Superlearning mission II

Here I am with a new post!!

Today I want to propose you another super learning mission of my OEP such as the one showed in my last post, in which I have explained you how to turn flat activities into learning missions.

My second activity will be to design a flyer to distribute among all the members of the school. Thus, they could go to the students’ learning diaries and see their final outcome that will be the video clip I have explained in my prototype.

Why I chose this activity?

I think that it is important to spread the work we have done to the rest of the world so I decided to do a kind of announcement of what we are doing in our classes. For that reason, this flyer done by themselves is a kind of advertisement of their final product so people will know that they can find it in students’ learning diaries.

Moreover, with this activity we are working on student’s autonomy because they have to do it by themselves with the teacher´s help.

This activity is going to be part of the final outcome announcing when is going to be ready to see.

Finally, I think that this could be a learning mission because they are working on speaking, writing and reading skills through a different task and methodology. Besides, I believe that this challenge will be good for working on student´s responsibility and effort.  

Activity description

Students have to spread and announce their work so, for that they have to create a kind of flyer in which they market their video so people can watch it. In order to do the flyer they will use Canva or Smore or another online tool that they feel comfortable with.

Goals of the learning mission

The goals of the activity will be similar to the former task.

-          To promote critical thinking and English skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

-          To know how to work with ICT in an adequate way and how to manage with different interactive tools.

-          To think, design and create a final product to announce the work done.

-          To develop communicative skills

Timing

Students will develop this activity in one class because I think this is easy for them. The teacher should monitor the class and answer the student´s questions.

Final artifact

The final product will be a flyer done with only tools to give to the rest of the school members as the one that I have created as example. Students may use this prototype of flyer or done another one by themselves. It is important to be creative because they will do one each. The flyer also has to be motivating and hooking in order to motivate people to see their videoclip.

Here you can find an example of the flyer students could make.

Prehistory film de Laura Hernández

Online tools

1.       They can use Google Docs to share their flyers with the teacher or with the students. They can also store their work in this tool.

2.       Canva or Smore: Students may use these tools or another one to do the flyer.

3.       Learning diaries: They also have to spread their flyers online so they can use their blogs to share it and do a self-reflection of the project.

How can I relate this activity to ESL TIMES project?

This task is also related to ESL TIMES because it works with ICT in a motivating and learning way, in order to students can take advantage of them to learn. The final artifact is in accordance with the ESL ones because it is also created on the web and it differs from usual posters in which students paint and write in a white paper.

Self-reflection

As a kind of auto evaluation of work I have done to date, I have to admit that it has been better than I had thought. I mean, I thought I would have more problems with all the online tools because I had never worked with any of them.

I think that my first version of my OEP was a bit simple. However, with all this challenges I believe that I am enriching it with many changes. The most important thing I have realize through all this challenges is that we, as a teacher, need to think how we can change our work in order to make it better because it will be probably improved. We tend to think that we do the best of ourselves in our activities but If we stop thinking for a moment how can we take into account our students´ needs, we never find a way to improve our work. This is what I have realized in my ICT classes: always thinking about improvements.

Furthermore, in my view, a self-reflection and a continuous assessment of our tasks is also important in order to notice the weakest points of our project. I believe that I have changed my OEP a lot because I wanted that the activities fitted with it. These tasks fit well with my project because they follow all the main goals and competences I want to work with my students. However, I am sure that my OEP could be enriched a bit more so I hope to see your comments and suggestions.

Superlearning missions

LEARNING MISSION 1

Hello everybody and welcome to a new entry of my learning diary.

Today I want to show you another step of my open educational project (OEP) that is turning flat activities into super learning missions.

First of all, I will try to explain what a learning mission is. These activities take part of an active methodology that I have already explained in my last posts when I talked about educational and collaborative projects.  The task now is to think about two simple activities from my OEP and change them into collaborative, active-learning and relevant for my students.

The first activity I decided to change is the one related to the description of one period of the prehistory that students are learning in the project.  The aim of a learning mission is make students think and do by themselves different ways to accomplish a challenge. Therefore, I try that pupils have a good time learning different characteristics of each period (Metal Age, Paleolithic and Neolithic).

To make the post more understandable I am going to explain my first activity step by step.

Why I chose this activity?

I decided to turn a simple task into a super learning mission because I think it is important to make our students independent and autonomous people. Thus, this activity is going to be part of an active methodology in which they will work by themselves in the classroom.

A description of a landscape and a time period as it can be the Neolithic period for instance, is a simple and usual activity that we are used to do in English classroom. Why we can´t do the same but using new and enjoyable tools?  Therefore, the purpose of this post is to show how we can change boring activities into meaningful and funny ones.

Furthermore, I have chosen this activity because I think that is easy to do for kids and represents a good example of a common task in the English classroom.

Activity description

The usual activity will be to write a description of one scene related to the period of time you have chosen. So then, you will have to describe the landscape, the people, some tools used in daily life, the wildlife…

This activity will be good to promote writing skills but not for creative thinking or collaborative skills.

In order to change this activity into a meaningful one I decided to swap the writing task into a new one.  The new steps of the activity will be explained through this flyer that I have created with Canva.

3 de Laura Hernandez

Goals of the learning mission

The main goals of this challenge will be the ones of my open educational project.

-          To know and to use different vocabulary related to the topic.

-          To be able to talk about the past using past verbs and time expressions.

-          To know how to collaborate in group and develop social skills.

-           To promote critical thinking and English skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

-          To know how to work with ICT in an adequate way and how to manage with different interactive tools.

Timing

Students are able to do this task in two classes of 50 minutes each. They have to work in pairs and think about one scene to describe in the comic. Moreover, they have to think about a story to tell, the characters, the settings... They can use Google Docs for writing the ideas at the same time in a collaborative way in class.

In that classroom, they can start writing and sharing ideas.

When they have their stories, they can start making the comic using Pixton that is a very easy tool for them. The teacher should help and give support to the students in this step.

Skills

In order to fulfill this challenge students have to work on the four skills:

1.       Reading: They have to read what they write to make changes and, also their partner´s comics.

2.       Writing: They have to create a story using the new vocabulary and tenses acquired in the classroom.

3.       Listening: They have to listen to their partner´s ideas to make the story.

4.       Speaking: They have to speak each other to share ideas and create the artifact.

Final digital artifact

The final product will be a comic in which students demonstrate that they know the period of time very well. They have to dress their character appropriately, choose the best settings for each time (metal tools for Metal Age, stones in the Neolithic period…), and make a good and suitable story…

At the end of this post you can find an example of the artifact they have to make with PIXTON. You can find it also here.

Only tools

Kids will use some digital tools to accomplish this challenge:

1.       Google Docs: They have to share their ideas with their partner to put them in common and create a draft of the story they want to share.

2.       Pixton: They have to create a comic using this useful tool.

3.       Blogger: They have to paste their comics in their learning diaries explaining the whole process to the rest of the classroom. Moreover, they have to make a self-reflection of the activity.

How can relate this activity with the ESL TIMES Project?

I believe that my task is deeply in accordance with The ESL project because their main goal is to work on the four skills. For that reason, I have chose one activity in which students develop listening, reading, writing and speaking skills as I have already explained in that post.

Besides, our students are going to use ICT for learning because they will do a comic to show their work to their classmates.

Finally, as kids will work in pairs, we are promoting another ESL TIMES project´s goal that is collaborative work between students.

When I was looking at their web, one of their ideal posts is the use of comics, so I think this could be a good alternative to flat activities.

Finally, here is a sample of the final artifact students have to make for fulfill this challenge. I hope your coments and suggestions!!

Partner Search

Hello everybody and welcome to another post!

Today I want to explain you another part of my educational project. As I said in my last post, I would like to enrich my CLIL project to make it collaborative. For that reason, the next step is doing a partner search.

In my open educational project called, living the Prehistory, students need to work together to overcome the final target that was record a videoclip using the ICTs in which they will show what they have acquired.

As I said before, I think it is important that we, as teachers, help our students to manage with technologies because they are important for life nowadays. Therefore, this project is focus on the development of these technology skills.

Moreover, I have previously explained the importance of collaborative work that I have also included in my project.

After modifying my project to make it collaborative, now it is time to look for partners and join to another collaborative project. For that reason, today I would like to explain you what I learn from my ICT classes.

Partner search

It is important that we join to other online project in order to spread our work as teachers and to find the help of the other members of the educational community.   In order to choose the best collaborative project that fits with my own, I came across some awesome ones as ESL Times , Tertulias con sabor a chocolate or InfoEDUgrafias.

All of them are very interesting and fits well with my project and also make me think about new activities to develop. I have to admit that I was in two minds between InfoEDUgrafias and ELS Times because both of them are adequately for my prototype. However, since I have to choose only one, I decided to join ELS Times because I think my project works on the development of the four skills that they promote. Furthermore, I believe that the project´s final outcome fits better with their goals.

I find ELS Times very interesting because, as I explained in my last post, they promote the development of the four skills in all their activities and also, they want children to participate actively in them.  Their main goals are working whit the four language skills, encourage reading in English, use ICT with teaching, promote collaborative work team and autonomous work…

In their blog , you can find more information about this collaborative movement and also in their twitter.

I encourage you to follow them in the social networks to know more about ESL Times. You will find it interesting and useful to make your own educational projects!

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The second challenge that I have to fulfill in order to convince ELS Times that my project is the best to join them is an elevator pitch that I am going to explain.

Elevator pitch

It is an enterprise technique designed to find financial support for a project as it is my case. You have to record a short video in which your partner see that your Project is the best to join with them  in only 20 seconds. I have to admit that I had to make some drafts because it was very difficult to do it in that Little time. 

It is important that you hook the audience with a good start of your video, that you define what you want to overcome with a proper solution for it. 

To record my elevator pitch I used a new tool that is WeVideo that is an online video editor that makes it easy to capture, create and share what I want to explain. I don´t know anything about this tool until our teacher mention it and I have to admit that WeVideo solve me many problems of edition.

Here you can see my elevator pitch and then my draft that I pasted in Google Drive. I also give you the link of my WeVideo.

If you want to do an elevator pitch, you have to take into account that is a new way to present your work so you need to prepare it in order to do it in 20 seconds.  I have to spend more than 20 minutes making the draft and recording the video several times until it can be published. Once you have recorded your elevator pitch, you will feel better noticing that you have fulfilled everything that you aimed.

To conclude my post and as a self-reflection on my work, I would like to say that I am facing many challenges that I think I can´t do it when I saw them.  I encourage you to take risk, as I am doing in this subject, because when you get them LOS CONSIGUES you feel very proud of you and your work. I am learning a lot of new useful tools that are interesting for moving to the schools and work with children.

I have to admit that this challenge has been the most difficult one for me because I find difficulties to summarize what I want to say in my video in 20 seconds. I think that it is crucial to catch the attention of the audience and have a good body language.

I hope you learn more about these new tools and I am waiting for your comments and suggestions!!

See you soon with new challenges!

How to turn an open educational project into a collaborative one

Hello everybody!! Welcome to a new post!!

Today I am going to explain more about my prototype of open educational project I have mentioned in my last post.  We are trying to enrich our project in ICT classes adding some collaborative movements.

Firstly, I am going to make a friendly reminder of what my project was about. As I said in my last post, my prototype of an educational project is about Prehistory and its time periods. The children need to acomplish some challenges  related to this topic, in order to complete the final outcome: recording a videoclip in which they recreate one of the Prehistory time periods.

As many authors have previously stated, “cooperation” is the key of success in Education and  this concept is also deeply in accordance with the principles of CLIL education that we try to promote throughout this master.  Furthermore, I think that one of the goals of Education is the full development of students, so it is necessary for the teacher to adapt individual and traditional methodologies into others that promote active participation.

Through the cooperative learning, we not only respond to an intellectual learning, but also focus on the work of diverse group attitudes, teaching values such as coexistence, respect or responsibility. Moreover, as the students take the decisions within the group, they develop an autonomous thinking and a personal initiative that are also very important in the educational process.

In fact, the vast majority of the new school projects include collaborative tasks and cooperative learning in order to promote social skills in the students. Nevertheless, it is not only a matter of merely doing some group activities but also placing the work online to reach out to all the society. We, as teachers, need to think about how our students can take advantage of collaborative movements, since they are part of the society and it is important that they know how to do well in it. For that reason, we are learning to turn our open educational project into collaborative and cooperative ones.

If you want to know more about cooperative movement you can read this paper published by Fernando Trujillo.

Secondly, I would like to explain that I have made some little changes in my final outcome, so that it could fits with this new challenge. Thus, I will include two specific challenges in the final outcome in order to make it collaborative and cooperative. These are as follows:

Cooperative activity:

Students will be randomly placed in groups of four people. Then, they have to record a videoclip, make a comic, an infograph or another task in which they should show that they have acquired the subject content. Besides, they should have worked on all the skills during the whole project. Students are free to choose the settings and the place where they are going to record the videoclip. They will be free to choose the way they will present their work. They can use some tools like YouTube, We video, Pixton, Canva… that we will show them in class.

Collaborative activity:

In order to make this work collaborative out of the classroom, we will show student´s results to other people. Students should have a personal blog called “learning diary” in which they will show their work to the rest of their schoolmates and also to the teacher. To turn this activity collaborative, we will make a short videoclip on the work done in this project. This videoclip should be uploaded to the schoolblog, so everybody can see it and benefits from the idea. Students should leave comments and give teachers their creations to paste them into the blog.

Furthermore, students can show their videoclips, comics or whatever they have create, to their schoolmates from other classes.

With all this changes, I try to turn my open educational project into an entrepreneurship one, in order to collaborate with other projects. Through an active searching, I decided to join The ESL Time.   This project focuses on the work of diverse skills that are in accordance with my prototype of open educational project. Besides, it want to ensure the use of ICT skills that are promoted in my project and actively developed in The ESL Time.

Finally, I have made a visual metaphor to show how I will turn my open project into a collaborative one using Canva. This tool is a good alternative to show your work in a very visual way. Moreover it is easy to use so students will be able to manage with it.

Prehistory de Laura Hernandez

To conclude, with this post I would like to admit that I have never done this kind of job and I think I am learning a lot. In fact, I am learning how to use many tools that I have never used and which are useful for both, teachers and students. Furthermore, I am grateful for take part of collaborative movements and for enrich my teaching work.

I hope that you have learned more about collaborative and cooperation movements and I am waiting for your suggestions and comments!!