José Picardo

Storybird: Providing a Tangible Outcome

Posted by José Picardo on April 21, 2012

My fondest memories of school are of the occasions on which I made stuff. When I think about what other aspects of my learning I enjoyed most, I always come back to the basic principle of creativity. Getting me involved in creative tasks that result in tangible outcomes was one of the ways my teachers ensured that I remained engaged and enjoyed the process of learning.

Working on a model of the solar system was a sure way of getting me to remember the planets (9 in those days) and our place in the universe. I was never naturally good at maths or physics, but making tracks and ramps down which to throw ball bearings gave me a much better understanding of Newtonian physics than any number of equations you might want to throw at me.

Technology today gives us the tools and the possibility to enjoy making stuff and exercise our pupil’s creativity in new ways: Now you can make stuff virtually as well as actually.

My classes and I exploit these new possibilities by regularly embarking on projects which require exercising creative skills and, in so doing, going far beyond the confines of the curriculum.

Showcasing Content with Jux

Posted by José Picardo on February 15, 2012

Jux is a stunning image-based alternative to what you might call ordinary blogging and allows the user to make impactful statements and delightful slideshows using their six different posting styles – slideshow, photo, block quote, photo, video, article and countdown.

Pictures can be uploaded from your own hard-drive or sourced from services such as Facebook, Flickr or Instagram.

Jux can be used by teachers to introduce or reinforce topics or, even better, by the students themselves as the culmination of a research or creative writing project.

Currently, as far as I can see, Jux only allows one Jux per user. It would be fantastic if students and teachers could have different Juxes for different topics or projects under the same main account. It would also be fabulous if individual pages from Jux could be printed out to form part of classroom displays. I wonder if Jux is listening…

Anyway, here is a Jux I made earlier using the block quote format in Jux, using quotations from my personal blog Socially Networked.

Reviewing Apple’s iBooks Author

Posted by José Picardo on January 22, 2012

Apple recently announced the launch of its free iBooks Author desktop application, which – they claim – “allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.”

This post takes you through my humble first attempt at making my first iBook using iBooks Author. The gallery below contains screen captures of all the aspects I will cover in this review:

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First Impressions

When Apple announced the new iBooks Author app, my first reaction was to say about time! The iPad was clearly a powerful tool for content delivery in schools but, prior to the announcement, content creation and sharing was very much the realm of the professionals, which I was clearly not. Yes, you could use Pages to create multimedia documents which you could then export as ePub files, but the results look positively amateurish compared with what iBooks Author can deliver.

Using iBooks Author

iBooks looks very much like a cross between Pages and Keynote (Apple’s answer to Word and Powerpoint respectively). As a regular user of both, I felt I knew my way around iBooks Author instinctively from the word go. Even if you are not familiar with other native Mac applications, the ready-made templates and the intuitive tools and layout allow you to start writing your iBooks straight away.

An important aspect for someone, like me, who has lots of older word documents already saved in my hard drive, is that importing into iBooks author is as easy as dragging a word document into the application. It then automatically creates an iBook with it with the correct titles, chapters and sections. The same process applies to images, video and sound clips. This is a massive time-saver.

Teaching and Learning with Social Media: A Case Study

Posted by José Picardo on December 31, 2011

In my role as teacher of languages, I have sought to study and understand how the social aspect of Web 2.0 can be harnessed to strengthen the teaching and learning of MFL. Most interesting to me was the transformative potential of blogs, Web 2.0 applications and social networks, not only to enhance existing practice, but also to create new technology-based tasks which would have been previously inconceivable¹, a process depicted below:

However, in order to assess whether learning socially online can truly have a transformative and positive impact on learning outcomes and curriculum delivery as accurately as possible, it is important to moderate any inherent positivity and open up the field of study to all viewpoints², discarding any preconceived notions that may bias the conclusions of this case study and taking care not to avoid any evidence that may be counter to those notions³.

ICT and Languages Conference 2012

Posted by José Picardo on December 4, 2011

Technology in the MFL classroom is the Marmite of many MFL teachers, who either love it or loathe it. Funny thing really, given how much ICT has helped not just to enhance, but to transform the MFL classroom for the better.

The ICT and Languages Conference takes place on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th February 2012 and is, as Joe Dale – one of the plenary speakers – has already pointed out, the must attend event of the year for teachers who are seeking to exploit the possibilities new technologies afford both teaching and learning.

Whether you’re a complete beginner or a self confessed geek, the ICT and Languages Conference is the place to go to meet and learn from other MFL teachers in an informal and supportive atmosphere. If last year’s conference is anything to go by, this year’s promises to become the best CPD event of the year.

I too am one of the plenary speakers and will be talking about how to harness social media and social networking to help us transform the way we teach and learn… for the better!

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