ONLINE LEARNING AND DIGITAL TOOLS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION


My experience in the IES Cartuja in Granada, 16 – 27 May 2022

First of all I would like to present the school: there is the IES Cartuja (public school) and FP (vocational school) with a focus on administration with together about 600 pupils and about 60 teachers.

The very first day I was welcomed by the headmaster José Manuel Franco and Mario Marquina, responsible for administration, and José Luis Martin Lobo, in charge of this Erasmus+ project who later showed me around the school and informed me about the coming two weeks, handing me out also my timetable.

Since there are pupils in the IES from about 18 different countries, lots of them immigrants and living in precarious family situations, quite a lot of the students have learning difficulties and have a Special Educational Need (NEE). This is why classes are smaller than in other schools. All the classrooms have smartboards. The teachers I accompanied integrated digital tools on a regular basis, e.g. LIVEWORKSHEETS. DIGITAL EXERCISES, coming with English books like Energize4, are also used in the lessons. And very interesting for me as a teacher of Spanish was the Spanish class (ATAL aula temporal de atención linguística) for pupils with an immigrant background. Since they have different language skills, they do work mainly with online programs like the Spanish version of LIVEWORKSHEETS.

I also went to a Universal Literature course where I saw two very impressive PowerPoint presentations. At the IES Cartuja pupils really learn how to use digital devices for school purposes. I also had a meeting with Luis Lopez who is in charge of the school library. He presented me a reading program in order to encourage the students to read more books.

Another activity, I went to in the break, was MINDFULNESS, a 20-minute – activity for teachers to relax via yoga. This activity is offered to pupils as well in the subject Educacion para la ciudadaníagestión de emociones – controlling yourself.

All in all a very interesting experience!

Thanks a lot to all of you who supported this ERASMUS+ project!

See also: https://www.iescartuja.es/2022/05/25/job-shadowing-margit-heilman-profesora-de-bbs1-goslar-alemania/

Margit Heiland