Thursday 27 December 2012

Espresso


In the technological world we live in, there are infinitely you can use to acquire knowledge and to make it fun to learn.
 
At the school where I work, we got a chance to for a certain period to test Espresso, a multimedia archive that comes from Liber. Check out http://www4.liber.se/liber_espresso/ or search Liber Espresso on Google.
This educational tool, we were so pleased that we ordered it (unfortunately it costs a buck, but it's worth it).
Espresso is directed at several ages, both young and older as an aid in teaching and continuously updated for the information to be fresh for the students. On Espressos homepage, you can make different choices, based on the age, topics or current news. When you select this, you can get started. There are now a variety of tools to use, such as movie clips, images, articles and interactive exercises.
An example is here:
Work with English in Year 3 and students practicing among colors. In Espresso, one can find a small short film of about 3 minutes of Winnie the witch. The witch and her cat living in a castle. The story repeats the same phrases several times and students both see colors and hear its pronunciation.
After seeing the film there are various interactive exercises related to the film and LGR 11, reading comprehension exercises where you can both read and hear the questions and answers, put pictures in the right order, songs and games that is linked to the topic and Winnie the witch
It is easy for the teacher to plan and fun for students to learn.

Various interactive tools as movie clips, games, texts and exercises are linked even to such as history, social studies, math, Swedish, religion, and more.

The best thing of all is that it is linked to LGR 11 order to get as much as possible of teaching using these ICT tools.

/Nathalie Sandher

1 comment:

  1. Dear Nathalie!
    I would like to comment on your post on "Liber Espresso". We have access to this tool of education at my school and we also got a good introduction to how to use it.
    I totally agree with you that "Espresso" is easy and fun to use and also "safe" since it´s linked to LGR 11. I really like that you can browse for a certain knowledge requirement and find different options e.g movie clips, texts, games and excercises.

    I hope that you also have discovered that you can visit the English homepage for almost every subject (except for the clips, texts and excercices that are developped especially for Sweden.)
    I find this very useful since this creates a possibility to cooperate between e.g Religion and English. Right now my class study Religion/Christianity and on the English homepage for Religion on Espresso there is a variety of material to use. In this way I teach both Religion AND English at the same time.
    I´ve also discovered that some of the Swedish materials is sometimes on a level too low for children age 11-12. I think that the creators of the Swedish homepages are aware of this and try to make some changes.
    The good thing though, is that the English homepage offers the same knowledge at a somewhat higher level, at least when it comes to the texts, films and excercises being in English.
    In my opinion, the best thing about "Liber Espresso" is that it´s interactive and that it can be used by a single student on a laptop as well as in the classroom on the Cleverboard.

    Lisa


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