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.
