Adventure Time

Hello everyone!

     Today I want to write about a website which I find truly impressive. Its name is Classcraft. Personally speaking I really like this initiative of transforming the classroom into an adventure role game. I have always found entertaining creating your own character and giving him/her features that represent you. Therefore, if you are a teacher who enjoys games like World of Warcraft or Tree of Savior, you should definitely try to implement this website to your students. Be sure to really know your class in order to design this fun adventure together.

DESCRIPTION

     Classcraft acts like an alternative reality where students can create their own character and choose its class depending on their abilities and personal interests. They can choose to be warriors, mages or healers. All of the characters have special and distinctive powers, which make the experience more personalized and fun. At the same every class has its privileges such as eating in class or having some clues for the next test. These rewards are gained when students' behavior is excellent and that helps them to improve as learners. By doing so, students gain XP (experience points) to level up their characters. As the teacher, you are the one who decides which behavior will gain more XP according to what you are trying to promote in the classroom. For example, if I want students to learn to work in teams I will give them more XP if they succeed in helping their other classmates and doing collaborative work. Moreover, if students fail they will lose Health Points (HP), which is the life of their characters. Therefore, if their character dies they will have to face random consequences and their team will be penalized. 

Here below I will leave some pictures that are shown as an introduction when you enter the game. 

You can subscribe as a teacher, student or parent.

Students can choose the class of their characters. 

Warriors

Mages

Healers

Every class has its own privileges and powers. 

Classcraft gives the possibility of improving different abilities. 

Students learn to work in teams in order to not lose HP. 

LANGUAGE LEARNING

     So, as you can see Classcraft is a very complete website which allows to teach anything you want while your students learn important values such as teamwork, solidarity, responsibility, and so on. One of the most important things regarding the English language is that motivation can be increased. Authors, such as Gardner, have affirmed that motivation is the main factor that needs to be developed in the acquisition of a second language. Therefore, this particular website can help students in their acquisition of an L2 by making input available and accessible for students (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Furthermore, Classcraft can be used with students of all ages. As a teacher, you can design the material, rules, rewards, etc. Thus, according to your context you can get the most from this ICT. 

     It is also important to mention that parents are allowed to participate along with their children, so that can be a good way to expose the students and their families to English language in their houses as well.

LIMITATIONS

     Some limitations that this website can have are related to Internet access, supplies, and acceptance from the school. The first one has always been an issue, sometimes Internet connections are quite slow interfering with the class. At the same time, before using this tool you need to check if there are enough supplies for all the students, and their conditions too. Lastly, it is important to take into account if the school will allow this kind of resources as a way to learn, and foster the English language. 

     I believe this website is really well-made, and I would love to work with it in the future. English is taught sometimes in a traditional way that is quite boring for students. It is important to acknowledge that now students are really into technological devices, and as teachers we need to implement creative and fun resources to the classroom. I really hope this brief review can be helpful and useful to all of you!

  

REFERENCES

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2005). Understanding Language Teaching From Method to Postmethod (1st ed., pp. 26-27). London: Routledge.

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. 

Songs for all

Hi everyone! 

     Today, I want to talk about a web site called Lyricstraining. Our teacher showed us this last week, and I found it quite interesting and fun. This web site helps you to practice your listening skills while learning pronunciation and different languages as well. 

     When I was in school, our teacher turned on the radio and played some song I had never heard before. In front of me, I had a sheet of paper with blank spaces that I had to fill in while listened to a random musical theme. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty boring as well as impersonal. I didn't understand the lyrics, the context and of course the song's meaning. I was completely clueless on how this could actually be effective learning. Now, you can ask the following: Isn't lyrics training the same thing? Yes, it is. However, don't blame on the tool, blame on the methodology.

     Most of the time, there are perfectly good technologies that are used poorly. It is our job to find ways to make learning fun and effective to our students. For this reason, I believe that this technology can help students with their listening skills as wells as their pronunctiation and spelling. The most important thing is that they can choose any song they want. Thus, their interests are actually involved in the learning process. That's pretty neat, don't forget that your students are the main characters of the story.

     Now, lyrics training is also about filling the blanks, something that has been used million of times with students, and it keeps failing in caughting out their attention. Mainly, because there is no connection between the song and students' personal interests. 

Lyrics training gives students the posibility to choose any song they want.

To choose different levels of difficulty.

Students can choose the modality of the game.

Students keep a score of their hits and fails.

     Moreover, by using this web site you can foster self-learning since students can use it whenever they want. You can even upload material for them, in order to inmerse your students into the English language in a fun and creative way. 

PLAYING LYRICS TRAINING

     I would love to use lyrics training with little kids (6-8 years old). I have noticed that most teachers try to make their classes in English, which is perfectly fine because students need to be exposed to the language. However, it would be a nice idea to complement it with this web site. Lyrics training can be used as a warm up activity to lead students into the English language. 

     For instance, let's work with the song "Let it go" from the original movie "Frozen". We can select the choice mode to make students start practicing their listening skills, then we can give meaning to the isolated words, and ask students if they know what they are (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, etc) By doing this, we can start learning the way words can be classified, and next time we can change the choice mode in order to practice spelling. Moreover, students can express their opinions about the movie and the main topic that was exposed in it. The posibilities are many, it is our job to make something good out of every new experience. Don't forget to ask students their thoughts, and how would they improve the activity, if needed. 

LIMITATIONS

     As all the activities, if it gets too repetitive, it will get boring too. The idea is use the tool but not exaggerate with its usage. Complement your classes with the web site and upload fun and creative materials for your students. Remember it all starts by yourself! 

Cheers to all of you! 

Teacher's Blog

Hello everyone,  

   
     As a future teacher, I have found that blogging can be an excellent idea to reflect upon my practice, and almost anything you want to talk about. However, teachnology has never been my dearest friend. Although, I'm 24 years old, these plataforms are still new for me, thus I'm trying to make the best out of them.

     Today, I will review a blog called ELT Experiences by Dave Den. The title caught my attention right away because of the word experiences. For some reason, that word has a positive connation, at least for me, mainly because I feel I will learn something, and that's always good. 

     Professor Dave Den share with us his thoughts, ideas, and reflections about EFL teaching, which I found quite interesting. I think his blog is a good example to get the most from ICTs because it's the perfect way to help pre-service teacher in their future jobs. I know there are several blogs related to different topics but when it comes to teaching I'm really into reading about personal experiences. Moreover, the owner's short story is completely outstading and the fact you can contact him to talk or to suggest him a book, makes you feel you are of the blog's contruction.

     The post that I read, talks about blogging and how to use it properly. First, we have a short definition about the term. Next, we have the following question:

Why should teachers have a blog? 

     "So a blog can be a personal space for teachers to share their ideas of teaching and to better reflect on what could be improved in the classroom (...) Therefore, blogging teachers can communicate and share ideas, experiences and reflect on teaching and the overall profession with those that are based somewhere else in the world." As you can see, blogging can have a huge impact due to the fact that we can interact with people from all over the world. It is important to highlight the concepts of interaction and communication because they are the beggining of multiculturalism. 

Following the post from Professor Den, he teaches us six tips to start blogging, these are: 

• The Top 10 Ways To
• How To Teach
• Teaching... In 5 Easy Steps
• The Book Review
• The Lesson Plan 
• Learning English

     These guidelines can be very useful when it comes to organization and decision making. In terms of design, the usage of it is minimalist, and very organized. There are different sections, and you understand easily how to go through them. I personally enjoy color and cute typography, and that's something this blog lacks. Nevertheless, that doesn't interfere with the blog's content and its importance. 

     

     Finally, I'm glad to see that there are teachers out there seeking for self-improvement but also to give a hand to their colleagues and pre-service teachers to improve as well. It all starts by your example!

     

Cheers to all of you out there!