The Digital Parent in you

This is a blog post originally published in August to http://www.mytowntutors.com It was an honour to share my thoughts on such a wonderful site.

“It is not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself."
Joyce Maynard

Whenever I talk to my friends and colleagues about the challenges of being a parent in the 21st century, I always seem to hear complaints concerning the amount of information they have to sort out. To my mind, observing the world around us is of key importance when educating a child. Can you imagine what life would be like if we all had the same form of education?

It is undeniable that technology has generated new possibilities and found its place in households, businesses, and schools alike. In this post, I’d like to share two straightforward activities that can bring tech tools and education together resulting in fun, engaging, and memorable experiences for you and your family.

The utility of technology is paramount. It can bridge gaps, spark conversations, and allow for the sharing of your best moments as a family. All you need to get the attention of your children is devices of your choice, construction paper, some quality time together, and of course a fair deal of imagination. Impress them!

Activity 1 – Listen to My Words

Everybody has got stories to tell and we all love listening to a good story. Can you think of the best anecdote you have ever heard? Reading a good book to your child is a fantastic start, but let’s take it up a notch. You can customize the experience by telling your child their own life stories. I’d like to suggest the following steps.

1. Take some time off and think about how you would like to tell them their story. Think of the characters involved. Take notes if necessary.

2. Record yourself using a voice-recording device (mobile, mp3 players, web recording tool, or any other way you find simpler). My favorite tool is the mobile phone.

3. Surprise your child one day and tell them that they are going to illustrate a story. Hand them the recording. Ask them to listen to it and invite them to illustrate the story. Ask them if they recognize the characters and places. As soon as they have finished illustrating it, scan the drawings, and save them as images.

4. There are many storytelling tools that you could use to recreate the story using your child’s drawings but, to make things extremely easy, Movie Maker is a fabulous option. (You may also want to try http://storybird.com or http://www.storyjumper.com/)

5. Revisit the story as many times as you would like, and ask your child to come up with his/her own story about a birthday, special day, or any other time they find relevant.

6. Cherish these recordings forever =)

Activity 2- Photo Scavenger Hunt

1. Take several pictures of places around the house, objects, people (if your child is a little older you can add pictures of the neighborhood).

2. Print the photos and cut them up in halves or into 3 pieces.

3. Place one part of the picture in a visible place, along with a clue so that they can find the other half (something like: Find the other piece next to something you use to brush your teeth), repeat this step for all photos.

4. Once they have all the pieces, they have to put them together and caption the photos (they should be able to write the name of the object, person, place or even give more specific details about it).

5. Now it´s their turn, ask them to take pictures of their favorite objects, places and people and tell you why they have made that choice. Great for the rainy season.

As you can see, all you need is to have fun! Technology is just a means, not an end. Technology can be very helpful when planning activities for your family.

I’d love to hear your ideas and experiences. Cheers!

Jim Scrivener in the Cloud - "Demanding-High" Teaching

After attending Jim Scrivener´s session “Demand-High” teaching (I have seen it 3 times and never get tired of it), I ended up with this word cloud and was wondering if you can come up with what he means by "Demanding-High" teaching and how we can become better teachers? If you click on the picture, you will be able to read it more clearly. Leave your comments, please. There will be a follow-up post on the subject, but first I´d love to hear what you have to say.



Tip: Word clouds are a great way to revisit previous lessons, and by looking at words and sentences alone,you can help students can recreate full structures in their minds.

We Are All Part of The Puzzle!

Students generally cringe before the thought of tests and an eventual failure. My students are not different. Last week, my group of adult learners was saying farewell to the first term of their intermediate course, but not before sitting two exams. The pre-test tension is quite interesting because it seems to trigger so many feelings and reflective moments. As a consequence, anything becomes a topic for discussion and group chats. Yesterday, I welcomed them into their second term and felt the need to do my own share of reflection. Having said that, I must say we had a pretty good start, with new students in the class and we went on talking about lots of current affairs including RIO +20. Towards the end of the lesson I decided to give them my personal ‘let´s move on’ pep talk, and that's what I would like to share with you today.


First I showed them a video featuring Jonatas Penna also known as Mistery Guitar Man.




This is a video of an elaborate project mixing mobile devices, animation, music, collaboration, hard work and above all persistence.

After they had seen the video I asked them the following questions:
1- What did you think of it?
2- Was it an easy thing to do?
3- Was that Mistery Guitar Man´s first trial? Which take was it? (this is mentioned in the beginning of the video)
4- How many people were involved in the project? How well had they worked together?

Ok, where is the pep talk? The pep talk followed as they fed me the answers. I mentioned that their learning journey was very similar to that video. The process is like a puzzle, and as in any puzzle, all the pieces must go together.

I am part of that puzzle.As their teacher, I will be the one who will conduct them through this journey. However, I cannot conduct alone and we will take turns once in a while, and they will eventually take the lead. Individually, they play a central role in the puzzle, because their effort will translate into success. Their classmates have equally important roles, since they will be the ones they will be partnering up with in the many activities we have ahead of us. We went on talking about the many other pieces of the puzzle and I could see they were putting some thought into the matter and coming up with wonderful twists to the discussion.
Finally, I told them that the result would be a beautiful and successful journey and I had nothing but good, positive thoughts for this semester. They seemed happy and so was I.
I am looking forward to this extraordinary adventure in language learning with them, and I ask you: which part of the puzzle are you?


This could be done as a first day activity, or at any time your students need a dose of incentive. Don´t forget to share your impressions and suggestions,I´d love to hear what you have to say.