INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY : a "LEARNIEing" unit

At the beginning there was ....an orange envelope. One for each student.
On the blackboard they brainstormed ideas about the possible content.



(mistake "a homework" left intentionally, as this is a photo
of what the students produced without any interference)

 Then they were asked to open the letter.

Inside there was a short story.

You can read it here.

After reading the story, they wrote their first impressions on the blackboard.

A class discussion followed on the meaning of the story.


Next task was to unscramble the word CHREATE.

After some guesses, they finally got it.


LiveTyping.com

The identification of Learnie with the figure of the student-learner was the next obvious step.
And the moral of the story

" ...I can take you to the spring but I can't make you drink if you don't want to.."

 was summarized in one word:


 

How much is attitude? How worth is it?

They were quite surprised to discover that

if
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is equal to
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

then

A       1
T      20
T      20
I         9
T      20
U      21
D        4
E        5
         __


         100%


One student explored the concept a little further and she found out other small truths on the web which she published on her wiki page http://villanovaschoolenglish.pbworks.com/w/page/21155049/Attitude


The class agreed on the closing sentence




In the following lessons the students wrote new versions of the story with different points of view.
The narrators were other characters in the story such as Learnie itself, Chreate, some animals in the farm, a plant, a boy, dragons, and so on...

At this point digital media were introduced.

A new character came out: that was Lalla, Learnie's "girlfriend".

She spoke to the students and asked for their help.

Listen to the Blabberize.








The new task was helping Lalla find Learnie.

At this stage a glogster was created to introduce students to digital storytelling , to help them understand the meaning of "digital explanation" and to explore some of the tools available online.


Click here to open the glogster.







They wrote the texts, drew the pictures and showed great creativity and imagination.

Finally, they gave voice to their characters using Blabberize.


Here are some of their digital answers.

















These were our first steps on the path of digital storytelling.

INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY: embedding songs titles in a text

Lesson 1

Teacher: - Open your diary and write down homework for our next lesson -

 Teenagers grumbling.

Teacher: - Homework: look at your Ipod and make a playlist of your ten favourite songs in English -

Surprised teenagers grumbling.

Lesson  2

All the class have their homework.

Teacher: - Ok, now work in groups of three and, after looking at your classmates' titles, make a new playlist of ten songs. Then, write a text , something like "My day yesterday" , using the simple past and embedding the titles in the text in such a way that it sounds natural and meaningful. -

Smiling teenagers on task for one hour.

Lesson 3

Martino, aged 13 ( 21st century teenager  interested in music, arts and internet ) comes to lesson
with a memory stick .
- Teacher, have a look at this. I thought I could record my voice and let the music play in the gaps with the exact songs words. It took me all Sunday afternoon, but I did it! -

Martino's work displayed on IWB.
 

1) Playlist



Music Playlist at MixPod.com



2) Audio text ( Martino's voice and musical gaps )







3) Text

A Horrible Day - by Musical Martino


Teenagers clapping hands.

Who says teaching teenagers is hard? :)