Prototype of an open educational project

Hello everybody and welcome to another post!!

Today I’ll try to explain more about Open Educational Projects and I’ve decided to make a prototype of one of them by myself about a primary education topic.

Thus, I’m going to  show here this project.

My project is called “Living in the Prehistory” and, as reflected in the title, this is about the Prehistory and the different time periods included on it, such as Paleolithic, Neolithic and Metal age. The aim is to work on this curricular content with fourth graders of Primary Education. This project will be included in a bilingual program, since we are going to work using English as a second language. Therefore, the key content is going to be developed in this language.

Here yo have the sheet that I used to make my prototype of the open educational Project. I have pasted it with Issuu that is a fantastic tool to share your documents in a new and easy way: Issuu

In order to carry out the project I have used a template to prototyping an open educational project giving by our ICT teacher to fulfill this new challenge. In this template I have explained all the main features of my project, which should be developed and revised in deph in the next classes. 

I leave you here a video made with Imovie. I am having troubles with You Tube so I share the link to my Google Drive also and you can see it there until I fixed it.



I have to say that I am learning many ways of sharing my work with the Internet community that I dind´t know. I have to admit that, for the first time you see the tools, you feel a bit lost but when you explore them deeply they are so easy to manage with them. I use to share my work using always the same tools such as Power Point or Word documents, however with my ICT clases I have forgot them and discovered new ones that I recommend you to use.
Furthermore, create an open educational Project is not so easy as I thought because you have to take into account many points and characteristics to create a good one. I try to think about what should be a good way to teach curricular content in a different way and I think my Project may have some changes in order to be better. For that reason, I hope you can see my video in Google Docs and read my template that I share in this post and share your comments and ideas to improve my Project.


Hope your feedback!!

Open educational project "My town" by EDIA

Analyse, evaluate and present a reference open educational Project

Hello everybody! Today we have a new challenge to fulfil: to analyse, and present a reference open educational Project.

An educational Project is a work to be developed in schools with students. This Project is called "My town" from "English in my daily life". It is designed to work with secondary students in the English area. "My town" is created by CEDEC and you can find it in EDIA Clil Projects or clicking this link: http://cedec.ite.educacion.es/es/noticias-de-portada/2337-contenidos-completos-de-ingles-para-1o-de-eso

Firstly, we have to choose a Project in order to analyse it in depth. I chose "My town" because I find it interesting and useful for kids. It is based on six different missions whose main topics are the cities and how to manage in them. In this sense, the Project works in essential curricular content, as prepositions, directions, the use of present simple, descriptions and acquisition of key vocabulary related to the cities. Finally, after completing the six missions, the student will accomplish a final task:  make a short video about their town.

In order to evaluate this Project the following points will be analysed:



1. Key knowledge, understanding and success skills: (TO IMPROVE)

At this point, I think that there is a good Project and works with key competences properly.
This project is focused on teaching students key concepts, such as how to use the present simple, how to ask for directions and give instructions, made comparisons and descriptions of places in order to use the third person and how to ask questions.
Furthermore, it works with the four skills, since each task is related to two or more of them, including how to manage with ICT tools.

To analyse if this Project is important to promote collaboration, I have to say that this is one of the main objectives of the Project. Each task have an individual component, as well as pair or group work, and therefore, collaboration is very important here.

2. Challenging problem or question: (GOOD)

Concerning challenges, I also find this project adequate. I mean that it includes many tasks relating to ICT tools and challenges to fulfil that are interesting and engaging for students of those ages. It also includes a final mission to know if kids have learnt the contents at the end of each season. As I said, I find this project very easy in content for secondary students, because it teaches essential key content such as to compare and describe some cities.

Moreover, in my view, this project is based on a meaningful problem to solve that are cities and what can we observe on them. This is an important topic because students live in cities and it is important to know what things surrounded them, and catch their attention. Besides, they know how to ask questions in order to find places, which is a useful tool in real life.

3. Sustained inquiry: (GOOD)

This point is well developed in this project. Students have a very active role in the process, because they have to achieve  specific goals in each season. Students learn how to generate questions and share them with the rest of their classmates. They find answers in interactive tools, such as videos or social networks and develop their own answers through these resources. Furthermore, they have to annotate their reflections and what they think about everyday situations.

Besides, they have to write down their process in their learning diaries and reflect all their thoughts and how they fulfilled the missions. It would be important that each season had their own objectives so this could increase students’ success to deal with the big final task.


4. Authenticity:  (GOOD)

  This project really has a real-word context because it is develop using some real tools as pictures of cities, maps… “My town” is based on real cities like New York or Liverpool. Furthermore, it is based on student’s interest because it includes many web sites that kids already know and consider interesting in their daily life. Besides, they have to find information into real life objects and manage to find information on the internet.


5. Student voice and choice: (REALLY GOOD)

  Students are autonomous and are guided by teachers in each step and mission. The tasks have clear directions but children have to develop them by their own way. Most of the work is done by students who have to handle with tools and times.

6. Reflection: (QUITE GOOD)

The project reflects the students´ voice in an active way. As I said, they have to write their impressions and reflections in a learning diary and in their blogs. Thus, they have a good opportunity to share their work and what they are learning. The project also includes many tools to share student´s work with their classmates and even with the rest of the world too. In this regard, they can open a Twitter account, a blog or work with web tools such as Youtube, video editors…

I think is easy for them to fulfil the challenges so they are one-day challenges and kids have to complete them in that time. Thus, is more easy for students to organize their work through seasons.


7. Critique and revisión: (GOOD)

The project includes a final self-evaluation for each student called “learning diary” in which they have to answer questions such as What are the most difficult challenges you’ve had?

There are many ways to show students some tools like videos, texts, webs, blogs… through which teachers can evaluate and give them continued feedback.
Moreover, teachers have some rubric to evaluate students‘ work at the end of each mission. Thus, teacher will evaluate the final posts of the blog with the rubric. Besides, they have to complete a personal evaluation about their peers´ work and their own work as a group.


8. Public product: (REALLY GOOD)

This is the mainstay of this project. Students have used different types of ICT tools to share their products and results with people. They have to create a blog to reflect how they complete each mission and their reflections about the tasks. Moreover, as I have mentioned before, they have to open a Twitter account to link their blogs and diaries.

I think this is a good way to learn how ICTs work because every children have socialnetworks and we should find a way to take advantage of them in an educational way and this porject overcome with it.


Today I am going to talk you about a new tool also that is Genially(https://www.genial.ly/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2FPanel%2FMyGenially ). I have found it very useful but I have to admit that the first time I saw this application I have some dificulties to manage with it. Finally, I could create my own presentation to show you more about this Project and how to work with Genially.

Hello everyone!!

Today we have a new post about flipped introduction. This is a new Project that we were doing at our University in ICT clases. I would like to share with you all the steps that we have to developed to do this challenge.

First of all, we made couples at random to interview each other using this new method. The flipped introduction consist in asking our partner a few simple questions in order to introduce them to the rest of the class. We were advised to do a 3, 2, 1 interview in order to knowing something else about our interviewee in a short period of time.
We had to formulate three questions about three things we should know about them; two more about her/his favourites activities or hobbies and one related to their dream occupation. Furthermore we can add some extra questions if we want to do it longer.

To achieve this challenge we decided to do a draft and think about the questions we wanted to ask. For that task, we decided to open a Google Drive draft to do it at the same time in class. Once we had our interview develop we decided to practice the interview in order to avoid errors and find an adequate place to film it.


Finally, we have to record the interview in video to paste it in the blog as you can meet my partner Daniel. Moreover we have to paste a photo of our classmate but, in that case I have created an avatar of him using Bitmoji (https://www.bitmoji.com/).

So in this video I have created with Imovie (http://www.apple.com/es/imovie/), you can find out some helpful information about Daniel, my classmate at University Rey Juan Carlos. I hope that this interview could help you to know more about him! Moreover you can find this video also in my YouTube cannel follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTD-8VnDaQIuVIMCU2dZgZg

From my point of view this is a new way to know our classmates and learn about how to use ICT tools that are so important nowadays. We can have fun throught this activities and maybe we adapt it to do with primary kids too.  Thy can learn a lot of technology and interactive tools as Bitmoji, YouTube or Souncloud that are very useful and attractive to their daily lifes. However it is important that we, as teachers, must supervise the process and give them some tips to manage with this challenges.


Thank you for your time and see you soon!!

School trip to Reina Sofía museum

Hello everybody!!



Today I want to share with you an interesting way of learning new issues. School trips are funny and easy activities to do with children, so they can actively learn many things.



Yesterday I went with CEIP Ciudad de Roma School to Reina Sofia museum in Madrid and we spent a good time learning together. There, we could find many paintings and artworks by well-known artist like Pablo Picasso.



We did this trip with third grade children of Primary Education who are studying the matter in motion, so we visited some artworks based in this topic, such as Picasso's Guernica or The indestructible object. We enjoyed a lot and children were very engaged with this activity.


It is important to do a previous work with students in the classroom, in order to explain them what they are going to do and to see during their visit. For that reason, it is useful to do some activities and give them some background. Several options could be as follows: give the students a list of artworks they are going to see and give them one to investigate in small groups, explain some characteristics of author´s lives, and investigate about the period of time the painting was done or the author´s reasons to perform their works



Finally, it is also important that children remember the visit and the acquired knowledge, so we should do some work in the following classes. One creative activity we can do with them is to think about one artwork and write a story of it. With this work we can improve their creative and critical thinking to develop an active learning on them.



I want to share some lovely pictures of my trip with kids and I hope you can find it interesting! 

Welcome

Hello everybody, welcome to my new blog "Learn by experiencing"

I would like to dedicate my first post to present my blog.
In this blog I am going to share some learning experiences and some tips for twenty-first century teachers. Furthermore I will share some helpful resources to make the task of Education easier for you.

I would like you to enjoy it and find it interesting and useful for teachers and also for students.

See you son with more news!!