Learning with Ana

Planning a video challenge

Hello everybody!
We are the group composed by Ana  Martín, Víctor, Natalia, Inma, Elena and Lola

For this mission we have been asked to complete a storyboard for a short video challenge to include in our CLIL eproject, which we will later make.

First of all we thought about one common learning outcome and we all agreed that it could be “to learn about the physical and political features and some of the most distinguishing representations of the European countries”.
So we created our story board using StoryboardThat

We would like to recommend that you use this fantastic tool if you have the chance since it offers many possibilities. You can choose the length by choosing the number of vignettes. You can choose among a wide range of scenes (you can choose among the typical ones such as the school scenes but you can also choose castles, islands...), characters (you can even change their emotions and create angry and sad characters.) and text tables. Therefore, you can adapt your stories for any purpose. For instance, we could use it in our class to introduce one topic in a more visual and fun way.

However, we found out some things that from our humble opinion could be improved. For instance, we did not like the fact that the work you do is not automatically saved. Therefore, you have to be saving it all the time. Even though the page reminds you to save, it would be fantastic if it could be done automatically.

It would also be very nice if SoryboardThat could have an option to record voices, that would be awesome. Our students could practice their speaking skills, writing, computer skills and also their creativity when creating their comic!

Furthermore, students could create their own stories about any topic of the curriculum (for example we could ask them to create a story in which they had to include information about Egypt or any topic they are studying). In this way not only would they work one subjects but also they would put in practice and would improve their ICT skills!

Of course these kinds of tools are fantastic to communicate with children with special needs. Sometimes, they find it difficult to understand abstract languages and concepts, and this tool makes  the process of communication easier. We can also use this comic for the routines: think about first grade of Primary School, at the beginning they find it difficult to get used to the routines of Primary, we could help them to remember them all by creating comics around the class (For example, before going to the playground take your snack, make a line and keep in silence).

Here you are the link of our final comic, 

Made with Storyboard That
And also the final result of the Infographic created by the children of our story using Piktochart (the same tool we used for the previous challenge)! You will learn some things about Norway and why they think it is the best country to host the next Olympic Games! 


Norway: Norway | Piktochart Infographic Editor
All the images included are from Pixabay


Once we created our Story Board we started working in our video.  Thanks to the story board that we had created previously we did not have any problem with the video as we already knew what we were going to say. To do the video we used "IMovie" with the support of an Ipad. We would really like to recommend that you use this tool if you have the opportunity because it is really easy and intuitive. You can do many things with it, for example adding music to your videos, images, cropping your videos. Defenitely this tool was fantastic to accomplish  this challenge! As it is so easy to use you can even use it with your children in your class! Just imagine the results presenting their candidatures for the Olympic Games.... they would enjoy this activity as much as we did and they would be practicing their speaking skills and learning new things without realising! You can see our video here:

Both of our final products (the comic and the video) are going to be part of a  nationwide educational collaborative project, the ESL times  click here to know more information about this project! Without doubt, it is a really good initiative for students, since it encourages them to use the new technologies while they learn English! As teacher we should be aware of these kinds of blogs in which our students can participate, since it is a motivating activity for them! Click here to see our post in the ESL blog
We hope you enjoy as much as we did! 
Do not forget to post a comment! We are looking forward to hearing from you!

gif from:  http://www.gifanimados.com/