3x2 Review!

Hello everybody!!

My trip through the ICT course is finished. But as I love blogging, I want to finish it by sharing with you the things I like the most and something that can be improved from the ICT module.

 WHAT DID I LIKE?

 

Retrieved from Google images

1. I loved the time when we had to do the flipped introduction, interviewing a classmate. It was a fun way to meet my colleague Elena, who I did not know her too much.
2. Another thing that I loved and I found really interesting for our future, as teachers, was the process for carrying out an Open Educational Project. Although it has not been easy and it has taken a lot of time, but I think it has been very useful for us.
3. Finally, I loved the moment to share our projects to the real world through an online class. As well as posting our learning process in our blog. Thank to this I could see how I have improved and how many challenges I have achieved in a short period of time.

 WHAT WOULD I CHANGE/ IMPROVE?

  Retrieved from Google images

I think we have had a handicap, which is called TIME. We have been under pressure because of that, and I think to really love digital skills you need time, to explore and to be able to manage many digital tools.

Now, let´s finish our ICT module with a little bit of humour!!!!

Created with Meme generator

New experience: live online class!!

Hello everyone!!

The end of the process of my Open Educational Project is here. Today I want to share with you an amazing experience. Thanks to the Master´s degree I am currently studying and to my teacher M. Jesús García San Martín and Dr. Nellie Deutsch, I have had the opportinuty to participate in an online class at Moodle MOOC 10 (MM10), and to explain my Open Educational Project to many teachers from all around the world.

There were people from Italy, New York, India, Autralia, Canada, France, etc. We only had 5 minutes to talk about our experience and the Educational Project we created, because we were 26 people presenting and that would take a long time. In fact, we spent 2 hours and 18 minutes listening to our classmates and learning many things about education, many innovative ways to carry out any lesson plan, fresh ideas and motivating methodologies to take into account in our future clases, etc.

First of all, I prepared a transcription of what I wanted to say and from that, I created an schema for everybody to see it during the conference. Here you can see my transcription through Slide Share.

Transcription conference de Laura Garrido García

Then, we shared a Google document for all of us to create one slide for presenting. Here you can see the slides from all my classmates that also presented their Open Educational Projects, all of them very interesting.

Open educational digital projects for clil primary education from Laura Garrido García

Furthermore, I want to share with you the whole conference.

As you can see in the video, we had to comment and spread our classmates´ blog for the rest of the people to know the topic better. Finally, we were combining our twitter hashtags: #moodlemooc10 and #ictclil_urjc, with the online conference, which was a little bit difficult for me because I had never done this and to be focused on two things at the same time is a little bit complicated (not only for men, hehe).

Regarding my experience on MM10, I have to say that we had to rehearse in WizIQ in order to prove the audio and video settings, for having everything prepared for the actual day of the conference. I was too nervous since I had never taken part of something like this.

I have learnt a lot of things thanks to this live conference, such as how important is for teachers to share our knowldege in order to learn from each other and an online class is an incredible way to share it. We are always learning, and learning from others´ experiences is greatful and gratifying. Another outstanding fact that called my attention was how we can connect to people from all around world. It is such an amazing experience!! There are many other systems and methods used in other countries or different cultures and it is very interesting knowing them because maybe we can adapt it to our classes, country or even to our culture.

As far as my ICT course is concerned, I have learnt many interesting things. Moreover, it has opened my eyes regarding digital skills since I was not convinced at all of using digital tools inside our classroom and either I did not know how to introduce them. However, after carrying out the whole process of creating an Open Educational Project has helped me a lot in believing education through a different perspective, from the digital side.  

These almost 4 months have been hard and intense but for me very rewarding, since I have imrpoved in the use of digital tools and I have carried out an active learning process, in which I have developed challenges that I never imagined to carry out. Moreover, I have discovered that many other teachers form virtual communities in which you can collaborate with. Besides, I have learnt a lot from my classmates´ projects and what is more, I have also improved my writing skills in English!!

All in all, it has been a wonderful trip through the ICT world and I hope I can put all these into practice soon. I encourage you to collaborate and share your knowledge with the rest of the world and if you have the chance to be part of an online conference, do not miss that oportunity!!

See you soon in my next post!

Assessment rubric

Hello everybody!!!

We are finishing working on my Open Educational Project and we have learnt many things so far. First, I showed you an analysis of an Open Educational Project published on the internet, in order to observe the main features that it contains because I wanted to create my own Open Educational Project. Then, I gave you some tips for carrying out the first approach to our Educational Project, creating a prototype of it. As the time passed by, I was getting more involved in this digital world and I wanted to enrich my prototype by doing it collaborative, taking into account collaboration inside, outside and back to the classroom. After that, I tried to look for partners and get in touch with an awsome collaborative community called The 30 Goals Challenge. The last step I took for enriching my Educational Project, as you could see, was turning flat activities into super learning missions, in which I gave you two super learning missions.

Today I want to show you the assessment rubric I have done for my Open Educational Project.

First of all, I would like to tell you why evaluation is so important. The assessment must be seen as a tool to improve the learning process, whose main goal is to determine the extent to which the quality goals set in the standards are being met, associated with the expected learning outcomes of the students. In other words, assess means to make an analysis of our intervention and, therefore, it is a moment of reflection that culminates the learning process that is the development of our activity. To evaluate, leads us consequently, to improve and to progress.

What do we have to take into account when creating a rubric for the assessment?
There are four main elements that we must take into account:

• The aspects of the learning process to be assessed
• A well defined criteria of each specific aspect to be assessed is needed in order to have clear what you are evaluating
• In a rubric we must include a scale of ratings. It is recommended not to use more than 4.
• The description of criteria must be clear and easy to understand and concrete the performance levels.

Here I leave an image I have created with Canva for you to see it clearer.

Assessment rubric by Laura G.

Furthermore, there are many tools for doing your own assessment rubric, such as Rubistar 4 teachers or Quick Rubric. I tried to do my rubric with the first tool, but finally I decided to do it with Quick Rubric because you can add as scale ratings as you want, as well as key aspects for criteria.

Before creating the final rubric I did a draft in Paint, in order to have clear the criteria I want to follow.

 Created with Paint by Laura G

Here you can see the final rubric I have created with Quick Rubric.

Rubric for Assessment de Laura Garrido García

After finishing this rubric with this tool, I downloaded as PDF and then I uploaded here through SlideShare.This rubric assessment has been designed for the teacher to evaluate each group, but not only for her/ him. As I told you, at the beginning, in the prototype I showed you, I wanted students to participate in the evaluation as well. So, this rubric is going to be used also for students to assess each group. It can also seen by parents, in order them to know what is going to be assessed in the project. With this rubric we can evaluate the project´s development as well as the final outcome since everything is related.

Moreover, I would like my students to assess themselves. For that, I created an easy self-assessment worksheet, which is not a rubric, that students have to fill in. This worksheet has been made with Microsoft Office Word and then I turned it into an image through Paint.

Created by Laura G

Self-reflection

I want to conclude this post by saying that carrying out this new challenge has been very useful for me because I have realized how important for assessing is to make a rubric in which you can see the key aspects of the project and the criteria you are going to follow to evaluate. It is even easier to evaluate by this way. Besides, you can even show it to parents in an organized manner and they are going to understand it easily.

Furthermore, I have learnt new things about assessment, different types and new interesting tools such as Socrative, which is a tool that a teacher from University used during my degree and I did not realized how useful it was to assess the knowledge of the students about certain topics through a different way. It can be used for quick quizzes and also on the fly, through a mobile phone, tablet or computer. You can even create a "race game" and the website automatically divides the class into teams. Students know what colour team they are on and they can look at the rockets racing one another on the board. It is easy and convenient to use, in fact, it gives percentages that can be used as a grade if we're ready for that and it shows the percentege of children answering a question, etc. I like using it with my students, with the tablet, as a game tool for reviewing a topic before an exam. By this way, students get motivated by answering questions about the topic.

You can also look for other tools in Edutopia and put it into practice!

I hope you put into practice the whole process for carrying out your super educational projects, and share your experiences! Although it is a long process, then it is worth!
I will see you soon with another post!!!

Turning flat activities into super learning missions (part ll)

Hello everyone!!

I hope you have learnt how to create super learning missions with my last post and that you like my first super mission. As I told you, this post is to share with you the second activity that I have turned into a super learning mission.

The second activity "creating a presentation", as its name says, consisted in creating a presentation in PowerPoint with the information from the textbook. Now, this activity is a super learning mission called "becoming teachers!", in which students will use a new tool called Genial.ly for preparing a wonderful and interactive presentation for the rest of the class. With this activity, we are not going to work only on collaboration within the classroom but also oustide the classroom, which is very motivating ides for our students! To carry out this collaboration, outside the classroom, students will record a video of themselves, explaining briefly some tips that we can bear in mind in order to protect our environment and these endangered species.

After that, students will have to post in a new entrance of the blog their final artifacts: presentation and video. Taking into collaboration back to the classroom, finally they will have to reflect about the experience as well as considering the tips that other students have proposed.

Here you can see how I have developed, in a draft using Google docs the super learning mission "becoming teachers!". As in the first activity, you can find the goals I want to achieve, the contents that are going to be worked, the competences involved, the timing and tools that are going to be used and the final artifact, as well as the full description of the development of the learning mission.

Moreover, I have created a short magazine with all the points for you to see it clearly. For that I have used the tool Canva.

Learning mission 2 by Laura G

How have I linked this super learning mission to The 30 Goals Challenge?

As the first learning mission that you have seen, I have also related this mission with the blogging goal, which I think is a very important tool that students should work with. The reason why I have chosen the same goal for both is that children learn how to use this tool, with different posts: in one of them writing including images, then embedding a presentation and including a video, etc. The main goal is that students distinguish the internet and some tools, such as Blogger, Movie Maker using it for an educational purpose from using it for leisure activity. By this way, students will realize that internet is not only for playing but also to learn and share knowledge with others.

Here you can see an example that I have created for you to see what I expect from students, using the tools: Genial.ly, Blogger and Movie Maker.

Presentation in Genial.ly:

Movie Maker video.




Post in the class blog.

Self- reflection

This whole challenge has been the most difficult for me. It took me a lot of time to think of how turning the activity into a mission since every time I came up with new ideas. Finally, following the tips that I told you in the previous post of "How to create super learning missions", I decided the tools I wanted my students to use and the final artifact I wanted them to achieve. I always had in my mind The 30 Goals challenge "blogging", which is the one I wanted to include in my Open Education Project, and I thought that students could work on different mission but through a common tool: Blogger.

This experience have enriched my thoughts about the teaching and learning process. Now, I can affirm that these type of methodology can be carried out in a real classroom and thus, we can keep curiosity and motivation for learning in our students, which is a very greatful aspect.

Regarding the new tools I want to include in this mission, I think Movie Maker and genial.ly are not excesively difficult to be used by students from 5th grade. Besides, the artifacts that they have to reach are fun and they like doing such activities.

Finally, I would like to say that as collaboration is so important, I wanted to involve it in these super learning missions, for students to have a meaningful and active learning.

I hope these posts have been useful for your future classes and... Do not forget to try to turn your flat activities into super learning missions!!! See you soon with another wonderful post.

Turning flat activities into learning missions

Hello everybody!!!!

My last post was about searching partners to join in a collaborative project from the internet. As I am getting involved in a collaborative community and I wanted to enrich my open educational project, my new challenge is turning flat activities into super learning missions.

How can we turn a flat activity into a super learning mission?

First of all, we have to bear in mind that we are teachers from the 21st century and there are many ways of teaching, most of them very motivating for our students. Let´s try to forget textbooks for a while and let´s try to be more creative! Creating super learning missions is a way of transforming boring tasks into motivating challenges for students to learn, and for teachers, it is a way of enriching our way of teaching and our educational projects.

In order to carry this objective out, we have to select a flat activity, for example a task from the book. Then, we have to set the goals we want to achieve and after that, we have to think how to make it more motivating and meaningful for our students, analysing the tools we are going to use. Finally we have to explain clearly to our students the artifact we want them to create.

I have created a poster with the steps you can follow to create learning missions.

Created with Easel.ly by Laura G.

Which activities have I chosen?

In the protoype of my Open Educational Project (OEP), you could see some activities that I proposed considering digital skills and ICT because I thought it would be nice and children would love it. However, after thinking about them, I saw that some activities were flat and I wanted to turn them into super learning missions. The activities I have chosen are looking for information and creating a presentation.

In this post I am going to explain everything from the first activity and I will publish another post with the explanation of the second activity for you to have it clear!

How have I turned the first activity into a super learning mission?

The first activity "looking for information" consisted in, as its name shows, looking for information in the textbook, about the topic that the group of students have in order to fulfill an activity from the textbook. Now this boring activity is a super learning mission called "blogging my knowledge!", in which students will have to do a research of the topic by groups, and then, they have to post the explanation in their learning diaries. With this super mission, students will collaborate within the classroom, in small groups.

Here you can see how I have developed, in a draft using Google docs, the super learning mission "blogging my knowledge!". You can find the goals I want to achieve, the contents that are going to be worked, the competences involved, the timing and tools that are going to be used and the final artifact, as well as the full description of the development of the learning mission.

Besides, I leave a magazine that I have created with the tool canva, with the whole explanation of the super learning misison in order to make it clear.

Mission 1 Journal created with canva by Laura G.

How have I linked this super learning mission to The 30 Goals Challenge?

As you could see in my last post about the partner search, I wanted to focus on the blogging goal from this community and I thought a good way to do it was including this goal in my flat activity in order to turn it into a super learning mission. By this way, I am also linking this activity to the community to which I want to belong to.

Furthermore, teachers will also achieve their objectives from the 21st century teaching by including this amazing resource.

I have created an example of what I want my students to do in the classroom blog with the tool: Blogger.

Self- reflection

As always, I want to reflect about this new challenge, which has been a little bit difficult. First of all, I had to look for information about what a learning mission is and after having a look at many websites, I started to think about how to do a more interesting activity from the one that I thought in the prototype. I decided to do a poster to explain it better, with a digital tool: canva; in order to make my post more visual and attractive.

This challenge has been very interesting for me since I have learnt how to work in a different and meaningful way on a topic that can be seen as boring for students.

As far as digital tools are concerned, I decided to include Blogger since students will develop their writing skills through an unconscius way. By learning many things about our environment and about digital tools, they will also improve English and writing skills. Moreover, it is linked to the challenge from The 30 Goals I wanted to focus on, inside this community. For these reasons I decided to link all the missions to this challenge. Students will have to overcome different artifacts and then publish them into their learning diaries in order to share it with the world.

From my point of view this is a very interesting and motivating perspective through which students will learn a lot of things constructing their own knowledge, helping each other.

As Ever Garrisson said: "a teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge and wisdom in the pupils".

I hope you like this new idea and I will be waiting for you to see my second super learning mission in the next post. See you soon!!

Sample of students´ post (mission 2)

Hello again friends. We are Goku, Lola and Florencio again. We want to show a presentation that we have done for our classmates. It is about the information we posted in the last post of the blog: endangered species.

What we have to do with this presentation is show it to our classroom and our teacher to explain to them what we have found. At the beginning it has been difficult to do it because we have never use it, we always use PowerPoint. But our teacher taught us how to use it and we could do the presentation very well.

We can teach you how to use it too: you have to think of a topic, then you go to the genially link that you can find in google, but we are going to write it here Link. Then you log in and you will see some examples for the presentation that you can use. You click and the screen appears and on the left you can add images, text, etc and on the right you have the pages. That is all, then you can start writing your presentation.

We have had a good time doing it, so you will love it too.

We also want to tell you some tips, for protecting these species and our environment too. We have done a video with Movie Maker for showing it to you that you are in another school. The teacher has helped us to put it on YouTube. We hope you like it and that you say your opinion. Thank you.

Our video

To conclude  we want to say that this missions has been very fun for us because we have done a lot of new thing. We have learnt a lot about animals and plants that are endangered and we want to share with you some ideas that we have.

To take care about our environment:

- Don´t leave rubbish in the nature, what you can do if you go to the sea or the countryside is to bring a plastic bag and you throw there the rubbish.

- Don´t hunt endangered animals for fun. What you can do instead is going to play bingo or going to the cinema.

- If you see any injured animal, call to "Animal protection" or to the vet, they will take care of the animal.

- Do not do fire because you can kill animals and plants.

Sample of student´s post (mission 1)

Hello classmates.

Our group is formed by Goku, Lola and Florencio. We are students from 5th grade of Primary Education and we have to do a research about endangered species. We want to show you some endangered species that we have found on the internet.

ANIMALS

Giant armadillo

It is in a vulnerable situation since, it is estimated a decrease in its population due to the loss of habitat and hunting as usual. In 30 years, 30% of the population disappeared. Is the largest species of armadillo that exists today. It measures between 75 and 100 cm, being able to measure the tail up to 50 cm. They weigh up to 60 kg in captivity, and in their natural environment they have data of between 18.7 and 32.3 kg.

 Retrieved from google images

Mexican wolf

There are no exemplars left living in freedom. However, thanks to the efforts that are being made for its recovery from individuals born and bred in captivity.

Its length is approximately 1.35 metres and its height to the cross is one 0.8 metres. Its weight varies from 27 kg to 45 kg.

It is a beautiful animal of nocturnal habits, and that as a general rule in the wolves they live in herds formed by 5 to 12 units, being a unique pair that breeds, the pair alpha. They give birth to an average of 4 - 6 puppies in April or May.

Their life expectancy is 8 to 13 years in the wild and 12 to 15 years in captivity. Its coat is gray in color sometimes with a reddish tint. They feed mainly on elk, deer, peccaries, rabbits and rodents.

Retrieved from google images

Bengal tiger

The Bengal tiger probably came to the Indian subcontinent 12,000 years ago, although it seems to continue this way not for much longer. In total, there are less than 2,500 tigers.

Its coat is generally orange or fawn with its typical stripes and with its light colored, almost white bottoms. In addition, a mutation can occur that makes the tiger white, and these would be the majestic white tigers, so coveted by many. They measure approximately between 2.70 - 3.10 meters in length, including the tail.

 Retrieved from google images

Mexican bear

It was one of the heaviest and largest mammals in Mexico. This bear, a subspecies of the brown bear along with ten more, had a reddish brown coat and silver colored stripes on its face, part of its body and legs. This characteristic color was the reason the natives called him 'the silver bear'. The ears were black along part of their paws. It could measure up to 1.83 m. And its weight was around 318 kg.

 Retrieved from google images

PLANTS

Drago de Gran Canaria (Drago of Gran Canaria)

This specie was found at the end of the 20th century on the island that gives it its name, Gran Canaria. At present, Tenerife and Gran Canaria are the only islands where the dragos subsist in the wild.
They have a very special shape that makes it distinctive. The dragos are characterized by having multiple trunks and take the form of umbrella with very dense leaves. Its maximum height is 12 meters, although being of slow growth, this can take several years.

Retrieved from google images

Manzanilla Real (Royal Chamomile)

It is born in areas where the cold and the ice predominate. It is a medicinal herb that has a lot of leaves of very small size of silver color. It is a plant that naturally creates more than 2300 meters above sea level.
Chamomile has a high percentage of essential oils and active essences that make it ideal for digestive problems and upset stomach.

 Retrieved from google images

Orquídea zueco (Orchid clog)

Also known as "Lady's Shoe". It is an orchid that has on the flower a yellow petal in the form of a clog, hence its name. It is often found in North America, Europe and Asia. In Belgium and Luxembourg it is now extinct. In Spain it only grows in the Pyrenees.
It lives in the moist forests. Its collection for being so beautiful, has been the main factor of its disappearance. It is the only European orchid that has a system of pollination through an insect trap.

 Retrieved from google images

All this is what we are going to explain to you in class, and to all of you from other schools through a video we are going to record.

We are looking forward carrying out the next step and that you like it a lot.

We have learnt a lot about animals and plants that are endangered and we want to share with you a question: how can we avoid eliminating some species? because this is sad. 

We will propose some tips and we hope that all of you collaborate with us giving your opinion.

Bye, bye!