WEEK 1 - "Tallarines Verdes"

So as told you before I decided to learn how to make some Peruvian food for my Major Project! This is the first week of my Major Project and I made a dish called "Tallarines Verdes" (Spaghetti with green sauce). This Peruvian dish is very similar to spaghetti with Italian pesto sauce. However, it has some different ingredients such as evaporated milk and fresh cheese.  

I used a recipe from Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), where you can find recipes and cooking videos from all over the world. This recipe required the following ingredients:

• 60 ml (¼ cup) olive oil
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 400 g spaghetti
• 200 g baby spinach leaves
• 3 cups basil leaves
• 125 ml (½ cup) evaporated milk
• 25 g (¼ cup) walnut pieces, toasted
• 150 g queso fresco or feta, crumbled

I don't like walnuts so I decided not to use them this time. Here are the ingredients I bought for this week:

Made with Thinglink
(Click here if you can't see the interactive version of my Thinglink project)

The process to make "Tallarines Verdes" wasn't very difficult. I made an infographic to show you the steps. Click here if you want to see the original infographic.

Made with Canva

Something I liked about this recipe is that it didn't call for a lot of ingredients and they were very easy to find in the supermarket. They weren't expensive either. I have a food processor but I think someone could also use a blender to mix the ingredients.

This recipe turned out really delicious! I can't wait to try the next one and share it with you.

Development of Digital Learning Spaces

As future educators, we know that all our students will not learn the same way. Not only their interests will be different but also their learning styles and needs. Differentiating our teaching strategies is essential to ensure that each of our students can learn and develop their skills. Flexible learning spaces also play an important role in education. They allow students to collaborate with peers and make them feel more motivated to learn, more comfortable when working and more willing to pay attention. In addition to this, flexible learning spaces can give teachers more choices to interact with all the students and allow them to arrange the furniture according to the needs of each specific activity.

In my opinion, flexible learning spaces are very beneficial for students because they allow them to work with others, be part of groups and have more opportunities to learn through a variety of activities. In the video Flexible Learning Environments, they show rolling desks as an example of furniture that is appropriate for a flexible learning environment. This kind of furniture, for example, can make students focus on the activities, have more choices and develop better social skills through the interaction and collaborative work. Students can move around the classroom for group work but they can also work independently when needed. A flexible learning environment can also help suit the activities to their learning styles, as some students will prefer to work sitting while others will prefer to work on the floor or use manipulatives. In the video Flexible Learning Spaces, they explained how to take advantage of these spaces in our classrooms:

“Flexibility and functionality of spaces can be enhanced by innovative and well utilized furniture and information and communications technology (ICT)”.

Teachers need to be aware of the importance of including technology in our classrooms as well as the advantages this brings for both teachers and students. Digital learning spaces are also a way to improve learning spaces. In the 21st century, when almost everyone has a smartphone or a laptop, teachers need to take advantage of it and use this to improve the teaching and learning processes. An example of digital learning spaces is online classes. They aren’t only cheaper for students and schools, but they can also give students the opportunity to decide when they want to learn and how.

In the article How Learning Environments Are Changing, the author explains some other benefits of online classes:

“Online classes offer a number of benefits: personalized, flexible learning approaches, access to courses that are over-capacity, and collaboration with other institutions, for starters. They’re also essential for distance learning for students in rural areas, with special needs, or those being homeschooled”.

Digital learning spaces can also have a few disadvantages; for example, parents need to help monitor their children’s use of technology regularly and for some students working alone could be not very motivating. Also, all teachers need to keep up with the newest apps and technology devices. However, there are more advantages than disadvantages about digital learning spaces. Students can have access to information all the time and everywhere they go; they can decide where and when they want to study; they can choose how they want to do their work and what apps they want to use to complete a task.

In my opinion, working both online and face-to-face is the best option. Even though students have access to everything they need online, school plays an important role in socialization. Students need to interact with peers and develop social skills. This can’t happen if they do everything online. A balance between both can be very beneficial for teachers and students, and can ensure the development of our students’ skills. Educators need to enhance the use of technology in our classrooms to give students more opportunities to succeed, but in order to do this we need to be trained and keep up to date with technology. We need to effectively integrate technology into any subject we teach to make teaching more motivating and meaningful for everyone.

E-BOOKS

In the article E-Books and TPACK: What Teachers Need to Know, the authors provide us with the following information:

“E- books offer an engaging medium for young struggling readers, ease of implementation for classroom teachers, and opportunities for individual practice for all students”.

Reading and writing can be difficult skills to teach at school. Working with e-books, however, can help teachers make this process fun and more motivating for students. One advantage of e-books is that they don’t only include text and pictures like traditional paper books do, but they also have interactive features that are more appealing to school-age children and that can encourage them to read, regardless the grade they are at. In the next quote from the article E-Books and TPACK: What Teachers Need to Know, they explain what kind of elements an e-book can contain:

“A deeper look at children’s e-books reveals a more complex form, a type of software that includes animations, sounds, videos, and a read-aloud function. The addition of electronics impacts the reading in new ways.”

The variety of elements included in e-books would also be useful for students with different learning styles; some of them will prefer the videos in these books and others might enjoy the pictures and texts. As for writing, the fact that students know that there is an audience beyond the classroom who they are writing for can also encourage them to do a better job.

After listening to Mr. Jon Smith’s presentation and reading about his work, I agree when he says that kids need to know that they can share their work with everyone, not only the teacher, and that they can contribute to the digital society with their work. In the article Using Book Creator to support students with autism, Mr. Jon Smith explains the importance of using e-books in the classroom and how beneficial it was for his students to use apps and design e-books to show their knowledge: 

“The students couldn’t stop writing and wanted to make more and more books.  They had so much fun and learned so much while using this app (Book Creator) that they have started a series of social skills books”. 

“I think students need to contribute more in the classroom. They need to be creating content and be a part of the learning process. They need to show us what they know and they need to be able to explain it”. 

In my classroom, I think it would be a great idea to work on writing and designing e-books. I think this would be a good way of assessing students’ progress, as it would give them more chances to show what they have learned in different ways. Children can be really good at writing or reading but most of the time they just lack motivation to do it. By giving them the chance to work on an interesting and challenging individual or group project, I think they would learn a lot.

In my opinion, teachers need to be trained in order to use apps to create e-book, so they can be able to teach this to their students too. It will be more challenging to work with e-books if we work in schools with fewer resources and not all students have access to an iPad or laptop, for example. However, as we heard in Mr. Jon Smith’s presentation, teachers can work with only one laptop or find a way to be able to make students participate in the creation of these e-books. The whole school support is also important, as well as getting parents participating in this process. I think including technology in the classroom can bring challenges for both teachers and students, and it can demand a lot of work at first. Although we might need to face these challenges, I think that with lots of practice, e-books can help us improve our students’ skills and exploit their talents.