Reflection on the use of Web 2.0 in Santafesinian schools

Our last practical work for ECO – Materials Design was to plan a didactic sequence using at least one Web 2.0 tool. A couple of classmates and I had to teach present continuous and clothes, so we developed our sequence using Voki, which allows users to create customized talking characters. Our idea was to ask our students to imagine their Vokis were celebrities walking down a red carpet and make their virtual characters say what they were wearing. Then, we would share our Vokis on Edmodo or Facebook.

Reflecting upon this practical work, I can say that we didn’t make as much use of Web 2.0 tools as we could have done. In most of our activities we used flashcards to elicit vocabulary and play games, and printed worksheets to learn and practise the present progressive. The only technological tools we used were an old fashion video on Youtube and Voki so, in this sense, the work left a bit to be desired . Looking back, I think we could have made the lesson a lot more modern and technological.

However, thinking about the reality of the few Santafesinian schools I know, I wonder whether we would be able to carry out even this simple task with Voki. Public and most of private schools in my city haven’t got internet connection (in fact, I downloaded the Youtube video and made a screenshot of my Voki sample to show our classmates the lesson plan), many of the netbooks the National Government gave students (Conectar Igualdad programme) do not work, and lessons this year have been incredibly fragmented thanks to holidays, strikes and teacher training. So, if we were to teach this didactic sequence in a real school to real students… would be able to?

A little bit of humour? to close. This cartoon represents a little bit what I mention in the last paragraph. 

References:

Picture retrieved from this page.