4.3 Create an infographic about your subject

Visual representations of information or data.

I created an infographic to be used in Natural Sciences, in 6th grade for the topic of the digestion using Canva.

Digestive Process by Marta Díaz-Madroñero Ramírez

Critical questions and problems encountered

At first I was overwhelmed by the ammount of templates that were available. I looked twice and I noticed that half of them were premium. However, it was not like other resources where the free version was terrible compared to the premium one, in this case the free ones were very interesting. 

I went ahead, chose a template and started adding my touch to it. I wanted to change the colours and I found out how to do it quickly: there is an option on the left bar called "more", then you click on "styles". There, you can find pre-made colour palettes instead of creating them by yourself, along with fonts.

Everything was too good to be true. Once again, the premium version ruined my ideas: most of the pictures were only available for the premium version. I had to look for the pictures outside Canva, adding them to my infographic giving credit to the authors. I used Flaticon for the pictures, changing the colour to match my infographic. I highly reccomend it, even though I could not save more than 3 for later, you can download as many as you want.

Discoveries

As many tools suggested by our master's degree teacher, I knew Canva but I had never used it before. I supposed it had basic resources, like images and frames. Nevertheless, when I started investigating I found out it has a lot of stickers, charts, lines... 

Moreover, you can add video and audio from your desktop, which is unusual for this type of plattform as they usually allow you to link resources or pay for the premium version.

Uses or connections

It has a lot of potential, specially for education: infographics, videos, lesson plans, bookmarks, schedules, posters... It can also be used as teachers to spread our own resources by using the templates for Facebook or Instagram. Even to create your resume and impress the principal of that amazing school you want to work at!

Martyrating

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Pros: 

• Easy to use
• Nice and varied free templates
• Wide options for customising the elements (colour, size...)
• Many free elements to use
• Wide variety of fonts
• Allows you to insert images, videos and audio
• Embed content from other apps

Cons: 

• Many pictures and templates are premium

See you in the next post, 

4.2 Design a mindmap for an educational project

Arrows, pictures, text boxes and a lot of colour as a way to organise ideas.

Mindmaps are an amazing tool, specially for learning. In my case, I wanted to make a project to learn the vital function of nutrition in Natural Sciences. The tool I used is coggle. This is an online plattform that allows the user to create mindmaps, even collaboratively! In my case, I used it to create a mindmap to be used collaboratively between the teacher and the students.  

The students from 6th grade would be divided in 4 teams and be given access to this mindmap. Using the links provided, their task is to complete their part of the mindmap, adding branches and categories if necessary. 

Critical questions and problems encountered

I felt completely lost at the beginning, the only thing I saw in my screen was this:

My intuition told me to click on the square right at the middle of the screen, I did it and I started playing with the features: 

The A symbol allows you to edit the text (bold, italics, how it is alligned and images), the link allows you to link websites, the image is for adding images and the lightning symbol lets you add emojis.

Discoveries

When I was halfway done, I discovered that you can change the colour and shape of the branches and the text boxes clicking with the right button. That was a huge discovery, as I am a very visual person and I rely a lot on colour. However, the options are limited for the free version. 

Uses or connections

The example I gave provides a great use for this tool, allowing for cooperative work between students. However, it is not necessary to have ICT resources in the classroom to use mindmaps; for example, they can be created by the teacher leaving blank spaces, print them and hand them in to complete during class. 

Another use is as a student myself, you can organise group works or your own projects thanks to this tool, facilitating visualisation of the whole picture.

Martyrating

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Pros: 

• Collaborative work.
• Links and pictures can be added.
• Text size personalisation.
• Moving branches and text.

Cons: 

• Limited range of colours and shapes for the free version.
• It is hard to get the hang of it at first.

That was it for today's post!

4.1. Create a comic to represent emotions

Comics! Such a fun and engaging way to learn! Today I will show a tool to create comics to use in your classroom. 

First of all, I would like to show you what I did. In my case I wanted to use my comics to teach emotions through History. First, you can see the comic that introduces the main characters, Josh and Sam, and their story: they stumble upon a magic book that takes them to different events in History to learn about emotions. In the second comic, you can see one of the chapters, which is about the Black Plague in the 14th century.

The idea behind this type of comic is that they can be created for each topic of Social Sciences, linking it with emotional intelligence, interrelating them in a natural way and leading to interesting debates between students. It will allow pupils to compare their own period of time with others and seeing how similar situations prompt the same emotions, seeing that even if it happened many years ago it still has relevance. In the case of this example, the comic is set in a pandemic, like the one we are living.  
Made with Storyboard That

Critical questions and problems encountered:

At first, I was a bit lost on which app to use. I tried Pixton, but to use most of the features you have to pay! I decided to switch and started from scratch with StoryboardThat. 

It is very intuitive. However, I had to look for help from my peers to find how to increase the number of cells (the option is at the bottom of the screen). 

When having to embed it, I had to carefully look for the option, as it is at the bottom and in a very tiny font. When pasting it into Blogger, I had to change its size, as it was too big for my blog template.

A problem that I encountered is that the free version only allows for two comics per week. You can solve it by creating an extra account if you are in a rush for a quick comic. 

Discoveries

This resource as a whole was a discovery for me! I hadn't heard of it before. 

One thing that I discovered while working with it is that you can copy whole cells, but I found out when I was almost done. Better late than never, I guess! (the option is on the bottom right corner, by the way)

The free version has a lot of content, like characters from different historical period, scenes, items, speech bubbles, etc. This tool allows for a lot of personalisation in terms of colour: skin, hair, clothes, walls, floor, furniture... Moreover, it has an option to change the time of the day and some features on the scenes. It even has thousands of fonts for the speech bubbles!

Uses or connections

This is an amazing tool for teaching any kind of topic, as it has a lot of scenes, characters and even science-related items. Going one step ahead, you can even ask your students to create comics of a certain topic to see if they understood, to work the features of a comic in Spanish Language or just for fun!

Martyrating

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Pros: 

• The free version contains a lot of items, which are varied.
• Easy to use and intuitive

Cons: 

• To make bigger comics you have to pay.
• Only two comics per week.
• You need to create an account to save your comics, even as an image.

That was it for today, Have a nice day!

3. Aggregated Content Curation

You PIN your INTERESTS

Smart name, huh? It's also an useful tool for teachers, let's dive in!

Critical questions and problems encountered:

At first I was a bit lost on how to use Pinterest. I knew about its existence, but I had never tried it before... So this was a difficult learning process, but I think I got the hang of it. It is pretty intuitive, they start by asking you questions about your interests so that you can start pinning right away!

My main worry was how was I going to store all the ideas I found. Well, you can create boards, like mine below. This way you can organise your posts in topics. As teachers, you could organise them in subjects or grades.

In my case, I created a board with Arts and Crafts resources, organised in sections. You can check them out by clicking here:

Discoveries

I also found something extremely useful. It turns out you can create sections inside each board. In my case I used them to store my resources according to their type: images, youtube, websites...

Uses or connections

Pinterest is an useful way for teachers to organise the resources they are already using or to store ideas for future projects. Moreover, it is designed to encourage the interaction between people, allowing for comments and following each other. It can be used not only as an educational resource, but in a personal way to look for inspiration for pictures, funny images to have a nice time or sources of information for any hobby you have, so it is quite nice honestly.

Martyrating

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Pros: 

• Facilitates storing ideas in an organised way
• Improves interaction between educators and creators of content
• You can add an extension to Chrome to pin anything you see on the net. 

Cons: 

• (not really a con, maybe something to take into account) Respecting other's licenses 

That's it, I hope it was useful!

2. Image attribution for a CLIL lesson

 

Boring, right? Yes, but necessary. 

As teachers we are used to create new materials. However, if we use others' images we must respect their authorship, as we would like others to do with ours. That is why we can use this website: https://creativecommons.org/choose/?lang=en to choose the license for our blog and our content by answering a series of easy questions. I already did mine (check the footer). Have you done yours?

Task: 

Our teacher asked us to practice authorship by looking for some images and thinking about how to use them in our CLIL lesson. In my case I chose images to use in Natural Sciences in the topic of the respiratory system. 

I obtained the images from Creative Commons itself, being able to choose the license I needed while searching. This is where I did it: https://search.creativecommons.org/  Under each picture you will find a link to the original picture as well as to the license it has. 

For my didactic unit in sixth grade, I would use this picture to create a worksheet, as I can modify it (it does not have the "no derivatives" logo). I would erase the words and some of the arrows, as there are too many. The idea is that they can fill it in by listening to descriptions made by me. I have chosen it because it is very clear and it will allow students to have a clear image of the respiratory system. 

"Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014" by Bruce Blaus. CC BY 3.0

I would use the second and third picture to create flashcards to explain that our body takes more oxygen when we are tired, compared to when we are relaed to give more oxygen to our limbs. I would add the word "exercising"and "relaxed" below as I can modify them due to the license they have. We would do the actions and see if our breathing has been modified. I have chosen them because the characters are attractive and will call student's attention. Moreover, they will understand the concepts in an easy way. 

"File:Man Out of Breath Cartoon.svg" by VideoPlasty is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

"File:Man Relaxing on the Beach Cartoon Vector.svg" by VideoPlasty is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Lastly, I would use pictures four and five in a Kahoot! about respiratory illnesses, in this case asthma. I believe that apart from teaching how our body works, it is important to know the illnesses we or people close to us may have. 

"Asthma Inhaler" by NIAID is licensed under CC BY 2.0

"Adult Using an Asthma Inhaler" by NIAID is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I hope you liked my post and you found it useful. Take care!

1. Cartoonize yourself

Today's task was to create a digital avatar of ourselves. Knowing me, I had to try some tools suggested by our teacher before choosing my favourite one. These are my avatars and next to them you will find the websites I used:

 Portrait Avatar Maker  

DoppelMe DM1797432HTR (that is my code)

 Funko Pop Designer

Now, going to my favourite tool: 

Critical questions and problems encountered:

Not many problems were found while using this app. First you have to download the app in your device (mobile phone or tablet) and create an account using an email, Facebook or linking it to Snapchat.

 From then on it is very intuitive: you are presented with an interface to choose the character’s physical characteristics, clothes and accessories. My biggest worry was which clothes to choose from the wide range provided! Plus, the accessories are very diverse and help adjust to cultures all over the world. 

No problems were encountered, even the app helps you set up the keyboard. That was one of my biggest worry before opening the app, but each and every step is scaffolded. 

Discoveries

Something I didn’t know as that apart from using it on a keyboard, you can add an extension to Google Chrome. This is very useful, as it facilitates adding Bitmoji from a computer. Clicking with the right button of the mouse gives the following options: 

Moreover, I didn’t know it can be linked to Kahoot! Look how cute my avatar is there!

Uses or connections

It is an amazing tool to personalise your teaching materials, specially if it is online schooling, as here we tend to miss the human factor. Moreover, if you print pictures of your Bitmoji you can use them in the classroom, like these ones:

Lastly, as a tech addict, you can also use them to text people through messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram or I Message) and in your email. 

Martyrating

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙 

Pros: 

• Easy to use
• Accessible
• Inclusive and varied designs 
• Connected to many apps

Cons: 

• Couldn't find any, to be honest.