Technological Tools for Educative Purposes


Original collage made in Fotor.com by María José Miranda

Technological Tools for Educative Purposes

By María José Miranda Guevara 
English and Preschool Teacher
Saturday, March 16th, 2019

Post 7

     In the past sessions of my Master's Degree I have learnt about different technological tools which work as innovative sources into our lessons. Those technological resources were the LoTi Framework, SlideShare, Fotor.com and Blogger. LoTi is a framework which helps teachers know in which level of technological implementation into their classroom they are. SlideShare is a free page where people can create presentation, comment on them, add audios and more. Fotor.com is a technological resource for us and our students to make collages. The last one to mention is this one, Blogger, which is a platform where people can blog about whatever topic they want, personalize their page, add images, documents , videos, essays and more. People can even give feedback and comment on each other's blogs.

          In the case of LoTi Framework , it helped me realize in which level I am standing in terms of the use of technology during my lessons. I realized how far I have come through this past years. Also It helped me realize in which areas I should become better to upgrade my LoTi level. I am planning to share it with other colleagues and help them upgrade their level, while I perfection mine. Even though I use too much technology, I must work on how to use it better to benefit my students. 

        I always use SlideShare during my teaching experience ,but I never use my own and original material. I plan to use SlideShare as a tool to enhance my speed during classes. I can avoid long time writing at the board, I can give students better graphics and examples, I can send them all the information and slide-shares with audios so they can practice at home by listening to good pronunciation and 100% accurate content related with the actual lessons. 

         Even though I always do collages I never saw them as an educational tool. After the previous lesson I started seeing it as a potential teaching and learning resource. Because it is easy to use I can teach my students to use it and for them to start illustrating all the works or put into an image their ideas instead of doing a mind map. Some students are visual and this app can help them to feel more comfortable in different activities. I can also use it for myself. Instead of doing a long PPT I can make a collage. It is even better because in that way my students can relate each topic that appears on the collage. 

        Blogger has been one of the tools I mention more often but now I am going to explain one of the specific tools blogger gives us which is embedding HTML documents into the blog. By learning how to embed those documents I can add into the blog other online documents as Slide-share presentations, Google quizzes , collages and more. They give us the opportunity that instead of giving our viewers only a link they can have the information right on the blog and they can even interact with the information instantly.     


            To conclude, all the past tools give a little extra and innovative touch to our lessons we just need to know how to use them properly. The LoTi framework must be used by the teachers to know where they are and to know what to do to upgrade their level. SlideShare can be used to save time and make our lessons more practical. Fotor.com is a non conventional but useful tool to give our students and to ourselves more ways to present and organize their information. The last one, Blogger, is the best tools of all because with the proper usage of HTML embedding all the previous tools can be posted into their blogs or into our own blogs to offer them more practical information. 

Comentarios

  1. Using Fotor, Slide-Share, and Blogger all together with pedagogical purposes can create synergies that benefit teachers and students.
    As you pointed out, innovation is one of the benefits that teachers can achieve and offer to their students to make their learning more interesting and at the same time more competitive to enable them to face the nowadays demands. Being a competent user of virtual tools can become in a comparative advantage for your students and also for yourself.

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    1. Patricia, I also believe in synergy and what it can produce among students and with the teacher. Innovation benefits everyone, the teacher and the learners.

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  2. María José, your post explains very well how useful are those technological tools for our students and obviously for us. We have learned important tips to present professional works to our students now on it depends on us where do we want to stand according to the Loti`s framework..

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    1. That's true, Roberto. It is now on you to decide what direction to take now that you are more aware of what you could be doing for your learners and for you, professionally.

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  3. Maria Jose, it is a very thoughtful reflection of yours. I also see how much you have gone so far as a language instructor. It is by far important to continue perfecting your use of technology, and thinking of helping others get exposed to LoTi will help many to become more "confident" in the use of tech tools in the classroom.

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