FACILITATOR

Hello there,

I'm this week's facilitator, Ben.

This weeks task handed out to us by our marvelous ICT teacher was the elaboration of a comic involving the uses of technologies for learning, in our case we decided to use the style known as "13, Rue del Percebe" as seen below.

To accomplish this we divided the task equally taking one room for each member of the group. After we all scanned our drawings, Charlie added them all to the building and as he was the Star then presented our project to the class via videoconference.

And that would be it for my post, see you next time!

TRANSLATOR

Hello everyone! This week Celia and Molly are the translators. 

This week we had to make a comic based on the design of some famous comic. We chose 13 rue del Percebe

COMIC: Making a comic book is a fun and creative activity that children usually like, as it's an entertaining and stimulating task that helps them develop their imagination and sense of humour. 

Some of the advantages of making a comic book is that it is accessible to children, facilitates comprehensive reading and develops skills such as comprehension, interpretation, synthesis.

13 RUE DEL PERCEBE: is a comic book created by Francisco Ibañez in 1961.
It is about a building with several characters like Don Senen who has a grocery store, the doorman, Don Huron, who libes in a sewer, a mad scientist, a veterinarian...
The character of mad scientist was censured because during Franco's time, as this scientist created horrifying beings, he had to eliminate him under the reason of "only God can create life".
The comics were always done on the same template of a building, with the same characters whose conversations are a series of jokes.
This comic series was so famous that series like "Aquí no hay quien viva" or "La que se avecina" were inspired by it.

ZOOM: Everyone is still in quarantine, so we've had to find a way to communicate while we make our comic. We spoke a bit over WhatsApp but ultimately decided that it would be best to talk over Zoom. We spoke and worked together for a couple hours.

COMEDY: For the 13 rue del percebe, it is important that there is an element of comedy and cleverness in each cell. During our call, we made sure that everyone's cell had a joke in it. 

CREATIVITY: For this activity, everyone worked together and made a cell to all come together in the main comic. It was important that we all had a different idea to make it unique. Carlos created the concept and we all made ours based on that. Everyone drew their own part and it is clear that there are 9 different styles in our comic. 

1. 

HISTORIAN

Hello there, I hope you are coping well with the quarantine and keeping yourself busy! 

Because of COVID-19 our classes are still online, so we all met up via zoom on Tuesday morning from 10 to 11. Linda told us what our new task would be: after reading the text „21st century skills - Rethink How Students Learn“ (Lemke, 2010) about the three innovational ideas with technology for teaching we are supposed to reflect them in a graphic story. 

First of all I will say how the roles of the week were devided:

Facilitator: Ben

Historian: Martha 

Curator: Alex, Alicia

Translator: Celia, Molly, 

Analyst: Marta, Natalia

Star: Carlos

We could decide which format to use for our graphic story. The options were cave art, hieroglyphics, cartoons, photo comics, superhero comics, modern comics and 13 Rue del Percebe Style. As a group we chose the last one. This is the example of the Rue del Percebe that Linda showed us.

Charlie had the idea to call the comic „30 days of confinement“, related to the situation with COVID-19. He designed the building with empty rooms, so each person in the group could think of a graphic situation for each room. Here is the template he created: 

The problem that connects all rooms is that everyone in the house has problems with the internet connection and the people in the rooms think of different ways to deal with this. 

On Wednesday evening we met up via zoom to discuss each of our ideas and talked about how we could make them funnier.

After that we all sent our graphics to Charlie, who then added them to the template that he made and colored them. 

On thurday we met up with the whole class via zoom again to present our finished projects. A lot of people had technical difficulties and after a while Lindas connection got bad, so she did not show up in the meeting anymore. A lot of students stayed online for a while but then after a bit it seemed like nothing was changing, so I decided to leave the zoom meeting. 

We then posted our comic in our instagram account. 

CURATORS; 23rd - 27th

Good evening!🥒
Welcome once again to our blog, how have you been doing lately? From the bottom of our hearts, we hope you're doing fine and that it is the same for all your loved ones. Please, keep in mind how important it is to be cautious and to follow all the instructions we're given, staying at home and protecting not only ourselves but also everyone else out there.

This week it's been us, Alex and Alicia, the ones that have taken the role of curators on behalf of our group. We're quite excited about it, as it is our first time being in charge of this and it is also the only remaining role we have, so let's get started, shall we?

We've only really used two sources of information in order to do this activity, which are the following:

1. The main ideas of the work, also known as the "4 main potentialities of ICT in the classroom", were taken exclusively from "21st Century Skills: Rethinking how students learn," by Lemke. Mostly, we paid attention to the three types of innovation that were highlighted: the fuel for a knowledge-based economy, democratization of knowledge, and participatory learning. This document was sent to us by our teacher:

Lemke, C. (2010). Innovation through technology. 21st-century skills: Rethinking how students learn, 243-272.

2. To have a clear view of the type of comic we were going to create, we looked up information regarding the "13 rue del percebe," by Francisco Ibáñez. Our teacher provided us two webpages with information regarding types of comics and how can we make them become a powerful and useful tool at school; however, we stuck to the main idea of digging further into this specific kind. This is an interesting article we came across:

Robles, J. M. (2018, 23 enero). Así sería hoy la España de '13, Rue del Percebe'. Recuperado 26 marzo, 2020, de https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historias/2018/01/23/5a60de4ae2704edb3b8b45a9.html

We were thrilled to see that another author had had the same idea as us, of bringing the classic comic to life in the current era, and although their comic is more based on the social aspects of nowadays, and ours on the technology, they still go wonderfully well together.

Lastly, as we all are always looking for more resources and tools to take advantage of as not only students, but as teachers, we would like to point out the fact that the program we used for drawing digitally, and tracing the hand-drawn parts, is one called Sketchbook, for pc, which is... FREE! We're sure some of you will find it useful.

Here is an updated version of our concept map:

That would be all for today! We sincerely hope you have a lovely week, and stay tuned for more! 🥒

ANALYSTS

Hello everyone! We are Marta and Natalia and this week we have been the analysts.
So here we are going to answer the questions about this week and make a reflection about it!

QUESTIONS:

a. What was the best part of the activity?
The best aspect of the entire activity is being able to work with comics, some of us really liked the idea of drawing and the are very good at it so the result was very good.

b. What was the worst?
Not everyone was involucred the same but we managed to do the work on time, but we all need to be more involved.

c. What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?
When we saw the comic fnished, it was so grateful and we were very proud of our mates for creating that comic page.

d. What was the worst?
When we suddenly realized that we were not talking everything and we needed to talk more and put things in common, and if a problem exists try to solve it.

e. What have you learned?
We have learn how to draw in a graphic tablet, and draw in a more comic way. We have also learn how to make jokes with the ict.

f. What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?
As we have said in posts before, our good relationship, we have to keep having a really positive environment.

g. What do you need to improve –as a group- for the next weeks?
Being a little more diligent and responsible when it comes to doing every work  in advance, and not leaving it for the last minute. Also communicating a little more.

h. How THIS content is related to other contents in the course and your degree?
It is very useful in how you plan complex activities for the classroom, because everyone knows how to draw, but not everyone knows how to plan and carry on a comic and make it with sense of humor. It’s also really helped us grasp the concepts of Lemke principles, which are  very useful and engaging for the students.

i. Is there any evident social connection of this content (news, politics, etc.)?.
There are of course various obvious connections, but the most relevant, or important one for us is the aspect of working with humor about quarentine. as in our educational system, classes are often too large and make everything more complicated, imagine if we talk about online classes!!! it is such a mess, like our comic shows.
Quarentine has shows us how to learn by videoconferences, how to organizate a online class, to be prepared if when we will be teacher this situation happens be prepared. And to reflect about opportunities and how not everyone has the same.

REFLECTION

According to this week, we have been noticing the effects of first-person confinement; never better said. The lack of communication and meeting has passed us a bill making us understand how important it is to relate as people. Still, we have been able to put ourselves before adversity and continue with the only important thing that is to continue our lives as normal. The development of the tasks has been both efficient and individual on some occasions, since we have worked a little at our air. On the other hand, we have had one of the most emotional moments when putting the cards on the table and talking about the few misunderstandings we have had as a group (all derived from the confinement and stress that the situation causes). In relation to activities, this week we have developed our creativity to the maximum by making a comic book where we reflected the use of ICT in education; this has been an activity, in my view, it was a very entertaining and entertaining activity that I think we all enjoy.

TRANSLATOR (16/3-20/3)

Hi! Welcome back to our magnificent blog! We're Alex and Carlos, and we're here to propose to you some information relevant to the activities we've planned for this week!

As you must know, we're quarantined in our houses, so we had to plan our activities exclusively in an online version, and this is where our concepts come in.

TIK TOK:

Tik Tok is a very on-trend social media platform where you can only post short videos (less than one minute long). You have many different tools at your disposal, such as sound editing, face altering filters, and music and sounds to play on your videos.

VRCHAT: 

VRCHAT is another social media site where you have the possibility to create a virtual world to share with anyone around the globe. It also allows you to explore other people's worlds.

PADLET:

Padlet is an information sharing platform in which you create a digital board that you can fill with anything, like links to videos, files, photos... It's very useful especially when you want to have all your sources in one accessible area, without needing to bookmark each interesting website you find, so for research or academic purposes it's a very commonly used tool.

SCRIPT: 

While we know that "script" is a vague term, we thought it necessary to include it in our list, since it's of vital importance when planning a story-telling activity. The script refers to exactly what is going to happen in the story. It has the dialogues, the locations, the needed props (or atrezzo), when each character comes or goes, etc. It is the most important part of any production, since without a proper script you either have no story to tell, or you can't tell it properly.

ATREZZO (PROPS):

The atrezzo, more commonly known as props, refers to the different elements you will need to use in a particular scene to comply with the script, and to set the ambience for the story you're telling. For example, if your character is reading a book, your actor will need to have a real book in their hands in order to illustrate that properly, you can't pretend to read a book without a book. In that case, the book would be part of the atrezzo. Props really help bring the story to life, and some of them have ended up being iconic, and very recognizable, like for example Harry Potter's glasses.

We hope these terms were all useful and helped you gain a more insightful perpspective of our ideas, however, like in anything, there are some negative aspects you could benefit from taking into consideration. 

For instance, using Tik Tok with your students, while being very engaging, can also be a source of distraction for the less focused or determined students. Another hurdle could be the fact that maybe not all of your students have access to the necessary technology needed to use certain tools, such as the VRChat, which might require a certain level of internet connection, abilities of the computer, or even user dexterity.

Even taking into account these minor set-backs, we believe that we had very interesting and plausible ideas within the online realm, and as challenging as it may be sometimes to bring these ideas to life, the end result is worth it, because you will end up succeeding in not only teaching your students a new skill, and the topics which you used them for, but also in allowing them to have fun while they learn, which is the best possible outcome.

Thanks for reading us, and we hope to see you soon! 

CURATOR

This is Martha and today I'm going to talk about the different information sources we used for our work this week!

Due to COVID-19, we could not go to university to prevent the spread of the virus. Linda organized an online class with a video-call feature, so we could all meet up virtually and talk about how we are going to continue the course online. We are going to meet via this platform twice a week so we can present the work we all have done each week. Also, the stars from each group presented the work they did for the past week.

Linda started the challenge #westayathome. She asked us to upload a video to a dropbox folder that she shared with us in which we explain why we are staying home in times of the spread of the coronavirus. She has already made and uploaded the video using all those videos to promote the message.

Here is an updated version of the concept map:

ANALYST - REFLECTION

Good evening! I'm Alicia, and I'd like to present a reflection in regard to our work during this week on behalf of Pickle RICT. Shall we start?

This week has certainly been a curious, yet sad one. We've gone through situations that we could have never expected to happen, maybe because it resembles some sort of film plot. It's always been common for people to ask themselves "why" and "how" do things happen, and sometimes similar questions to this rise, without a dark tone to them, such as what would we do if we were to live for two months straight without leaving our houses, what would we do if we were to a deserted island, or even If we'd like to be part of a situation which resembles "The Walking Dead."

Many changes have taken place during these few past days, and we need to be ready for the ones that are yet to come... But despite that, we're all working together and doing our personal best to prove that we're fighting for our future and for the people we want to become. It's a complex situation, for sure, but I believe we can all use it for improving ourselves and gaining healthier habits. Because of the COVID-19, some people have realized the importance of their actions, having solidarity and staying at home for both their own health and everyone else's. But sadly, not everyone follows this rule, claiming that they're not doing the quarantine because of plenty of reasons that seem legit for them. I firmly think that by making the #WeStayAtHome video our Resources and ICT teacher, Linda, has put together, we have learned a bit more about being aware of our actions and at least, I do hope we've prevented someone of going out; thinking about the possible consequences instead, and staying at home.

It was been because of this massive coronavirus around the world that the task we've had to do for this week changed. Instead of working on the "Un Día en el Cole de mi Maestro" activities, we were told to design an online activity that could be used to teach the same contents, but in a similar situation to the one we're currently living under. We were lucky to work with storytelling, as we were put together with another group whose task was the same as ours, so we were able to put our thoughts and ideas in common, doing a brainstorming. Nonetheless, it wasn't as helpful and successful as we thought it would be, probably because we were lots of people and it was hard to let everyone's ideas be heard, so we failed at making the most out of it. That was probably the worst part of it, but at the same time, we had lots of fun when listening to what the other group's activity consisted of. We loved their props!

As for the workgroup, being honest, this week has been chaotic. Barely nobody has shown interest in the tasks and we've been in a rush until the very last moment before the deadline, presumably because of the changes of schedules, but this is something we must definitely work on, as there's not enough communication between the group members and there's obviously an unbalanced amount of dedication and interest shown for the sake of the group, which is sad to see, although it also awakes the feeling of wanting to do better the next time, even though it sometimes feels as if we're just getting worse as a group, not because of some loose gears, but because of the whole system itself. We are supposed to work together and care for one another, instead of limiting ourselves to writing down our names in the "roles for the week" message and waiting for someone else to tell us what to do, or even read. I utterly believe in us as a group. We have lots of strong points: engaged people, students who are great at expressing themselves, creative members, cheerful ones... But lately, our weaknesses seem to cover the positive ones, and we need to change this.

The worst part of the activity was seeing how people disconnected from it, they changed from being completely engaged back in the classroom, to not saying a thing afterward up to the point of having a strong division of tasks, when we all should work as a group.

Moving onto the activities themselves, we have learned to manage ourselves through VRChat and TikTok, the two platforms we designed our activities for. Those who were unfamiliar with it learned about them, and those of us who had previous knowledge about them, still learned a couple of new things, such as how difficult it is to create your own model from scratch for VRChat.

Finally, in regard to the existence of a social connection, there is for sure. For instance, the whole reason behind this activity is COVID-19 itself, but fostering the use of apps such as TikTok for educational purposes allow the students to learn to use a fantastic tool they'll most likely be familiar with, but would have never played with it that way because it does not appear on the "trendy" side of it, so it opens the students' horizons. 

STORYTELLING? LEVEL IT UP WITH VRCHAT

Good morning, afternoon or evening, dear readers! We're the Pickles, once again, and we're here today to finally dig further into how could a storytelling activity be conducted in a similar situation we're currently leaving regarding the COVID-19 while making it fun for the students, always fostering their creativity by encouraging them to take part in innovative, dynamic activities. This week's posts will be, however, slightly different than the usual, as we'll also include the Historian part here, in order to build a more holistic view. I'm Alicia, and as the facilitator throughout this week, I'll introduce our wonderful ideas.

In order to do so, we had formerly chosen two different ways to portray it, but in the end, we will only be explaining in-depth the one that we believe to be the most creative one. Nevertheless, we decided to create a padlet which contains all the relevant info, so please make sure to click here if you want to have a more holistic view of our activities. However, it'd be kind of boring to go straight into it, don't you think? Thus, we'll begin talking about the first idea we had. So without further ado, let's begin!

TikTok

We're positive you're already quite familiar with it. TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, is an app that focuses mainly on videos; most precisely, music videos. People dance, sing or mainly lipsync their favorite songs while filming themselves... But these are only the most common ones! It's worth keeping in mind how diverse the TikTok community is, so despite being classified as "cringy" by so many people, you can still find talent there with people who work very hard in order to create amazing content, such as timelapse drawings, makeups, or even transitions that will leave you speechless.

Now then, how could we use TikTok for creating a storytelling activity? Well, it's quite simple, honestly, so we've going to explain it briefly in a couple of steps. Nonetheless, if you're not that used to the app, we recommend checking our padlet here where we've already uploaded the basics to become a TikToker.

1. The script of the story will be given to them. All the team members need to have the app, as they'll be filming different parts. This constitutes the epistemic design.

2. They'll need to distribute the different characters and each one of them must create their own props.

3. They'll need to organize the different scenes and the timing, knowing that they can only film a 15 seconds long video if they're using a previously generated audio, but they can film up to a minute if they don't choose any audio.

4. They'll need to establish order, as the first video uploaded must be the end of the story so people can scroll down through their page as see the whole story in the right order.

The understanding of their classmates by working in groups and dividing the different parts of the whole story into smaller, different videos belongs to the social design, whereas the set design would be introduced through the props, clothes, and all the materials that were used.

In regard to the evaluation, students' creativity will be greatly valued. This includes the props, clothes, and even the audio choice, as well as how the act is performed.

VRChat

Besides it being a great tool for tasks such as these, the idea of the students not being together while performing the act seemed a bit odd for such a methodology, as each one of them would be in charge of creating a video by themselves and even if the outcome was great it would be weird to not have the characters interact with one another directly. Therefore, we kept thinking about it and we figured out the one idea that we firmly believe to work the best: VRChat.

Now then, the main idea would be the same: students would be put together in groups and they'd be given a script, but even if they cannot physically be together, they would virtually be. This platform is easy to use and quite fun and entertaining, too, allowing them to choose the avatars they want and visit a wide range of words, from a simple house to the most fantasy-looking spaceship. They only need a computer or a laptop and an Internet connection. The program can be downloaded for free from Steam and they don't even need an expensive device such as Oculus Rift to play, as they can use their keyboard.

In addition, they can even create their own models and worlds... Although that's quite more complex, yet nobody's going to stop them if they want to learn!

VRChat offers extremely intuitive controls. Therefore, these would be the required tools:

1. The script of the story that is going to be portrayed.
2. A computer/laptop.
3. VRChat.
4. The "world" or maps where the story's going to take place.
5. The "cast"; the models that are going to be used to portray the story.

Following the ACAD model, the students will follow these steps:

SET DESIGN:

The students will use VRChat along with all the models it offers and they can either take screenshots or film the whole story by recording the screen with a program such as bandicam, although newer devices with Windows 10 allow the user to record it by pressing the Windows button + G. Then they will put the video together and edit it with a video editing software, such as Sony Vegas or Adobe Effects, although they will be encouraged to use a free platform such as Movie Maker.

SOCIAL DESIGN:

They will be divided into different groups to perform the task. Each group will have the necessary amount of students to cover all the characters and they will equally take part in the activity, giving their opinions and choosing the models. Thus, they will have had to divide their work into smaller pieces so they can pay attention to them in a more individualistic way, but always keeping in mind that the whole group must participate and give their opinion in regard to the activity.

By doing this, we'll be fostering students' tolerance, confidence, and critical thinking, which happens to be essential.

EPISTEMIC DESIGN:

By giving them the script they will have the base instructions to perform well in the task, but they will be the ones that are going to show what they've learned so far through the activity itself, so they will learn to be responsible with their own tasks.

OUR PERSONAL FAVORITES!

This is the world we liked the most. It consists on a huge forest with a large lake on it that also contains a house, which could be use for grandma's.

Moving in depth into the Historian part, we've come across the following articles:

Firstly, we've chosen this video, which focuses on the uses that Virtual Reality can have in education. In this case, a more complex device is used to get a complete feeling of belonging to that virtual world, instead of using just the keyboard to move around. It's fun and entertaining, and it could certainly be used in the near future. It is also worth mentioning how useful it'd be in situations like the one we're currently leaving, as it'll be something new and they won't get tired of it that fast.

Secondly, we have looked around our classmates' blogs only to find quite unique ideas. For instance, we loved what The Outsiders said regarding adapting ourselves to the situation we're currently living, changing everything that's been already designed due to a sudden change. As teachers, having a plan B, C or even D always comes handy and they make the difference.


Last of all, these are the roles for this week:

Facilitator: Alicia
Historian: Natalia and Marta
Curator: Martha
Translator: Alex and Carlos
Analyst: Celia
Star: Ben

And that's all for this post. Stay strong and have a lovely week, at home! 

Translator

Hello! I'm Celia and I'm the translator.

I'm going to talk about last week.

We continued with"UDCMM" and we did the augmented reality activity.

With augmented reality, children have the opportunity to explore the environment around them in a more attractive and interesting way, and there is no need to leave the classroom, which is also an advantage for the teacher, who can thus pay more attention to the curiosities of each child.

It contains many ways of seeing the world, with virtual reality images, 3d objects, videos, audios...

One of the advantages that this activity offers is the development of autonomy and creativity in the student and also that it is not very complicated to carry out since you only need a tablet, mobile or camera.

With this activity, children enjoy a lot while they learn.

However, the use of a device containing a camera and internet access are requirements for this activity can also become a disadvantage, as we know that schools are improving their technological materials but nowadays not all of them have a good internet connection or technological devices. It is clear that this activity is innovative and can give very good results, but if it is done with slow or old devices that generate many problems the activity can be boring for students and they will lose interest.

The next day we were also going to do activities with children, however, at the last minute, we were informed that this was not going to be possible due to the fact that the coronavirus has been installed in Spain for a long period of time, forcing us to remain in quarantine for at least fifteen days.

But what is COVID-19?

It is a very contagious virus that can be caught by the entire population, but it especially affects the elderly and people with respiratory or heart problems or who are immunosuppressed.

But don't worry!

There are several ways to avoid contagion or spreading it to others. To do this, we must wash our hands well, keep a meter away from people and, most importantly, DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE!

So, for these days when children can't go to school but must follow, some of the tasks that teachers can send to their students are

-Keep reading, teachers could offer some easy to find book titles on the internet or at home so they don't lose the habit of reading.

-Do homework, on topics already given in class because, if children have to learn by themselves it would probably be difficult and boring for them.

-Exercising with parents through games is a good way to strengthen family ties and not lead a sedentary life.

We believe that current conditions are not the best for learning, but we must always look on the bright side and be optimistic. We are!