Christmas Animated Postcards

If you have access to internet, this website http://www.northpole.com/Mailroom/Postcards/PCIntro.html%20 is perfect for you! I know you will find it useful for a writing lesson. Students can email a Christmas animated postcard to their parents or friends, adding their own messages. It is a fun activity, students will enjoy it! I will include this project in my planning for December. But before starting I’ll need to follow SIX STEPS.
STEP 1: I will tell my students a little bit about Christmas and talk about the Christmas animated postcard project. STEP 2: I will ask my students to create a web and remind them that in the center of the web they will have to put the name of the person they want to send the postcard. STEP 3: they will write their ideas for the postcard in the web and later create a paragraph with those ideas. STEP 4: I will ask my students to exchange papers to revise their work and I will edit their work. STEP 5: I will ask my students to find out the email address of their father or mother; to send the postcard. (Check with their parents to be sure it's OK.) STEP 6: if your students have access to internet, they will be able to type the letter and send it online. But if your students don’t have access, they can type the letter in Word; you can paste it and send it later.

By Maria de Lourdes Lopez Pereira

Standards towards technology classes

By Hugo Velasco Castro
Guayaquil-Ecuador

If you want to use technology or if you are already using them ; keep doing it but, are you setting standards for your classes?


No matter what tools you are using in order to implement technology in the classroom, it is very important to set standards when using technology in your classrooms and some of them are: to develop technology skills that support learning, personal productivity, decision making, and daily life.

In order to accomplished these goals; our students could use a variety of media and technology resources for directed and independent learning activities. For example in my classes using internet has given my students opportunities to use educational software , E-books , demos to practice activities on-line and others to support learning. However, it is very important to teach our students how to use these resources effectively so they could have choices for their own learning and help them being autonomous learners.

So, If you haven’t; start thinking of standards as your assistant for achieving goals when implementing technology in your classes.

What about Science Fair?

By: Lorena Baquerizo, Guayaquil-Ecuador
In our local schools´ annual planning we will always find a day or two for the special science fair which will be held in the school´s patio and which decoration should be outstanding so it looks attractive for our visitors from other schools. Its content is 100% scientist and is explained by the students, some of them in Spanish and some others in English, among the subjects involved we usually have: chemistry, anatomy, math, social studies, statistics, physical education, and others.
Planning and making it real a science fair takes all the stakeholders we can imagine: media, sponsors, institution authorities, coordinators, secretaries, teachers, students, parents, sponsors, and janitors. The whole school community gets involved into this macro activity. My question is: Why do we have science fair? What do we want our students to learn or be able to do that day? What do we want our parents to see?
This is how a traditional science fair may look like: Stands with cardboards full of letters written with markers, hanging on the walls, small tables full of souvenirs ready to deliver to the listeners. Kids, most of the time with costumes, give a text known my heart, looking at the poster to help him remember the next word in his speech. Does this sound familiar?
And this is I consider a science fair should look like: Kids in different places with no more than tools, materials and instruments to do their experiment, nothing too prepared but just students own work in class based on a specific subject, not repeating a text but explaining it and able to answer a questions if a person in the public asks.
I know traditions make culture, but we need to be sure first that whatever we do, even if it has a long trajectory, needs to have clear objective and clear goals to reach. So our school events are productive and worthy of all praise.