Hello! my name is Daiana Martinez. I am a teacher of English in two different schools in Argentina. I work with both primary and secondary school students in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

I looooove my job and enjoy spending time with my students. I love planning projects which are enhanced with technology as I find electronic devices crucial for the XXI century education.

I also enjoy reading books, watching films and travelling around the world. Every time I have the possibility, I pack my bag and start a new adventure to different countries and different cultures. I have a curious self which is delighted to learn about others even during the holidays.

I would like to share with you my reflection blog in which I write posts related to education, both in english and spanish.

http://daimartinez1.blogspot.com.ar/

In Argentina, has introduced a programme called "Conectar Igualdad" (Connect equality) which consists of giving netbooks to secondary school students who belong to state-run schools. If they finish thei course of studies successfully they can keep those netbooks. Besides, the government launched a postgraduate course about Education and TIC. The idea is to give teachers the necessary tools to incorporate netbooks to their lessons.

Some private schools took the decision to buy some netbooks which can be booked by teachers to use with their students. Both schools where I work bought 25 netbooks so that students profit from them.

One of those schools started a pilot programme in which students bring their own devices to class, so now almost all students from secondary school ad 6th form primary bring their netbooks or tablets to school.

Students communicate with anothers school in the world to ask yes/no questions in order to guess where the other school is located before they guess where we are.

These activities are part of a school project called "Bringing the world into the classroom".

Students communicate meaningfully with another school, they use the English language to ask questions and give answers. They also use their critical and analytical skills as they have to think carefully of their next questions which should give them crucial information to guess and win the game.

Besides students need to work as a team as they class is divided into different groups and each concentrates on different tasks: some do research on the interenet, some others use maps to locate the country, some others take desicions regarding the next questions and another group talks in front of the camera. Students need to work collaboratively if they want to guess where the other school is located.

As part of an asynchronous Mystery Game, students created this video with answers and clues so that another country like South Korea could play the game with us. Due to the fact that there is a wider time difference, there are some countries that we can't connect synchronusly, so we started sharing videos!

Students love playing games, why not creating their own with their set of rules characters and places?

The simplest thing I can tell students is that, at least, they need computing knowledge to make devices work when they get stuck!!

Our school is called Newlands, a bilingual school where students start using notebooks from an early stage. Secondary school launched the "bring your own device" (BYOD) programme a couple of years ago, so this year 6th form students in primary started bringing their devices to school, which can become rather difficult because each of them have a different device (notebook, tablet, smartphone) and even different operational systems. That's why Ale Redin (our ICT coordinator) decided to organize this activity in which secondary school students teach my students how to go about devices in class.

http://csunplugged.org/

Whenever I have to plan a collaborative activity I start by giving them a clear objetive for the task.

Then, I give students an assessment rubric so that they know what they will be evaluated and how they are expected to work during the task. I share those rubrics and in some cases we design them together.

After that, I give each student a clear role within the group, so that they understand that the efficiency and success of the group will depend of each of them paying their parts accordingly.

I liked the metaphor of the driver and the navigator to use in class with my kids !

FInally, when the task is shown, each students self evaluates their performance and we share our thoughts and impressions, following the rubrics.

I do notice that, in general, girls take more time to make their products look nicer and colourful. They pay an extra attention to aesthetics, whereas boys pay more attention to the content in itself or the resolution of the activity.

During these first months of the school year in my country my students have been carrying out a History project called "Industrial Revolution, curse or blessing?". During this proyect students used their devices to read an adpated version of Oliver Twist, they investigated about the author and the period in which they lived and then they used their devices to create a comic of a similar boy living similar situations but in a 21st century Argentina. Thye used storyboard that. In this way, we linked the project to literature.

Then, they watched and listened to some diary entries children working in factories wrote, so they replicated those entries, they wrote their own and now they are going to use fotobbable to record their own voices reading those letters.

Now, as a final task, we are planning to hold a forum to debate about the topic with schools from other parts of the world. We will use google hangouts and students will use their notes on the devices. Some students will become the jury and they will use todaysmeet in order to chat and come to an agreement on the "veredict".

These are just some activities a I have carried out recently, but last year I used other tools such as collaborative google docs to share information and create presentations; glogster , mural.ly, padlet or linioit to create posters in different situations, videos with slide.ly, animoto or even movie maker.

I would like to keep this vide in my diary so that I can come back to it in order to use the ideas suggested.

At school students started using scratch. Actually, some years ago one of my students created a game with scratch and showed it to all my class. He did it on his own and he created a beautiful game related to the project we were studying at that moment.

I have neber used robots in my schools but I imagine that can be used to study programming, maths, physics among others.

I found this video on the net which gives an example on how to use robots in literature. In this case the robot sees an image of an element from one of Shakespeare's plays and it tells the lines from the character who is related to that item!

A list of links helpful for Primary Computing curated by James Abela

http://www.scoop.it/t/primary-compu

My students have their personal sites in which they show their own process of learning the best way they can. They add each activity carried out in bearing in mind their personal style, interetsts and preferences.

I always have my blog to show students how to publish things and then they use their own to share their knowledge with the world. There is a variety of activities which cater for the different type of learners.

Here you'll find the links to some of my students' sites:

https://sites.google.com/a/colegionuevomundo.edu.ar/octi/

https://sites.google.com/a/colegionuevomundo.edu.ar/manu-d/

https://sites.google.com/site/emiliadellapaolera/

https://sites.google.com/a/colegionuevomundo.edu.ar/gaston-2014/

As far as searching information in google, I generally give them a variety of pages to read. I pre-select the pages I want them to read as I don't want them to find anything inapropriate for their age! However, when we need to carry out research, I always recommend students to check the extensions of the webpages to see if they are realiable or not. Next time I ask my students to investigate, I will ask them to go for KidsRex or Google Education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOUu1fldBbI

https://vimeo.com/29383001

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/5_7/leeandkim/

At school students have a special workshop in 4th form which deals with cyberbullying. The teacher in charge of it is Ana Lucía Castells Ruiz and she's been dealing with this topic at school for a couple of years. Students watch videos, reflect and make posters to talk about cyberbullying to the rest of the school.

Apart from that, I have regular talks with my students about posting online. They generally post pictures in their social networks and they even add pictures of friends who didn't want to be online.

I think that the videos and recommendations shared in this module are really useful to develop further talks and meetings with my kids.

The Learning Diary includes answers to the questions raised in each module

This is a very good Learning Diary. It is comprehensive as you have mentioned most of the topics discussed in each of the modules. I will keep the link to your diary so that I can access later on to try out the resources you recommended.

The Learning Diary shows that the author has reflected about the questions and topics raised on the course in the context of her/his own situation

While you answer the questions posed in each of the activities in the module, you give examples relating them to your own situation and school projects. I liked the photos and videos you posted, they show you are a step ahead regarding computing in the classroom.

The Learning Diary includes a lesson plan that follows all the criteria identified in section 4.8.1

This is a good lesson plan integrating elements covered in the course and making use of tablets. You could have develop other activities since there is only production. It is good that you used a topic you are already familiar with such as QR codes since you already know the lesson worked well!

The Learning Diary includes resources, posts, ideas, etc. directly from the course, from other course participants or from anywhere on the web that are relevant to the topics discussed.

You have done a good job at collecting resources from your own school projects which are relevant to the course and you’ve shown reflection as well

Well Done!

This is an excellent Learning Diary. It is comprehensive as you have mentioned most of the topics discussed in each of the modules. As a result, it will be a great resource to go over the entire course at a later stage. I will keep your link so that I can revisit your Diary later myself.

The learning Diary shows that the author has reflected about the questions and topics raised on the course in the context of her/his own situation

While you answer the questions posed in each of the activities in the module, you give examples relating them to your own situation and school projects. Through your answers and reflection I can have a clear picture of your school and class. Well done!

The Learning Diary includes a lesson plan that follows all the criteria identified in section 4.8.1

This is a great lesson plan integrating many elements covered in the course and making use of the training of fundamental skills such as problem solving. The plan has a very good balance of activities and there is a clear link to the stated aims.

The Learning Diary includes resources, posts, ideas, etc. directly from the course, from other course participants or from anywhere on the web that are relevant to the topics discussed.

You have done a great job at collecting resources from many different sources. I like how you have built yourself a catalogue of videos and material from each module on the course.

Congratulations!

by Jpierre Bourgeois

The Learning Diary is the proof of involvement and preoccupation for the topics proposed for debate. The ideas stated by the author indicate that the author has reflected over the ideas proposed.

by Iuliana Ivan