kahoot also demands to be quick in selecting the right answer in order to gain more points. Therefore, students participate actively in the process of the game. 

     Here below I will leave an activity made with 5th grader students in order to understand how this tool works. This activity was based on recognizing nationalities, flags, and some specific characteristics from three countries. 

     The images shown are projected to students using a data or any other kind of device. In their computers or cell-phones, students see the colors and the specific forms in order to choose the right answer. 

LANGUAGE LEARNING

     This particular tool has been very useful and entertaining to implement with students. They have shown a positive reaction to it and they have asked us to do another one next class. I believe that one of the most important things that Kahoot brings is the fact that you can learn by playing a game. However, one can never miss the purpose of every activity. It is important to know how to manage the game, and stop it in order to explain or help students understand possible mistakes. It is important to give feedback to students and ask them why they selected an alternative. It does not matter if the alternative chosen is correct or incorrect, the idea is that students can explain why he/she has chosen it over the other ones. Although, Kahoot gives the chance to create fun material, it can also help you to make students think critically about their choices. 

LIMITATIONS

     One of the limitations that this tool have is the Internet factor. Although, using it has a lot of advantages when working with kids, it can also lead to lose time when the connection is not so good. You need to take into account several things before working with this application. It is important to not only check the Internet but also the computers as well as if the students have the devices, in the case of cell-phones, to work with it. 

     Working with Kahoot was a great experience. Students really enjoyed it and it help us to introduce useful tools that could help students not only learn English but have fun while doing it. Even when, you need to have certain things in order to work properly with Kahoot, you can always change the activity according to your resources. It is important to never lose our creativity and design a class along with students. It always starts by our example.