A tool for a purpose

In risposta alla blog entry di Laura Maffei del 30.5.2012 citerei quanto ho scritto a una mia partner che aveva dubbi sull'uso di nuovi tools nel TS "However, you are right, you don't have to feel 'forced' to keep up with these technological innovations. If you and your kids are not willing to invest work on that, simply don't do that. There are other priorities.
New technogical tools are not a must and, above all, they should not be employed just for the sake of them.

When we did voki and cinch, we were in class and I had worked on how to write an editorial. Kids had familiarised with the different parts of a newspaper, had understood the peculiarities of editorials and had written editorials in English. While the groups worked on their own editorial, Beatrice studied the voki and made one explaining the features of an editorial; while Monika "studied" how to make a cinch. When the groups were ready they chose a speaker who recorded the cinch with Monika's help. Everything was done in English. Thus in a couple of hours kids worked on: content (editorials), team building, foreing language and ICT. Nobody wasted time.

What we do in those kinds of lessons helps us a lot to create a harmonious atmosphere where everybody feels at ease and uses their creativity Those kind of lessons help me to enhance pupils' motivation to come to school and accept other "more" boring (for them) but highly useful kinds of lesson (with the cinch and voki kids this year we studied the history and literature of Britain from the Celts to J. Swift + the integral reading of Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice; from Januray to May they did 4 written tests and 4 oral ones about literature). We have a serious problem of dropping out, some kids skip lessons and have disastrous family backgrounds. Lots of them live miles away from school and get up at five to come to school. It's not easy task to teach them Their attention and motivation cannot be taken for granted. If a lesson with voki and cinch helps them to use English, to smile, get a sense of being able to do things + motivates them to study Shakespare, I'll say hurrah for technology. Technology has to be rooted in a human context. "