Extra credits - Nerea Coronado Milán

COMPUTER AND VIDEOGAMES

1. PROFESSOR LAYTON

The video games of Professor Layton, which describes the adventures of he and his apprentice Luke Triton, are one of the best options to train brain of youngest people. There are a saga of different adventures and children must speak with people and resolve different puzzles to discover the mystery in each one.

They have an attractive aesthetic for children because they are cartoons. Moreover, they are recommended for all ages (with more or less difficulty) and through them, children will work the areas of language, maths and art education. 

2. SIMCITY EDU

This video game is recommended for primary students because it is based in the curriculum of science subjects.

It is a simulation game where students have to create and maintain a city, working with science, maths, technology and economy concepts. Moreover, they have to resolve conflicts and think, in some occasions, as politicians.

Apart from that, is important to say that there is online community for teachers with different didactic options.

THE FUTURISTIC CLASSROOM

Future smart classrooms will be always-on connected spaces with data-driven amenities such as smartwatches, tablets and other gadgets. The main costumers are children, so companies must think in their interest and motivations before anything. Apart from that, the way to teach will have changed and it will be updated with all the amenities necessaries to a good learning.

For these reason, books won't exist at the future, children will work with their electronic gadgets, through they will know the key themes of each subject or things that are trends at this moment. In other words, the will use IoT everyday at class and classroom won't be understood without Internet.

THE BIG LESSON FROM THE WORLD'S BEST SCHOOL SYSTEM? TRUST YOUR TEACHERS  By John Hart The Guardian - August 2017

The author of this article describes the reasons for the outstanding results of Finland's school system, how they have achieved it and why other countries, such as UK, should adapt some aspects of the Finland education system. 

In this article, John Hart compares the educational system of UK and Finland, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. In his opinion, the government of UK should look after, value and trust in their teachers. Also, they should move to a level playing field, which seems to be inconceivable right now. 

In Finland, teachers have not to provide evidence to prove what they have done is ludicrous, cause is obvious that each teacher marks mark works when it benefits them or students, but not for anyone's else sake. 

For this reason, the lesson that Finland education has given to the rest of educational systems around the world is to teach in a different way, giving importance to the development and learning of children, trusting in teachers and their way to teach and forgetting some useless works (as write a plan for every lesson they teach) because they enter the profession full of drive and enthusiasm and is supposed that they are going to do their best.

WEBSITES OR APPS TO LEARN ENGLISH FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS 

1. Proloquo2Go

In my opinion, it is one of the most interesting apps for children with special needs. It is an augmentative and alternative communication solution for students who suffer from speech difficulties due to autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, apraxia, aphasia or traumatic brain injury. 

The app contains visual vocabulary that allows creating sentences of varying complexity to communicate wants, needs and more advanced messages. It is flexible and customizable because it allows choosing from a range of realistic accents to match their 'inner voice'. 

A disadvantage is that it is just compatible with iOS. 

2. The Sounding Out Machine 

It is an interesting app for students that have problems with phonemic awareness, so for learners that struggle with decoding. This app provides aid similar to that of the teacher sitting next to a student, listening and correcting. It is also very helpful in class, because it can be used with books (student just has to take a snap of a page), and the application allows isolating challenging word from the rest of the text if the entire page is too overwhelming. 

If you click on it you will be redirect to the video that explains how this app works.