The Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War took place between 1936 and 1939.

During this period soldiers from different places came to Spain because they wanted to save the II Republic. One of the soldiers was GEORGE ORWELL. Orwell is known for having written a lot of books: Animal Farm, 1984,...

Here, we are going to read one of his lesser-known books: HOMAGE TO CATALONIA.

Throughout the book, Orwell show us the miserable condiction in which people lived in Spain, and the lack of supplies on the front and the shortage of weapons in the republican army, as well as the lack of training between the soldiers.


The final task we are going to do about the Civil War unit is reading this book.
When you finish, you have to do a short review that you can upload on CANVA, and we are going to do a debate through a videocall on Webex.

Newsletter: The National Museum of American History

I have subscribed to The National Museum of American History newsletter service and I want to share with you the latest newsletter it has sent to me: http://americanhistory.si.edu/connect/email-newsletter 

In this case, we can find posts about the new exhibitions they are organizing, and they aven demand our attention, like with this post about the history of American philanthropy, asking us about our experiences, which is very useful for our students due to the example it gives them and because of the history of mutual help. 

Education & ICT tools

How can we take advantage of new technologies in our day to day in class?
Are there tools according to the levels and subjects?
The answer for these two questions is yes, of course, and now you can check it on this link, where I've shared a number of resources about history:

http://linoit.com/users/saragsarrio/canvases/TASK%201.-

First of all, I must highlight the tool www.myhistro.com  where you cna create your own timelines. In contrast to other tools, myhistro allows us to create unlimited timelines, with all the events you want. Each event can contain a description, links, vedeos, images and the location where the event took place. I created my own about the History of Spain from prehistory to the last general elections in December 2015.

Secondly, I want to draw your attention to lesson plans. If we talk about plans for printing, I must say that the most interesting one that I have find is one about the World War II. This lesson plan includes links with photos, the most important vocabulary and all the essential sections that allow us to organize in a properly and tidy way a unit or a lesson.
Another lesson plan that I find extremely interesting is the one about Humanism, which we can use with the whiteboard. Thanks to this lesson, students will learn the mindset changes that took place in that historical moment, as well as changes in art and the inventions and discoveries that had been produced during this period.

Finally, let's talk about the online publications or e-books. I have found an on-line magazine  called History Net, where I can find interesting articles about recent and ancient history. It provides videos, galleries with very interesting photos, what happened this day in history and some subscriptions.

CMS examples

All the web pages we have to see can seem ostensible simple because of their appearance and lack of dynamic functions at a first glance. 

Nevertheless, I think that the more interesting format could be the WordPress, inasmuch as I believe that the content can be organized in a better way through multiple tabs, making it more visual and easy to find. It also offers the option to find all the latest news and interesting links at a glance on the home page. 

In conclusion, I believe the web pages are a good option to store the entire contents of a educational center because it provides resources and liks for parents, teachers and students, but I think that the most dynamic and interesting classroom ITC resource is the traditional blog created by the blogger platform like this one. 

JOOMLA!

Joomla! is a CMS that allows to create our own applications and web pages for free and in a very simple way. For teachers and students, it can be a very useful tool, which we can provide ICT content to our student in a more attractive and visual way.
Here there is a video tutorial where you can learn more about this tool.

As I said before, I believe that visual content is extremely important and that's the main reason I have chosen the photos and images extension, inasmuch as I believe that it is very instructive adn valuable enriching the knowledge we are trying to explain to our students.

Cloud computing

According to en.wikipedia.org  is a "kind of Internet-based computing", where you can share and deposit all your data, information and any kind of document. Moreover, you can access them from any electronic device if it is connected to the Internet. 

Nevertheless, I honestly believe that there are some advantages and disadvantages. 

Among the most important advantages of using the Cloud, we find its cost, because yo can use it for free and, if you need more GB, you can pay a small amount of money. Apart from that, I must highlight that there are some many important plus sides, such us its agility and independence that it provides; its hability to share resources with whoever you want and wherever you and other people are, and those are the main reasons that we can consider the cloud a dynamic tool that increases the productive capacity of its users. 

But, when there is light there is also shadow, and I believe that the main downside of the cloud is its security. More often than not, our data are hosted on servers located in countries with different laws from ours and where our security is not as guaranteed as we assumed. 

Despite this seemingly huge disadvantage, I use the cloud every day inasmuch as it allows me to work on the same document from different devices and to share with my colleagues date, information and all kind of documents, music and videos. 

In conclusion, I believe that the cloud is a extremely useful tool that we can use every day, even in the classroom!

https://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_computing.html

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing

http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Cloud_Computing

Interaction in class

If we want that our students have a significant learning, we have to use the appropriate methodology, which must be based on motivation and interaction. How will students interact with me and between themselves? In my history of Spain lessons I will use:

• Blog: I will use the blog of the subject as a meeting point outside the classroom, when my students are at home, for instance. On the blog, they can keep working and talking with me and other students, even from different classrooms.
• Wikispaces: it is a web where students and I can do some collaborative activities, such as the creation of a story or some debates on different aspects that relate our history and current life situations.
• Discussions and debates about activities: the methodology I will use in my lessons goes from the specific things to general ones. I will give my students different kind of documents, made by me or historical documents, and they must work with them at home, discussing about the content at classroom during the lessons.
• Group work: some activities will be done by my students in group, therefore, they must organize and communicate themselves to get a good mark.

The main advantage of using motivation in class is that the students can learn by themselves, that is to say that through interaction they can debate about the most important issues of the subject and the can learn and teach at the same time and from the teacher and even from each other. Thereby, students can get a significant learning.

However, interaction has also a main downside, time schedule. Maybe, students debate about some issue and the debate can extend in time and it can change all the planning.

Despite this disadvantage, I believe interaction is a key tool for 21st century education.