I come from a secondary school in Asturias, in the north of Spain. It is small but it includes such a variety of ages and studies that it is unique in the area. There is also a mix of backgrounds, combining industrial and rural worlds in a single space fit for all.

This school year has been very busy both at a personal and at a professional level. It has been very demanding since a new law and regulations have been passed in the whole country, which meant several changes had to be implemented in a very limited period of time. In order to cope with them most of us have been busy taking different training courses involving ICT and the new approach the authorities wanted us to implement.

The students have attended lessons in the normal way and have done their homework, their projects, and lived their lives as usual, whereas we have been working out how to translate their achievements into a mark which observed their progress abiding by the new law.

This school year we have been using Office 365 in different ways: Outlook to communicate important news, PowerPoint to prepare the presentations that supported oral presentations, Forms to gather information fast, and Teams to upload all kinds of tasks and chat with students and families. We have also added Canva to assemble images and audio when creating the video for the Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias contest. Some students followed my advice and used the Quizlet activities before the exams to review vocabulary.

They have been able to use liveworksheets and work on their own reviewing and reinforcing their liguistic skills whenever I was absent.

Students were allowed to use their mobile phones as dictionaries or encyclopaedias when searching for information was necessary. They even surprised me when they kept the notes for their presentations on the screen of their devices instead of using traditional cards or a simple piece of paper.

-Creating group work activities that included the prescriptive curriculum requirements.

-Developing  projects involving ICT.

I have spent many hours before a computer screen in order to update my qualifications as a 21st Century teacher in Spain. At the same time, I have struggled to prepare interesting lessons my students would enjoy. Luckily, most of them passed English at the end of the school year and I keep training so that next September the new regulations are included in my teaching practice.

Making a fresh start next September, which includes more group work activities and more ICT in the lessons.

I have had two different kinds of students and they have been monitored differently as regards the use of mobile phones in class. First of all, my vocational training students were all over 18 and they belonged to a small group. As they were taking an administrative assistant qualification course, they had a computer on their desk all the time, which they used to check vocabulary online, to play with Quizzes or to write assignments. They were free to check their mobile phones as I was always relying on their good use of the device. The only moments they were required not to have access to them were test time. I kindly asked them to place their mobiles on my desk while they were writing and there was never a complaint to be heard.

The other group was made up of 15-year-old students and they were recommended all the time to keep their mobiles away from their desks, even from their pockets in order not to get distracted during the lessons. Occasionally they were allowed to use them as dictionaries or note keepers. Whenever we needed a laptop to browse the internet looking for information or to create a presentation, we borrowed the school computers.

https://getpocket.com/en/ to keep the ideas I find online all together in the same place so that I can be more organised.

https://wakelet.com/ for the same reasons than above.

https://bookcreator.com/ seems the kind of tool that can turn very useful for writing projects. I will give it a go!

https://wordwall.net/ I have seen several teachers use it on the internet, so that must mean something. I will learn how to use it with my students next school year!

https://learnhip.com/conversation/ it seems a very useful tool when it comes to speaking about different topics and you or your students have run out of ideas.