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!

 

Searching partners

Hello everybody!!! As I told you last day, my new challenge consists of being part of other collaborative projects from the net and I was looking for some of them, such as: InfoEduGrafías, The Twima project, Maderas que son violines, The other kids EDU, The ESL Times, Tertulias con sabor a chocolate, Piratas y Libélulas, No me cuentes historias, ¡dibújamelas!. All of them very interesting, but as I wanted to fit my educational project on it, I decided to join The 30 goals Challenge, which was founded by Shelly Sánchez Terrell @ShellTerrell.

 

Collected from The 30 Goals Challenge

I decided to be part of this community since they encourage a movement to transform the way of teaching, in which ICT and innovative methods are very important. They also think sharing knowledge and receiving feedback from students is necessary. Another important aspect in this community is learning through challenges, and I think my project invloves it.
Moreover, my educational project fits perfectly into this community since students will learn through different missions involving ICT methods, through which children will develop digital skills. Furthermore, teachers can accomplish and fulfill their objectives, as 21st century teachers, using an innovative methodology for the teaching process.

I would like to focus, particularly on "blog and reflect" section because students, during my educational project will have to share, post and reflect on the classroom blog what they have learnt. Finally, taking into account and concerning every idea, they will have to create a presentation.

I want to share with the rest of teachers my open educational project, in order to improve my teaching, to provide other ideas to the rest and to share experiences regarding blogging in the classroom.

 

Collected from 30 Goals Challenge

Having said that, in order to be part of this community, I have created an elevator pitch, which is an interesting tool and enterprise technique to find financial support for a project in a short time, 20 seconds approximately. I used this tool for an educational purpose, explaining the benefits, contributions and reasons why I want to be part of an educative community. 

Here you can see more information about what an elevator pitch is.

How can we do an elevator pitch?

First of all, you have to bear in mind what you want to get with it. After that, I recommend you to make a draft, because it is not easy to say everything in just 20 seconds. That´s why I recommend you to write the main ideas you want to express, and then, to explain them in a very clear way. You can follow this 4 easy steps in order to be clear and concise in your 20- second elevator pitch.

1. Hook. Getting your audience´s attention and interest about what you are going to tell them.
2. Problem. Showing your concerns, and the importance of working on that topic.
3. Solution. How you are going to face that problem, explaining your approach to the situation.
4. Close. Saying what the achievement of that goal will mean for you.

Then, after having this 4 main ideas, you just have to record yourself! Besides recording myself, I uploaded the video to YouTube in order to spread it on Twitter, mentioning the twitter handles of the running collaborative projects I would like to join. By this way, they will see my request and they will know more about me.

Self- reflection 

As in every post I want to reflect what I have learnt with this new challenge.

First of all, I have to say that I am very excited for belonging to the 30 goals communitiy. It has been a little bit complicated to look for a blog that best suits with my educational project, as I liked many of them and I wanted to be part of more than one. But finally, I have just decided to be part of just one, at the beginning.

Regarding the elevator pitch, which has been the main fact for this challenge, it was a little bit difficult to summarize the principal ideas of the whole project. However, following the 4 steps I told you before, it was not that difficult. I bore in mind the main idea I wanted to tell getting the audience´s attention and for that, I created a draft with Google Drive. Taking this into account, I could record myself easily.

After recording myself, I edited the video with Wondershare Filmora adding music and a final "contact me" slide, in order to provide my information to the community I want to belong to.

From my point of view, drafting was difficult, because I had never done something similar. Carrying out this draft, is very interesting in order to realize how important 20 seconds are, because we usually think that in less than a minute we do not have time to do anything.

Moreover, I think it is not only a tool, for us as adults, but also for our students in the classroom. Children can improve their oral skills by creating an elevator pitch. Besides, it is a fun way of getting children involve on summarizing topics and practicing speaking inside the classroom.

As far as my personal experience is concerned, I have to say that it has been a very greatful challenge because I have learnt how to summarize and tell the key ideas for catching people´s attention, and it is very useful not only for an eduactional purpose but for everything in life.

Before carrying out this motivating challenge, I did not even realize how many collaborative projects from people around the world are settled on the internet. I have also learnt that if you want to be part of something on the internet, just try it! Through social networks you can make it possible.

This challenge is also going to make me grow as a person because I will be able to see other experiences, to talk with other professional people, to share experiences with people not only from our surrounding environment but also people form all around the world!

I´m looking forward having this enriching experience and coming back with lots of things to tell you!!!

See you soon with my next post !!

Enriching my prototype

Hello everyone!!!!

Last week, I shared with you my prototype of the educational project I created. Today, I want to show you more about it. I have been thinking about enriching my educational project by making it more social, introducing different cooperative work.

First of all, I want to explain to you what collaborative work is. Learning and cooperative work is an approach that seeks to organize activities within and outside the classroom to become a social and academic learning experience. Students work in groups to perform tasks collectively.
Learning in this approach depends on the exchange of information among students, who are motivated both to achieve their own learning and to enhance the achievements of others.

Through collaborative work, students can share strengths and weaknesses with their groups and help each other, Besides, they will also develop many interpersonal skills to interact and communicate with others.

If you want to investigate more about this approach you can have a look at these links I leave you embedded:

1.Concept of collaborative work

2.Collaborative work in depth

3.Steps for collaborative work 

For these reasons, I decided to turn my educational project into a collaborative one.

How have I done it?

I was researching about collaborative work and I found three collaborative movements:

- Collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning.

- Collaboration out of the classroom connecting with other classes or communities and share opinions, to make service- learning projects, etc.

- Collaboration back to the classroom, taking into account external agents in order to provide a meaningful and real learning.

I have made some changes in the prototype I shared with you last day. If you remember, in my prototype I included collaborative work inside the classroom but as I want to make it richer, I have taken into account collaborative work outside the classroom and then, bringing back the external ideas to the classroom for the final outcome. The protoype process was the following:

1. Collaboration inside the classroom: looking for information in groups, about a certain topic, in which each student will have a different role.

2. Final outcome: creating a presentation with the information they have looked for.

I will keep collaboration within the classroom the same way I explained in my prototype, keeping roles within the students´ groups, but with a different purpose. The final outcome will be a genial.ly presentation too, but I will include another challenge before the final outcome in order to involve collaboration out of the classroom.

In this new challenge, social networks will be part of the project. Students will be able to spread their ideas through the classroom blog. The process I want to carry out now is:

1. Collaboration inside the classroom: looking for information about a certain topic, in groups, in which each student will have a different role.

2. Collaboration outside the classroom: students will have to write their conclusions of what they have learnt through the previous process, in a learning diary in the classroom blog. The teacher will help students to share their learning diaries with other schools or classrooms in order to receive feedback from other students.

3. Collaboration back to the classroom: once students have shared their ideas, they will have to reflect about the feedback given in order to include some of the aspects they have learnt from the other students. Each group will have to create a genial.ly presentation in which they include the information they have concluded, and some aspects they have learnt with this educational project.

It is a great idea, that students can share their knowledge among others. By this way, students learn from a meaningful context and thier interests arise.

Here I leave you a flyer explaining briefly how I have enriched my educational project.

Created with Smore

Here I share with you a mindmap for you to take into account when creating your own collaborative project from your lesson plan!

Created with Easel.ly

As in every post, I want to share with you a final reflection to conclude, in order to reflect what I have learnt.

Self- reflection

For carrying out this post, I had to research about what collaborative work is, and to know some of the main collaborative movements in order to see which one fits better in my educational project. Finally, I decided to include the three movements I have already shown you, because by this way, with this educational project, students will learn a lot and they will realize that learning is not an own task, but we can learn from and with others.
The tools I have used are:
- Smore for creating the flyer through which I have presented the changes made in my educational project in order to turn it into a collaborative work. For doing that, you can also use other easy applications, that I used for other posts, such as: Canva to create images and flyers, Pixton in order to create comics for your students, or even your students can create them for the rest of the class!, another tool for creating comics is Storyboard That.

- Easel.ly for creating the mindmap highlighting the three main aspects we must take into account for making a collaborative project.
All of them are very easy to use and very interesting for enriching your works, you just have to log in and start working!

Besides learning about new tools and applications I had never heard about, I have learnt many things about cooperative learning. I realized how much I like this type of learning since I think it is very interesting for our students, moreover, it has many advantages that maybe we had never thought. It makes students to be motivated with the topic they are going to study and a positive attitude is going to be developed. Cooperative learning also helps students to develop interpersonal skills, to respect each other, to develop problem solving skills and to be resposible with their own work.
In addition, for me, carrying out this challenge of turning my prototype into a collaborative project has been very useful because I see that there are many fun ways of learning, not only for the students but for us, as teachers, for example taking part of other collaborative projects, that many other teachers share with the world.
Having said that, the next step I will take is to fit in another collaborative project from other people. I would like to be part of a learning circle on the net with people from all around the planet. I invite you to do the same because it will open your mind and see the world through another perspective.

See you soon with the next post!!!