Lesson plan

Age group: 15 years old.

Language level: Intermediate

Objective: The students will have to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of social media and they will be able to choose one of them and do some research, while using a variety of vocabulary and grammar structures.

Language areas: Writing.

Number of students: 18

              

Time allotted: 40 minutes.

Physical location: Computer lab.

Topic: Social media.

          

Activation

The teacher will write “social media” on the board, and will ask the students to brainstorm what comes to their minds and write it on the board.

Once they have done that, the teacher will ask them questions, such as:

•     What they think about it?
•     How much they use social media?
•     Why they use it and what for.

                        

Comprehension and clarification

After having the discussion, the teacher will project a short Genially presentation showing what is social media in general. Then she will show a tutorial about how to use Genially, which will be posted on their Google classroom.

Application

The teacher will ask the students to get in pairs or groups of three, choose one social media, do some research about it and take some notes.  After doing that, they will start to explore how to make a presentation on Genially, with the help of the tutorial.

For homework, the different groups will have to create their own Genially presentation, in which they have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the social media that they have chosen.     

Genially tutorial

Genial.ly is a free web tool used to create interactive visual content. This content can be used to enhance websites and blogs or as a communication tool. This means that it can be used to make presentations, infographics, reports, posters, or guides. This tool is designed to be broad and wide-reaching because it can be used in different areas such as education, in order to teach skills; media, with the purpose of circulating news; marketing with the aim of attracting customers.

Advantages:

·       It is a tool easy to use, you don’t need to know much about technology. You can design and create great and unique digital projects.

·       You can integrate many different types of content such as audio, videos, social media, maps, surveys, links and more.

·       Another advantage of Genial.ly is that it works with the cloud. This allows you to easily access or modify your creations from anywhere.

·       You can also shared your project through social networks or Whatsapp.

·       You can create your account for free. Once you create it you will gain access to a lot of resources, templates, images, etc. You can also use your accounts on Google+ or Facebook to register.

What differentiates Genial.ly from other tools, such as power point, are:

•  Animation: Genially allows you to add animation and movement to your presentations in an easy way. Helping your audience to focus their attention on the most important parts of the content.

• Interactivity: The layers that you find in Genially give interactivity to your content. Your presentations become innovative and stimulating. It allows your audience to be the protagonist, and not just a spectator. Through layers of content, the information is separated out by importance, allowing the audience to choose what content they want to see in each moment.

• Integration:  The web content is integrated in the same place. Genially allows you to embed the content from videos, audios, social media, calendars, interactive graphics.

Many teachers say that Genially is very useful in education. Here is a comment of one of them; “I love this tool as a teacher. It's powerful, and once you get the hang of it, you can use it to make almost anything. Think simplified Photoshop meets interactive tool to easily embed videos, giphs, text, images, audio, etc. I'm hoping they'll make an app soon, but in the meantime students with chromebooks or ipads can use Genially in a web browser." Common sense education, (2019, December) Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/genially

Limitations and drawbacks:        

• It has many options, so you can feel a bit overwhemled.
• You can not use all the templates or tools if you don’t have a premium account.
• Upgraded premium membership at cost.

Tutorial on how to use Genially to create your own presentation

• First you have to create an account.

• In order to create your own account, you will have to introduce your email and create a password.

• If you want to start to create your presentation, click on "Create Genially".

• You will be presented with many options, such as guide, video presentation, gamification. All you have to do is click on the one you prefer. In this case we will be exploring presentations.

• Before choosing your template, click on "free", in order to be presented with only the templates that are availaible for you if you don't have a premium account.

• You select the template that you want to use and a window with it will open. You can either select "Use this template" in order to begin to create or you can select  "start" in order to have a quick gaze of how the design of presentation is.

• Once you have clicked on "use this template" you can start creating your presentation by adding images, text, videos, audios, links, graphics.

• You can give a title to your presentation by clicking on "untitled Genially".

• In order to add a text or change the font, click on "text".

• If you want to add images, giphs or stickers, click on "Image", you will be presented with different options, choose the one you want.

• If you click on "Resources" you can add, shapes, icons, even maps and silhouettes.

• If you click on "Interactive elements", you can add buttons that allow you to link one page of the presentation with other, through animations. 

• You can add tables and graphs by clicking on"Smartblocks".

• If you want to add an audio file, ou should click on "Insert". You can either record an audio, upload it  from your computer or link it with an URL.

• You are able to change your background or its colour, by clicking on "Background". There you will also be presented with the option of uploading an image, in case of wanting to change it.

• Some important buttons that I haven't metion yet are: Undo and redo, and saved. Although this tool automatically save your changes.

Sources: 

• From powepoint to Genially and beyond (2019, February 12) Retrieved from: https://doitgenially.com/en/from-powerpoint-to-genially-and-beyond/ 
• Common sense education, (2019, December) Retrieved from: https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/genially