Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2014 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This project was the result of my participation in
the “EU-MAGIC – Effective Use of Modern
technology And Games In Classrooms”, a
pedagogical course for all teachers, organized by
Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education,
in 1st – 7th of July 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey. The
course was about using ICT in the classroom. I
learnt about useful techniques that can be used in
the classroom: educational games and ActivInspire.
Because the course location was Istanbul, one of
the most beautiful cities of Europe, I had the
opportunity to discover Istanbul and elements of
Turkish culture, civilization and history. There are
lots of historical and cultural places, such as Grand
Bazaar, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi
Palace, Basilica Cistern; also the trips after the
course sessions (Bosphorus tour and Adalar tour)
revealled the beauties and cultural richness of
Turkey; it was also the chance to observe Turkish
people, their behavior and socialize with the other
participants.
The training course was divided into two modules:
Using games to teach in the classroom and
Educational software "ActivInspire". The first day
was for Using games to teach in the classroom;
Mrs. Jarmila Novotna leaded the session about
games; she used a PowerPoint presentation
entitled “Communication in the classroom”, with a
lot of supplementary oral information; the .ppt file
included information about Language and
communication, Posing questions, Didactical
situation of formulation and Games focusing on
communication and terminology (How many things
can you think of that...?, Blackboard Bingo, What’s
the explanation?, Noughts and Crosses, Unusual
view, Correcting mistakes, Jumbled numbers,
Brainstorm round a concept, Geometrical puzzles);
this part included plenary sessions and tasks to do
in groups or pairs; we identified good examples
after doing those tasks and sharing them. During
this part l found out that:
- the focus nowadays is put on communication
teacher-students and also among students; the
attention shifts from language of texts to language
of discourse;
- how to create good question is important too; a
„good“ question requires more than mere referring
to known facts; students may learn something
when they answer it, and the teacher can learn
something about his/her students from their
answers; there exist several answers that could be
accepted; we can start from the end or adapt a
commonly used question;
- interdisciplinarity is important to achieve success;
a “good” question in interdisciplinary situations is a
question that combines many approaches; for
example, mathematical modelling as well as
observation of real situation typical for natural
sciences;
- the teacher's role is changing: a moderator of
debate, the teacher now assures that the debate
rests in the objective, does not decide about
correctness but helps students learning to explain,
use and accept legitimate arguments, to defend
their statements.
Each day also contained countries presentations by
the participants (PowerPoint presentations,
websites etc.). The next days were focused on the
educational software called ActivInspire, whose
presentation was held by Mr. Ersin Ozseven; this
part included presentation of the software using
internet, laptops, microphone, video projector and
doing tasks in plenary sessions and individually.
ActivInspire, a Promethean tool, includes a vast
suite of easy-to-use tools for creation and delivery
of dynamic lessons that can be saved, edited and
shared; l learnt that l can import PowerPoint
presentations, insert photos, video, music, weblinks
into new lessons, or use ActivInspire annotation
tools to instantly get students actively involved with
existing content and applications.
The most important thing for me is that ActivInpire
can be used in lessons even if l do not have an
interactive whiteboard. It is easy to use, and
interdisciplinary lessons can be very attractive for
students. l learnt how to work with the menu bar
and the toolbox: Menus, Switch between files,
Design mode, Pin toolbox, Docking toolbox, Floating
toolbox, Customizing toolbox, Resource Browser
etc. During the course l used my own laptop to do
the tasks from the easiest ones to the end of the
training – how to work with texts, with shapes and
pictures, with the pen tool, with pages, with ways
to reveal answers etc.
The training course was very well planned; the
trainers divided the course into the two parts I
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