We are going to give a feedback on the story Mesoke and her new friends, the link of the story is here.

We first thought about language. We have to say, it was a good choice to use different voices for the different parts of the story, but it was a bit hard to differentiate them, and it was hard to understand the girls at some moments because they didn't always articulate. There is one vocabulary point: they talked about the swallow by saying “she”, but they should have used “it” because it is an animal.

Secondly, the technique. We really liked the fact that the drawings were simple but easy to understand apart from the background: as the trees didn't really change, we had trouble finding out Mesoke was actually moving forward into the forest. Besides, we don't really see the smile of the girl which makes her look a bit scary sometimes but it is more a detail.

And finally, the pedagogy. It was well presented and easy to understand. The only thing we could say about it is that the actions were sometimes not really logic, but otherwise it was very well done.

The activities were really well chosen! They were clear, simple and went well with the story. The only comment we could make was about the presentation of the second one: the aim was to match pictures and sentences but they were both listed horizontally.

As a conclusion, we can say that what we liked most about the story were the drawings thanks to they're originality (the teepees were very well done!) and the activities were appropriate. Thanks to this story we learnt that a swallow was an hirondelle. The only blame we can make is about the logic of the story: the background that doesn't really change and the reason why some animals couldn't help Mesoke (why did the mouse need to swim?)

Another wordle

Hello everybody !Here's a Wordle of our story :) And the First three winners are ZOOM, Look and trunk :) 

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6565719/story_project

And now it is my turn to speak!
A lot has already been said but I'll repeat it anyway :p
For me too, one of the most difficult parts was to lower the level of the story, we had to drop many great ideas because we couldn't explain them in a simple way. I always loved writing stories and having brought this one to a good end really makes me proud of our group.
Talking about our group, I am really glad I was with Jeanette and Cécile, not because I don't like the others, but because we were a really good team and everybody invested as much as the others, instead of one doing all the work and the two others watching quietly, all along the project I was very confident we would be able to manage. Thank you girls!
I didn't learn any vocabulary, excepted the word carp, but I learnt how to talk to children and that will certainly be useful in the future! I also learnt how to use the really useful software which name I can't remember right know... the one on which we put our final stories.
I agree with Cécile when she says that it will help us when we will be teachers, I had doubts because I didn't know wether I would be able to create something that would be simple enough and thanks to this project I know it is possible!
So this is my feedback! Maybe I'll think of something else in a while, but that's what the blog is for! :)

Afterthoughts

Hello :)

Well it feels weird to have that project done ! It was quite intensive near the deadline....

As Janette said, I don't feel like I improved a lot in English. It helped me realize that when I am conscious that I have to speak English I get tensed and forget my vocabulary more, whereas when with friends, outside, doing something, words come easier ! So, in class, when I'll (hopefully) be a teacher and that I'll have to be cautious to speak good English grammar/vocab/conjugation... Well :) teaching is not something you do because you like it and have certain facilities for, but also a responsibility ! Giving the class quality, materials they can understand and challenging enough to keep them interested !

Creating that story helped me realize that a teacher, no matter how much he/she knows, no matter how many years he/she's been abroad, he'll have to be at the students'l level to help them growing in understanding !
It is hard to know what others don't know ;)
And what we did was only for 9-10 y.old kids ! What is it to teach to beginners or advanced !

I really liked that experience ! Not only I learned that I could use Gimp for drawing :) (first time using it...) but now when I see a children book, I have a little glimpse of how much work was needed to achieve in making a book of good quality !

As a teamwork, it was good to be in that "hardship" together ^^
Yes it was hard ! But it was fun, it taught us a lot and it was the less boring work of the week !

Janette summed up well my thoughts too :) I'll just add that I can't wait to have the feedback from the teacher !

Personal thoughts

Language, Pedagogy and Technology 

Perhaps my language skill didn't increase for this option but it did in general thanks to Word Reference. This dictionary is very useful because of it content: words are translated, defined, given in examples, you have great amounts of expressions in which the word can be used and the pronunciation ! 

One of the best online dictionaries :) 

This semester was "creative pedagogy" if I may say that. Because the only thing we had to do was creating a story for children by the means of technology. Using technology for our generation is easy since we understand how it works but the difficulty comes from each individual. After this year (yep ! school is practically over) i realized that  being a teacher is not easy.

If I had to do this project on my own I would probably fail due to my lack of time (and the drawing too )! Time commitment is essential because we have personal things to do and other subjects and this project needed extra time. So I guess this is something teachers face on a daily bases : dedication of personal time to create lesson plans, activities etc ...  

The most difficult thing in the project was being able to find the appropriate (simple) vocabulary and short sentences that the students would understand. Students have different levels and understanding abilities and you have to  find a way to reach each student and that was challenging. Do they know this word? Isn't it to difficult ? ... were questions we always had to have in mind.  

What else can I say ? ... hmm 

My voice .. I will never be an actress! My voice was really awful on these recordings and speaking loud and clear have always been my major problem this is why I will never be a teacher. 

Teaching is firstly a gift and everyone isn't gifted :)  

What makes an effective team ?

How did we organize ?

We only met four times out of class (hope I have that right). Once at the library, twice at Cecile's and once at Johanna's. 

When we finally finished our story lines and we had our goals things were much easier. Everyone understood the tasks they had to do, so we did some of the work separately and met  only to combine things together and change what needed to be changed. 
We had a great time laughing, eating and working together :)  

Who did what ? 

I'll start by saying that we are a great team!

We all participated in finding the story and at a point we even changed most of it so that it would be easier to be drawn. Thou all of us tried drawing (which was a huge failure for me !), we all did the "Fiche pédagogique"  and we all spoke for a character, we knew how to use each other qualities and combined them to do something good. 

What I mean by that is :  

Cecile is talented, she can draw: so she was our artist ! 

Johanna has a clear loud voice: so she was the voice for our main character (Kitty) and she came up with the best activities so she was responsible for them. 

And me, I have skills for image manipulation: so I manipulated the images. 

We complete each other :)

I did this with Photofitre : 

       Cecile drew this then transferred it to Gimp and colored it :  

And together we did that !! 

As a team we knew how to listen to each other (critics or positive aspects) and the only thing I would change if I could is : start working much earlier !!!!!! I never thought drawing could take so much time and patience but we managed to finish on time :) 

Collaboration was a success ! 

These past weeks ....

My last post ended with GIMP and Sketchbook so I'll start back  from there .... 

Monday March 11th ....  

I had finally installed GIMP. It's an image manipulation such as Photoshop and we had a lady visiting us in class (can't remember her name)  to explain how it  works. I didn't really pay attention to all her presentation because she was speaking quite fast and because i'm used to Photofitre which is practically the same thing. 

But i'm sure it helped other people, and that's great :) 

Class was cool that day. After she left we only had to continue working on our stories (if my mind isn't mistaking me). And at the end of the class the teacher announced that stories should be finish by next week for a presentation in class (feedback) and also the activities along with the "Fiche pédagogique" .  At this point I realized that time was really passing fast; I wasn't aware that the deadline was so near. 

PS: Sketcbook isn't free !!! so we'll do without it 

Monday March 18th .... 

We arrived late for class because we recorded our voice on Voicethread at the last minute but at least our work was done !!! And I'm pretty proud of it :). That day we saw all the other stories and got feedback from the students and the teacher so that we can ameliorate the final version. 

Monday March 25th ....  

On that day the teacher made sure she had everyone movie and activities then we had to create a "questionnaire" for the teachers receiving our projects.