What is Materials design?
You may be wondering what Materials Design is... well it happened to me the same when I enrolled in this subject at my teacher training college. On my first day my teacher asked my peers and I to predict what this course would be about and so we wrote our expectations. I thought that we would be creating things online but random stuff. I just could not see beyond these two words "materials" and "design" and in which way we would implement this in teaching. By then I kind of thought coursebooks were like The Bible, i.e. sacred documents! Materials + design = creation of materials... yes, but how? As you can tell I didn't get the hang of it right away but as we moved forward (and also because I was carrying out my practice lessons) it all became much clearer to me. The idea underlying this course is the creation of materials but, in this case, linked to the teaching profession. I always thought that I would be a teacher but by no means did I thought I could be the designer/creator of my own materials.
Materials Design at Lenguas Vivas "JRF"
Meet the crew...I would like to introduce you to my college buddies from Materials Design at Lenguas Vivas. I will start from left to right: Pauli, Flor, Cyn, me and Meli. Unfortunately, the day this pic was taken Maite was absent.
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Meet my teacherMaria Laura García is one of my teachers at Lenguas Vivas (LV). She has a lot of experience working with children and adolescents. At my institution (terciary level), she just teaches the subject Materials Design. María Laura is very nice and what I like most about her is that she does her work with a lot of enthusiasm.
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If you are already a teacher or a student teacher who has attendend the methodology subjects you may know that sometimes coursebooks do not satisfy your students' needs. Therefore, the aim of this course is to help you go about it. Our teacher made us read theory first to be able to perform a "Unit of Analysis", that is, you go over a certain coursebook unit to see if it fits your needs and that of your students. If you detect some problems or you simply believe that you could provide the same kind of materials but in a more appealing way, then you need to know that you can always resort to online tools.
In this course we were assigned different tasks to work individually and at times in pairs or in groups. Sometimes it was just exploring a tool in order to become acquainted with the way it worked. When doing this, we were also asked to think ahead and tell in which ways these tools could be implemented in English classes at our schools. Furthermore, reports and reviews were produced with information about the positive and negative aspects of using that particular tool. However, at other times we were pushed a step further and challenged to come up with our own materials.
In this course we were assigned different tasks to work individually and at times in pairs or in groups. Sometimes it was just exploring a tool in order to become acquainted with the way it worked. When doing this, we were also asked to think ahead and tell in which ways these tools could be implemented in English classes at our schools. Furthermore, reports and reviews were produced with information about the positive and negative aspects of using that particular tool. However, at other times we were pushed a step further and challenged to come up with our own materials.
Take a peep into some of my work...
In Materials Designs we were introduced to many online tools for the creation/adaptation of our own materials. Thus, the aim of my portfolio will be to show you the things I've learnt and found useful in this journey. I have also included all my work. Hope you enjoy it!