UDCMM DAY 3 - HISTORIAN

Good evening, dear readers! I'm Alicia, and I'm excited to bring a new post today, as the Historian.

This week has been a tricky one for us, and we expect that it's been the same for all the other groups. Due to the situation the whole world is currently concerned about, there have been some changes in our schedule... But worry not, we'll talk more about this during the week that is about to begin.

Throughout this whole week, from March 9th to 15th, we kept working on "Un Día en el Cole de Mi Maestro" (UDCMM). We were assigned to work with Augmented Reality on Tuesday 10th in order to explain how the water cycle works, and it was a great experience! We only got to work with two students, but the activity was truly enjoyable nonetheless. In addition, I was in charge of conducting this activity, taking the role of the star as well, so I can go a little bit further into the ideas behind the task design. Let's talk a bit about it, shall we?

The activity itself was divided into four different parts:

1. Firstly, we introduced ourselves to the students and explained what the main topic was about. As soon as it was presented, we asked them if they knew what the water cycle consisted of. One of them hesitated a bit, but the other immediately answered with all the information he knew, along with a couple of jokes. This allowed us to see where should we start from, according to their prior knowledge and even according to the atmosphere that surrounded them, which appeared to be quite good. Both of them got along nicely, despite their different personalities.

2. Secondly, we let them choose between a cloud, a raindrop, and the sun to represent themselves. The objective of this activity was to explain how all those three elements are very different, but equally as important within the water cycle. In this case, as we only had two students with us, they chose the sun and the cloud, so we focused on the process of evaporation, highlighting the relevance of the elements that are needed for it to happen.

3. Thirdly, we moved to the main activity where they would be using Augmented Reality:

• We showed them the 2D template and a 3D model, asking them what the main difference between them was. Of course, it was the fact that the perspective was not the same, as they could touch the various mountains of the model, but the template was just a mere piece of paper. Then, we explained to them that they would make the template come to life, but the model seemed kind of dull, right? So in order to make it look better, we told them to color them using their creativity. We wanted to see pink, orange, or yellow mountains... And one of the students even drew a pig on the sea! They were both quite creative and original, to say the least, and that's what we were trying to foster through this activity as well.

• Once they were done coloring the templates, we gave them a smartphone with the app we'd be using in order to make their designs come to life and explained to them how it works. We used Chromville Science, and they loved it! They were so excited when they saw the drawing rise, and they were especially keen on the small plane that moved around the model. They played a bit with it, clicking everywhere, familiarizing themselves with the app.

4. Fourthly and last, we highlighted the importance of saving water, as it is a scarce asset. We suggested some ideas to save water and asked them to add their own. Afterward, we introduced a game in which they had to save as many liters of water as possible. To do so, two different props were offered:

• A bucket, with a total of 21 questions on it and pieces of velcro around them, but missing answers.
• A cloud, full of waterdrops with an answer on each one of them, with velcro underneath.

Time went by quite fast, but we managed to do everything we had planned and it was such a pleasure to work in this activity.

However, due to the recent events in regard to the COVID-19, we were unable to receive students on Thursday. Instead, we were grouped together with the Cheetah Girls and presented our stopmotion story to them. Both groups had been working on this activity, so we had the opportunity to learn more about different techniques that can be used in storytelling and that will definitely come at handy once we become teachers.

Furthermore, aside from taking part in each others' activities, we also began a task that we'll be talking about this week... But this is a spoiler-free zone, so I won't say much! But putting it simply, we had to think about how could a storytelling activity be portrayed in a quarantine situation such as the one we are currently living. So keep tuned, and see you in our next post!