TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION

In this entry, I'll show you an example of how you can incorporate technology into your teaching practices.

 

LESSON PLAN

  

Course: Children 1. 
Number of students: 8 (9 years old ) 
Time of the lesson: 135 minutes (Tuesdays)
Book / Unit / teaching points: Young Achievers 1 Starters.
Unit 6: AT THE ZOO (monkey, hippo, elephant, zebra, giraffe, lion, tiger, crocodile, hamster) 
Grammar points: This-These vs That-Those + The (animal) has got (body part)
Vocabulary focus: Animals at the zoo/ Animals' body parts

WARM-UP

 

MONSTERS CALENDAR: Teacher chooses different students, and they have to go to the front and circle the day, date, month and weather.

EXERCISE 1: Student’s book Unit 6. LESSON 1  

EXERCISE 2: WORDSEARCH

 

EXERCISE 3: Student’s book Unit 6. LESSON 2 

 

BRAIN BREAK (students stand in a circle, and they clap their hands saying high 5, high 10, high 20)


EXERCISE 4: Student’s book Unit 6. LESSON 3 

EXERCISE 5: Students will go to the board and paste the correct part of the animals’ body

EXERCISE 6:  Students play BINGO  

 

EXERCISE 7: Write the animal’s body parts 

EXERCISE 8: Puzzles (Students solve the puzzles in pairs, and then they mention the animals)

FINAL TASK: Creation of a VOKI AVATAR

PART 1: The teacher will use a computer to show her students a talking avatar (a dog created with Voki), which will describe itself and its body parts. She'll tell students that they will give voice to a zoo animal they can choose, and that it needs their help to describe its body parts. 

PART 2: Students will have access to a laptop to work in pairs in the creation of the animals' description. Each pair  will be given a password to log into Voki. The tool's website will be opened in each laptop by the teacher, so that students just type the password to log in and then click on CREATE.

PART 3: Once Voki is opened, the teacher will tell students that there will be 9 steps to follow to give voice to the animals. The teacher will monitor and provide feedback during the whole task. On the board, students will have the following "tutorial" with the steps to use the tool:

1- Click on the boy.

2- Click on this picture. Choose a Zoo Animal.

3- Click on this picture. Choose the animal's home

4- Let's describe! Here you have an example

 

Students will prepare a draft of the animal's description on a sheet of paper. Once students have received feedback on their description, they will be told to follow step 5.

5- Click on this picture.Write your description here.

  






 

6- Choose your animal's voice. Click here

7- READY? Click on SAVE

8- Write your Animal's NAME
    Click on save

9-  Well done !!! Click here

The teacher will copy the URL links and will paste them on the wall of the Language School BLOG. Once all students have finished their VOKIS, the teacher will ask each pair to click on their Vokis to share their creations with their classmates.



EXIT WORDS (before leaving the classroom each student says a word he/she learned during the lesson)

  

WHY I USED VOKI IN MY LESSON PLAN

VOKI is a technological tool through which students are able to apply their creativity and imagination, at the same time they're working collaboratively. According to PLANIED, (Plan Nacional Integral de Educación Digital) which was drawn up by Ministerio de Educacion y Deportes de la Nacion, ICTs are cultural shapes, that is to say, they are spaces in which information is not the only thing that circulates, but in which play, exploration, creativity, fantasy, critical thinking, and communication and collaboration converge as a whole. 

In the lesson plan, my students will create the words of the talking avatar, and while they try to reach a communicative goal (body description), they will play with the language and the sounds (the different voices available in Voki).

Creativity and Collaboration are 21^st century skills that teachers should foster in students, and in this case, Voki is a technological tool that gives room to exploration and creativity, and as PLANIED states, students are the protagonists in the construction of knowledge, and they interact with each other during an activity that is mediated by a digital environment.

On the other hand, Doctor Ruben Puentedura developed the SAMR model as a way for teachers to reflect on how they incorporate technology in their instructional practices. The SAMR model categorizes 4 different degrees of classroom technology integration: Substitution and Augmentation, in which technology is a tool to ENHANCE learning, and Modification and Redefinition, in which technology TRANSFORMS learning. Transforming learning promotes higher order thinking skills such as analysing, evaluating and creating. In the REDEFINITION step, technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable without technology. In my lesson plan, Voki is used to give voice to an animal that will describe itself; without technology, this would be impossible. Thus my students are at the top of the ladder, making the impossible  possible, and developing 21st century skills such as, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration and Communication.

Last but not least, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, which is an updated version of the original Bloom’s Taxonomy, creates a hierarchy of learning activities in a digital environment. The aim of Blooms's Digital Taxonomy is to help teachers design lesson plans in which technology is used as a tool that will take students from lower to higher order thinking skills. According to this hierarchy, there are 6 levels of cognition expressed through verbs: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create. This levels are dependent from one another, that is to say, students can't create if they don't understand first. In my lesson plan, the idea is that students create the words of the talking avatar, imagining its name and how it would describe itself.  Since my students are very young, they'll need prompts in order to create the sentences, and that's why they will rely on the sample of the animal's flashcard. My students will invent and construct a descriptive text, applying what they've learn about animals' body parts. 




References:

Education, C. S. (2016, July 12). What is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqgTBwElPzU.

Education, C. S. (2016, July 12). What Is the SAMR Model? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=106&v=9b5yvgKQdqE.

Portal, E. (2018, February 7). Presentación del Plan Nacional Integral de Educación Digital (PLANIED) - Ma. Florencia Ripani. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1o3AcEBenI.

Imgenes de Google. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.google.com.ar/imghp?hl=es-419&tab=wi&ogbl.

Screenshots from: Teaching With Voki. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.voki.com/.