Isabel Pérez Torres
Isabel Pérez presented new ICT tools for a constructivist approach to teaching and learning.
You can have a look at her presentation.
She states that the requirements for learning are:
– Personal involvement
– Cognitive engagement
– Support and scaffolding
She adds “Be successful (help students be happy)”
The audience can watch an interesting video on the matter http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html which is worth watching.
She talks about Google applications, Glogster, Audacity, etc. also about collaborative spaces such as Bookmarks (drigo), Blogs, Wikis and microblogs (twitter) but she emphasizes the use of webquests and webtasks.
Two interesting ideas to highlight:
Twiducate (http://www.twiducate.com/), a platform where teacher and students get a channel and works like twitter.
Webasks: students must do something with the information, involving high order thinking skills. She suggests to built webtasks and webquests on wikis. Her key points on how to use your own webtasks:
- Use a template to reflect on the content
- Start from the evaluation criteria
- Find a big concept, brainstorm possible tasks connected to students’ interests
- Think in terms of language skills practice
- Asses the results together with the pupils
- Plan and support the learning process
- Simplicity
You can always have a look at her excellent webpage: www.isabelperez.com