PGI410188-41010064DO/ME (20202) - Tecnologias em Ensino e Aprendizagem

Hello, again! 

In general, I enjoyed the activities proposed by Stanley (2013). I think some of them need to be updated considering that most learners are not into blogging nowadays. For instance, in the activity social-networking writing group, we could ask students to create a Twitter account that they would use to comment on a hot topic. They could write single tweets or threads. The activity I liked the most was myths and legends, but I would probably adapt it to use with superheroes.

Hey there, everyone!

In my opinion, some of the activities are quite outdated (e.g. blogs are not so common anymore). Therefore, I would update these ideas using some Social Media instead (taking into account the debate we had in the first unit of this course, hahaha). Twitter is a micro-blog and it could work just fine. Moreover, I did not really like the idea of the class Wiki. My students do not even like to post on our Google Classroom, I cannot see this happening with a wiki page then. My favorite activities were the 7.5, 7.6, 7.14, and 7.19. I will definitely adapt and use them with my students (they are all adults). Furthermore, I really liked the recommendation of the website https://www.imagineforest.com/ during today's class. It is really amazing! I am looking forward to using this as homework for my students!

Hello!

Concerning writing, I agree with William and I think some of the ideas might be a little be outdated. However, I really enjoyed the idea of creating a blog for the students to write a summary of the class. I am not really sure how much the students would enjoy this (or how much they would just copy their friends) but I think it would be useful to track how the students are going in relation to our classes and if they are enjoying the classes. 

The activity that called my attention was 7.8 - Interactive Story. I think working collaboratively to write something could be profitable to the students. In this way, all the students can contribute with what they know and learn from their classmates. Also, as William has also mentioned, I really liked the website that our colleague presented in the class (imagineforest), and this would be my adaptation in this activity. Moreover, perhaps working in groups could be more beneficial as well (as in Variation 1), the students could all read each others' stories afterward.  

Hello! 

The activities are again very interesting, and they could be easily adapted to receive some updates in relation to the platforms and social networks. So, I would like to use many of the ideas, but an activity that called my attention was the one about Myths and Legends (activity 7.5), presented by Tatiana in our class. In my opinion, the theme of the activity is amazing, and it could interests learners a lot, particularly young teenagers. However, I think it would work better if students first researched the legend or myth of their choice in order to obtain the prior knowledge necessary to write about it. In this way, the teacher could also take the opportunity to talk over plagiarism and how to avoid it when researching and writing about a topic. 

I would really like to work with 7.9 Developing a story, where students can write texts based on a story starter provided by a website. I think this activity would be fun and would help students to feel more safe when writing a text, because sometimes students can have some difficulty to come up with a plot for a story. I would adapt this activity so that each student gets a random starter because in the end the class would have many different texts. I also think it would be nice for them to present their stories to the school or to other students. 

Hello!!! :D

I agree with my colleagues that some of the activities suggested by Stanley are outdated (it is a bit of a challenge to keep updated in the age of modern technology), but I also think that these activities could be easily adapted to be more realistic to our current apps and resources. I really enjoyed 7.5 Myths and legends, in which we can engage our students with cultural stories; 7.6 Five sentence photo story; 7.8 interactive story; 7.9 developing a story; 7.10 Crazy stories or poems; 7.12 Do you dream?;  7.13 Message from the past; 7.15 Sensationalist reporting; 7.18 Pros and cons. I guess this chapter had the biggest number of activities I would like to use with my students. I will also share with you the writing activity I suggested based in Stanley’s chapter. Hope you find it useful :D

Hello, everyone

Digital technology also lends itself easily to the skill of writing. This can be done at the learners’ speed, in their own time, both in and out of class.  In Stanley’s book, there is a range of tools and content for practicing writing, rather than simply replacing paper with digital text. In the writing part, the suggested activities are easy to adapt to different contexts and different learning objectives, such as 7.20 Academic Writing. In this chapter, for example, the suggested tools and activities are interactive and require input and/or responses from colleagues, creating a collaborative environment. 

Although some activities might seem a bit outdated, as Tatiana previously mentioned, I found some of them in particular quite interesting. I personally feel that nowadays due to our current situation concerning corona virus and having to teach online, teaching writing might seem a bit more difficult, since most of the time, when teaching on online platforms, language teachers tend to to work more on speaking, listening and reading. Therefore, the activities suggested by the author could be also worked online to motivate students to practice writing. The activities I liked the most were, 7.10 Crazy stories or poems, which involves choosing words to later submit them to an automatic text generator where it creates a story for you. I thought students would like this activity because it is not only fun but it also makes students more interested on choosing words and making them more curious to listen to their classmates' stories as well. The activity concerning teaching how to write CVs (7.19 Social network CVs) was quite useful as well. I think it is not something teachers tend to work with students, even though, it is really important. I also really enjoyed the suggestion to work with teaching students social media abbreviations, since students these days, regardless the age, seem to start using smartphones at a young age.

The activities proposals are enjoyable, it requires that learners are active. The activity that I would choose is “Using a learner blog” because students would write about themes of their choices, and they would edit their blog, it would be a creative activity as well. However, to improve this activity I think I would use a “class blog” because it would be easier to manage, and I think it would be an informative blog, in which learners could choose the topics to discuss, to inform or teach something.

It was difficult to choose only one of the activities suggested by Stanley (2013), but the one that most called my attention was 7.8 Interactive Stories. 

I think this activity can be done with all leves if well adapted and it can also be used "offline" with other kinds of realia such as objects, images, etc.