The Blog that presented new challenges

Teacher: Telma Lenita Zen
School: E. M. Albert Schweitzer
City: Curitiba / PR
Country: Brasil
Project: Information Technology: An indispensible resource for education, potentializing pedagogical success and bringing multi-task students together

Our society is seeing incredible advances in technology in the different forms of communication. With the Internet, we have access to an almost infinite amount of information.

This technology appeals to young people. And inserting the Internet in the current teaching models is a huge challenge for educators. A challenge that Telma Lenita Zen, a teacher at the Albert Scheweitzer School in Curitiba, Paraná decided to take on. She decided to use resources from the Internet in her English classes with her classes ranging from 5th to 8th graders.

Telma used the Aprende Brasil Portal to change her students’ routines. She created a blog full of activities. On a daily basis she posted new projects, challenges, interesting facts, videos, photos, stories, games and other educational resources. The interactivity of the blog, according to Telma, really got the students involved, stimulating the joy of learning. After only one month on the air, the blog received over 700 visits.

The blog made her realize just how many opportunities there are to use the Internet in the classroom. She decided to explore this potential. Telma used the Aprende Brasil portal to create home pages and new blogs, in addition to other activities.

One of the highlights of her work was the virtual election. Taking advantage of the fact that it is an election year in Brazil, she had the idea of teaching students about how to exercise their citizenship.

First the group was invited to make models of what an ideal house would be. The best ones were chosen and published on the blog. Everyone made campaigns to get votes from their classmates, learning how an electronic voting machine works and they started to respect the many different opinions.

Even after taking a sick leave for two months to recover from surgery, Telma used the blog to follow what her students were doing. The commitment of the students in her absence was exemplary.

Once considered a “digital immigrant”, through her blog, Telma now has gotten closer to her students, understanding the language that they so admire. When she observed the success of the project she proved that technology in the hands of students has an amazing power for transformation, bringing students and teacher closer. Eliminating the frontiers between the community and the world.