Week 4, moving on... :)

Week 3 : Haha... Was late and Janette did a great post !

Week 4 : Starting the story !!! I won't reveal much of the story :) Our main character is Kitty and the story will be about her amazing travel !!!

So, everybody... Our teacher scolded us because we don't put up enough info about our progress, what we go through etc... so now we'll have more time in class to dedicate to our lovely blog :)

Vocab gram etc :  I learned trunk :) 

I also realize that I am loosing a lot of vocabulary as I am most of the time lazy about my English .. I get in touch with a lot of English speaking people that know french so if I throw french words here and there it is funny and they understand me... need to work on that laziness ;)

Pedagogy :

I love the principle of creating suspense, the desire for the child  to learn or to understand, so that they would receive the lesson in an easier way ! Today we did the story line, how to create a desire for the kid : quest with character growth that the kids could identify with : scared of leaving the parents...

Technology :

Nothing to say:) exept that I can't wait to start drawing the character and finding out how to protray Kitty:) I am even thinking of downloading softwears like photoshop or something like it...

Collaboration : gathering info about...

Janette : Africa + Australia

Johanna : South America + South Pole

Cécile : Asia + drawings

Week 3 ! Brainstorm

Humm. What can I say about last week ... 

Well we started class by installing several software on our laptops : Audacity and Free screen to video (for those who didn't do it at home) but also "FreeMind". "FreeMind"  allows us to organize our ideas. All you have to do is to add nodes and write down what's on your mind. In order to get used to it we did a brainstorm on the characteristics of a good story and a main character after watching pictures of different characters (cartoons/human portraits) . But also on the benefits of reading story to children (after browsing through a document on Edmodo). 

The main characteristics we noted down are:   

For the story

- Basic and specific vocabulary, short and simple sentences 

- simple storyline

- lively, illustrated

- moral (?) 

For the character (s)

- an imaginary character

- pay attention to physical attributes (slim/tall/round etc) and inner attributes (good/bad)

Facial expression is important as much as appearance (colors, clothes, posture etc...) 

Benefits of reading story to children

- it's an easy way to learn 

- it allows the children to develop imagination and creativity but also to predict and anticipate an event 

- it develops their listen comprehension and permit them to share their opinions and expressions

- while developing their language abilities, they increase their curiosity while discovering other cultures and civilization 

We did most of this work while recording our voices to help  Mrs K. Thapliyal  in her research (though I doubt I was useful because I really have difficulties in speaking loud!! Not my fault ...) 

What else ... ? 

Concerning collaboration, we've decided that each week we would start working from Thursday (because the first days of the week we are very busy).  And concerning language improvement I learnt a new word: a stubble :) Thanks to our new classmate from London (Sorry, I can't remember her name!)       

Week 2 : A bit late :)

Week 2 : late report...

Every Monday, us students have "didactic class" and we need to post a kind of weekly report on what we've learned... Janette was on time :)

Anyways, the topics we need to report on are Language improvement, Pedagogy, Use of technology and Collaboration. 
As Janette already answered all of them, I don't need to add anything I pretty much agree with all that she said :) I am not diligent enough with communicating, but I hope that this will get better !
We are trying to work out things as we slowly but surely get to know THE Project ! We're supposed to start this afternoon !!!!

I have a few words to say about the videos we watched last week though. 

We saw different types of videos that the students from last years had done. Some of the materials used for the videos were pictures, video, music, sounds, drawings, a voice reading what was written on the screen, text etc.
It was a first glimpse of what tools we could use for our own project, and it was interesting to see the work one by others on the internet ! I am sure of one thing : I really, really don't want to do a video without any voice reading the text. 
We watched a video entitled "the singing contest", I am both a visual an auditory learner so I understand the importance of considering the different learning characteristics of the audience. When one is missing it becomes harder to stay focus on the story. 
Therefore, for our project I hope to keep this point clear in mind : use video, pictures (in fact as much visual as needed...) then put an adequate music background or voice reading to it !
Oh, I almost forgot something, the story needs to have a clear goal or an interesting frame. We were kind of disappointed of the video. There seemed like there weren't any goal to it... 

Have a great day, and see you soon for some new adventures ;)

WEEK 2: REFLEXIONS

A - Language improvement: vocabulary learnt, some part of grammar better understood, which type(s) of language difficulties are you facing, how a team-mate has helped in making you understand something?

So far I've only learned technical vocabulary due to the videos (History of technology interactivity and Digital story telling). In fact we haven't started working as a "team" because we don't even get in contact with each other after the class !

B - Pedagogy: Which type of decision-taking is important? Why do you take the decisions you do while making stories? Which aspect of teaching did you learn today?

To be honest, I don't know which type of decision-taking is important. When I have to take decisions, I choose them according to my goals; choosing the best alternative.

   

C - Use of technology: how do you think the technology you are learning to use is helping you to make stories? Which types of technological difficulties are you facing? Are your friends helping? In what  way?

A story is a series of pictures (animated and voiced or not) used to give a message and the technology I am learning to use (VoiceThread) is helping me to assemble all this elements (sounds, comments, pictures etc.)  rapidly and efficiently. 

I’m not facing any technological difficulties or being helped by my friends simply because we haven’t started working.

D - Collaboration: how are you dividing your tasks each week? Who does what? Who helpswhom? Are you facing difficulties collaborating with each other? How are you sorting themout? How much work are you managing to do in class and how much do you do at home?

We have communication difficulties because my emails never get a reply or my texting.  We are supposed to communicate via Edmodo and it still doesn't happen but I think that we'll soon solve this problem ... 

I haven’t done any work at home yet besides trying to understand VoiceThread. 

I'm not sure if this is what we had to do but ... at least I tried ;)