TBLT Training held in Amaliada 18-19 December 2015

Report on PETALL Tasks
By Julie Harbali

The activity, I chose among the proposed tasks is entitled “Now and Then-A Photostory” by Germany.
It captured my attention because I thought I could incorporate it to this year’s curriculum. We are involved in a project which has to do with memory, so I found it suitable for my class and the students’ level and interests, since it involves smartphones and selfies.

Class profile: 14 students of 3rd Grade Junior Secondary school of Karatoula
CEFR Level: B1
Skills: writing/reading/describing people/expressing past habits
Product:
Descriptions of oneself and comparison of an old picture to a selfie tagged on a padlet dashboard serving as an icebreaker and/or introducing activity in an e-twinning project.
Duration: still in process
Description of the task:
Students have to compare a selfie with a picture taken of them about 8 years ago. Indeed, they have to imitate the posture, expression etc. of the old picture and then to take a selfie of this with a smartphone or a digital camera.
The teacher edits the two photos in one using the layout by instagram programme, and uploads them to a padlet board, which is embedded to a blog.
Students access the padlet using a password and write in a new frame anonymously. They compare in detail the two pictures and describe the differences. For instance, they compare the life they used to live when the old picture was taken to the life they live now and consider the following aspects: Houses,town,clothes,taste,likes and dislikes,etc.

Expansion of activity:
Let’s play a game…Students will have to guess who is described in the text and match it with the right picture.
…What’s next… The activity will be enriched with students’ vision of the future (how they wish/predict to be in the future) and capture a “future selfie” or create an avatar.

Highlights:
Students embraced it with enthusiasm and the very next lesson almost half of them brought old pictures of themselves. They enjoyed the process of shooting and sending pictures. That day some students were allowed to bring their phones at school for the activity and then they saved them turned off in the office of the headmistress. They realized how much they have grown up and they recalled old memories, which was the purpose!

Problems encountered-things to improve:
Two students haven’t brought a photo, they are not so competent in English and kind introverted characters and a bit shy. A student from Albania, who came recently in Greece, has no photos of her childhood so it was an awkward moment. Time is always limited!!! Some students don’t like the photos…It was commented in the middle-project evaluation sheet that they didn’t like the fact that some students hadn’t brought photos. The lesson plan suggested was too much detailed so I adjusted it to meet my students’s needs and our educational purposes.
Padlet’s frames are unfortunately limited when embedded in a blog.