Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

Nowadays, it is impossible to conceive education without the implementation of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). For this reason, in the last session the teacher showed us a few resources we could use in the future which are:

• Applications for character designing: Ifunface, Muglife, Snapchat, Talkr... Creating a commendable character to explain some contents helps promoting significative learning. This kind of tool it's not only useful for the teacher but also for the students who can apply it in the making of presentations.

• Genially: It allows you to create infograms, slides, interactive murals, graphics, tests, maps, audio, video, gifs, timelines, animations... It is a very useful tool to perform interactive activities.

• Thinklink: Similar to Genially but easier, it is appropriate for designing presentations with different links attached to videos, tests, songs...

• Microphone and tripod for mobile phones: allows you to record students' speeches and presentations in video or just audio.

Scaffolding 3: more techniques

Other methodological strategies used in language learning are:

• Slow down speeches and oral expressions paired with appropriate gestures.

• Repeat structures doing emphasis in problematic parts with pronounced intonation.

• Take advantage of students feedback to redirect the speech.

• Use visual organisers to accompany and complete the explanations (schemes, mind maps, Ishikawa diagram, videos...).

• Communicative schemes and grammatical structures.

• Error correcting codes.

• Total Physical Response (TPR):

Students internalize and understand the meaning of words and grammatical structures trough the repetition of different movements and gestures that the teacher perform. Thereby, the learning and comprehension of the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs... becomes more dynamic, intuitive and easier. This is a key technique in the first years of children's education where reading and writing isn't developed yet. 

• Storytelling techniques: 

This refers to the use of stories or tales to communicate complex information in a more dynamic and motivational way. Storytelling appears as a useful tool to teach abstract concepts and ideas, introducing connections between them and students' interest and context.