SUPER LEARNING MISSION 1

Hello 21cenTeachers!

This post is part of a challenge that is divided into two parts. To overcome this challenge I will have to work on my open educational e-project in order to turn two of its plain and boring activities into super learning missions which engage and motivate students. So, in this post I am going to explain to you in depth the final mission that I just prototyped for my open educational e-project: Live a healthy life. The second part of the challenge will be published soon and I will share with you all the steps I followed to turn another mission of my project into a super learning mission in collaboration with my peer Raúl Oviedo. If you want to find out more about him visit his blog The Science Corner or have a look at his Twitter account @ScienceCorner1.

Now, I would like to share with you all all the steps I followed to turn the final missión of my open educacional project into a super learning mission.

• ALLIGNMENT WITH THE COLLABORATIVE MOVEMENT 

As you know, I decided to join the collaborative movement Infoedugrafias to turn my educational project into a collaborative one. As I joined this collaborative movement, I must allign at least one part of the project with its style so I decided that one mission will consist in creating a healthy magazine with different infographics. 

What is an infographic? An infographic is a representation of information in graphic format and it is designed to make the data easy to understand at a glance. People use infographics for different purposes: to communicate a message, to simplify the representation of large amounts of data or to monitor changes in variables over time. An infographic can be used as an interesting educational resource since it helps students to develop high and low order thinking skills. Below, you can have a look at a visual created by Proyecto Infoedugrafías which will help you to know better what the main characteristics of infographics are and what they are used for.

Retrieved from Infoedugrafías

I decided to do this, because I have been searching information about ways to make students work in groups and cooperate in the classroom and I think this option will provide them with that opportunity since they will have to follow little steps and overcome differet mini-tasks cooperatively to come up with a nice final product. Some examples of the mini-tasks that the will have to face are mentioned in the next paragraph.

• FINAL MISSION

This is the final mission of the unit and students will be divided into small groups of three or four to carry it out. As said above, in this activity students will create an infographic of a topic related to healthy lifestyle such as ealthy eating, physical activity, hygiene, etc. In order to come up with a nice and useful infographic students will have to work in groups to achieve different mini-tasks such as looking up information, selecting relevant information and avoiding non-relevant, organising this data, selecting an online tool and managing it to create the final product and present it to the rest of the class.

Retrieved from Pixabay

After creating the infographics in groups, students will have to present the information to the rest of the class. But this is not  an ordinary presentation, the presentation consists in recording a short video (< 5 minutes) with a video camera or with a mobile phone (all group members must appear in the video). For this purpose, the teacher will take the class to the playground during a session and will monitor that they work properly. To ensure that this challenge is carried out efficiently, they will be given enough time to prepare it in advance either at home or at school and they will be encouraged to create a draft of what they want to explain in the video. In addition,before finishing the unit, students will self-reflect about the learning they have acquired.

• METHODOLOGY AND TEMPORALIZATION

As I explained in previous posts, along this open educational project I would like to use and active and cooperative methodology in which students are the centre of the process. By doing so, children will take part actively in their learning process and this will make a positive difference. I would also like take advantage of the flipped classroom technique to carry out most of the activities.

To accomplish this goal, I have been looking up for different ways of doing so. Thanks to it, I found a very interesting tool that will allow me to design a project in which students will be able to look up information, acquire both content and language and overcome challenges by themselves. This tool is called Exelearning and it was designed by a group of software developers in collaboration with different organisations related to the Ministry of Education of Spain, I have to say that I am currently trying to learn how to use this tool in order to create a real open educational project which can be carried out in a primary classroom. 

Moving on, this whole educational project consists of 5 missions and a final task and it is intended for fourth grade of primary school. Regarding the final mission that is explained in this post, it will last 4 lessons and it can be carried out within different subjects such as Physical Education, English and Natural Scence. It will promote cooperative learning and group work as well as other important skills mentioned above.

• OBJECTIVES AND COMPETENCES

Regarding the objectives to be achieved and the competences involved in this mission, I started to think about them as soon as I chose the mission that I wanted to develop in depth. For this reason, I wrote a Word document trying to explain carefully every aspect: objectives, competences and online tools that are involved in this mission. Then I uploaded it to SlideShare and embedded it here so you can have a look at it below.

Final task project from puchi_dani88

As you can see in the document, this mission will contribute to the development of certain abilities that are crucial in the current society. Through this activity students will improve different skills such as communicative, digital and cooperative skills. At the same time, it will offer them the opportunity to improve cognitive skills because they will have to do LOTS and HOTS activities.

Below you can see an infographic that explains some benefits of doing exercise. I created it in order to give it to the students as a sample. This way, it will be easier for them since they will know exactly what is expected from them. I created this infographic with an online tool called Canva that provide us with all the options needed to create a nice infographic.

Benefits of doing exercise de Daniel Marques

To finish, as always, I would like to reflect on my own learning experience. First of all, I have to say that creating this educational project is one of the most challenging tasks that I have faced during my university years.

Regarding the online tool Canva, I had already used it before and it is an useful tool which is easy to use. It allows us to create dfferent visuals and it also has an specific option to create infographics in which we can use different templates depending on how we want to organise the data. 

Then, as far as new methodologies are regarded, it have realised how important it is to use appropiate methodologies that are student-centered and allow children to acquire content and language in an active and participative way. It is also important to chose appropiate materials and take advantege of the integration of new technologies in the learning process which is very motivating for our students.

If you have any suggestions or comments do not hesitate to leave a comment! 

I hope you enjoyed my post! See you soon! 

Enriching my educational project with a visual metaphor

Hi 21cenTeachers!!

Today I will explain to you all my last challenge that has been quite fruitful. Also, as always, I will show you the artifact that I have created and explain my opinion about some online tools and how I handled with them.

But first, concerning my educational project, I would like to share with you some strategies and activities that I have been mulling over and I think could be useful in order to turn my open educational project into a collaborative one. 

So, I started to read about different possibilities to turn normal projects into collaborative ones. I analysed some of them and I have choosen some options and activities that could fit with my project in a realistic way. Below you can see some aspects that I think could be implemented in my project.

Retrieved from Pixabay

• Collaboration within the classroom: Cooperative learning will be one of the cornerstones of the project. Students will have to collaborate (pair work and group work) in different ways to look up information and achieve several missions. For instance, I have thought of an activity in which students will be divided in pairs. They will carry out an interview following the 3, 2, 1 technique and questions will have to do with the topic of healthy lifestyle. Moreover, students will collaborate whether face to face or through the internet to create the final product of the class: a health magazine.

• Collaboration out of the classroom: This kind of collaboration includes connection with other classes, other communities and with the real world. In this context, pupils will create a learning diary in an online platform such as Blogger or Weebly. This way, it will enable them to share their learning evidences and reflections and upload their product to make them public and visible. In addition, it would be fantastic if this project could be done jointly with another class or school, so students will get to know more ways to do things and other styles while they communicate and develop their interpersonal skills. Finally it woul be great if we could join a collaborative movement on the net. I am already browsing different websites to know more about them and I will try to fulfil this ambition in my next post!

• Collaboration back to the classroom: This kind of collaboration consists of taking external agents into the class whether in person, via the internet or otherwise in order to enrich the learning process. From my point of view, this is a more complicated task since it will be hard to find someone who has direct experience in this field or topic, And even finding it, this person has to take the activity which is not always easy. So, I will keep mulling over this way of collaborating in order to find an idea that is realistic and contributes positively to the project.

Moving on, I would like to introduce to you the callenge that I have had to overcome during the last few days. Do you remember that I prototyped my own educational project? I am sure you remember the title of it: Live a healthy life! Now it is time to make it more attractive to the world. I have been challenged to design an online visual metaphor to turn my educational digital project ino a collaborative one. So, let´s get to work!

Once I knew what to do, I started to look up for information an online tools that might be useful for me in order to accomplish this task.  I got information about different different tools that could fulfil this aim such as Canva, Pixton, Smore, Piktochart, Caccoo and Mindmeister. Then I took a deeper look at the characteristics of each one by going into their websites and fiddling with them.

I finally decided to create and infographic with Piktochart. An infographic is a graphic visual representation of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. Below you can see the infographic that I have created with Piktochart and I have shared by using Evernote. You can also see it by clicking here.

Created by Daniel Marqués using Piktochart

To finish, I would like to share with you my opinion about the online tool I have used to create this infographic: Piktochart. I strongly think it is a wonderful tool. It is free and it offers its users the chance of creating attractive and striking visuals such as infographics, posters, visual organisers, flyers, menus and even book covers. For example, the template and the images have been retrieved from the application itself. In addition, it enables them to add different elements, to upload photographs, to choose different templates and many other options to change other aspects. However, when I was finishing my work I had a very unpleasant surprise. As I did not have the "Pro version", it did not allow me either to download my creation in PDF or to share my creation where I was thinking of (Slideshare). Nor did it let me download the infographic with all the aspects that I had inluded in it. For instance, I included some links (to my blog, to my social networking sites, etc) that are now no noticeable.

Moreover, I have used another online tool that I had never used. It is called Evernote and it allows us to create notes and other things in order to remind ourselves to do something or to share it with collegues and family. I have used it to share my visual metaphor and I found it useful for this purpose.

Apart from that, I have learned about the different ways in which we, as teachers, can collaborate with other others to turn our learning adventures into collaborative ones. This is very important for our students because we will provide them with the opportunity of collaborating while learning and this makes their learning process more beneficial.

If you have any suggestions or questions, please let me know by dropping a comment here or by contacting me on my Twitter (@21cenTeachers).

See you soon!

SEARCHING FOR PARTNERS

Hello again 21cenTeachers!

Today I am going to share with you all the steps that I have followed to overcome a new challenge: searching for partners. After prototyping my open educational project and enriching it with a visual, it is time to look for partners on the internet.

First, I was given the links of some on-going collaborative projects so I went to all of these sites to have a glance at them. By doing this I could have an overview of these collaborative sites and their main features. Then, among all of this collaborative projects, I picked up three of them to analyse in depth. I decided to browse these three carefully to find the one where my project could best fit in.

Retrieved from Pixabay

By doing this, I got to know great collaborative movements on the net such as The 30 Goals Challenge and The twima Project. After spending considerable time on anayling each collaborative project, I chose InfoEDUgracias as the collaborative project that I would like to work with. I am going to summarize the main reasons for this choice.

• It is a collaborative movement that contains projects of different ages and topics so I think they would accept mine.  In addition, I have seen many projects in which students have came up with amazing infographics of different topics that have aided them to learn certain content in an active way.

• Teachers that are interested in joining this page send to the administrators the required information. Afterwards, they have to uploud their collaborative projects and the whole illustrated process with the students so other teachers and students who belong to this community can benefit from it.

• All these projects follow the same pattern. The teacher act as a guide. He helps students and encourage them to look up information, select the right information, organise it and present it to the rest of the class, hence, to the rest of this online community. So, it is the same methodology that I will use in my project. 

• Infographics are one of the resources that this collaborative website uses most. I think my project could fit quite well in it. For instance, the final project of my project consists in creating a healthy mazagine so I think they could create it by putting different infographics together of different topics related to healthy lifestyles such as: healthy eating, physical activity, personal hygiene, etc.

Retrieved from InfoEDUgrafias

Below, you can see my elevator pitch. The steps I followed to create it are the next ones:

• First, I looked up what an elevator pitch is on the internet.

• After getting to know that it is a short video or presentation in which you present a product to other in an appealing way in order to find partners or investors, I made a draft in GoogleDocs in order to make sure that I was covering all the necessary points in my short speech

• Next, I recorded myself with the video recorder of my mobile phone.

• Then, it was time to make it more visually appealing. I did not know whether use Imovie or a new online tool to edit it. As I had already edited a video with Imovie, I went for the other option to experiment new applications. So I edited it with Wevideo.

• Finally I shared my elevator pitch using YouTube. I shared it in muy YouTube channel and then I embedded it here in my blog.

Before finishing I would like to share with you my opinion about a couple of aspects. First, as far as the collaborative project that I would like to join is concerned, I must say that I found InfoEDUgrafias a very useful site in which both students and teachers can share their work with the world. Wherefore, the rest of teachers and students who belong to this community can benefit from it.

This collaborative movement promotes essential skills such as ICT skills, english communication skills, cooperative and collaborative work and active learning. From my point of view, we, as teachers, should provide students with full opportunities to improve these indispensable skills that will enable them to succeed in real world.

I have also learned how to present a product and look for partners on the internet. I found out what an elevator pitch is and I found it extremely helpful. In this context, Additionally, I learnt how important is to have the ability to catch others´attention with few words, rather than making a long speech that may bore them.

Regardind the application that I have used to create my elevator pitch, I think that Wevideo is a wonderful video editor that allows its users to change, add and remove countless elements. I am almost sure that I will use this online tool and take advantage of its fantastic options.

See you soon!

A prototype of my open educational project

Hello 21cenTeachers!! Today I am going to share with you all a new challenge that we have been assigned. After analysing an open educational project from EDIA-CLIL projects (Analysis of "A TV program") we have been challenged to prototype our own educational projects.

As I have already said, I will present you a prototype of my educational project in the following lines. Also, I will try to explain carefully all the steps I followed and my learning experience concerning this matter. Moreoever, it is very important to make clear that this is a first approach to the project and it can be modified if necessary.

First, I started to think about what topic my educational project would adress. After thinking about some posibilities I have in mind I decided to center the project on the next topic: healthy lifestyle. This CLIL project could help students acquire healthy eating habits and healthy routines in their lifes that will lead to a better life standards.

Retrieved from Pixabay

"Live a healthy life!" is the title of this project. After deciding on this topic and its title, I started to shape the whole project using a template that we were given for this purpose. Below you can see the template which is complete and shows the main features of this educational project.

Prototype of a CLIL project: "Live a healthy life" 

As you can see this project would be carried out within the subjects of Natural Science and Physical Education but it is connected to other subjects such as Arts and Graphs (cross-curricular link). It has been dessigned with the aims of:  promoting collaborative work, fostering creativity, acquiring english, learning about healthy routines and improving digital skills. Throughout this project, I would try to provide students with the necessary tools and full of examples to ensure they succeed. According with what I have in my mind, all these activities would be related to the final task: creating a class magazine (online). Additionally, concerning the teacher´s role, he/she will act as a guide and will follow a student-centered approach by prompting them to investigate by themselves and by helping or giving them examples when necessary.

Now, I would like to share with you all a video that I have created with Powtoon.  I must say that I was going to use the application called Tellagami but while I was editing my character I realised that the free version only allows us to create thirty-second videos. However, Powtoon is a free online tool that allows its users to create animated videos that result very interesting and attractive for others. A significant advantage of this tool is that it is very easy to use and it offers labeled templates and animations that can be used dependind on the type of video we want to create. This fantastic tool has given me to opportunity to present my project in a fresh and unknown way (at least for me).

Finally, I would like to reflect a little bit on my work. For me, this has been a challenging task which has given me te opportunity of experiencing some interesting things. Regarding the educational project I have to say that I had been said to create a didactic unit before but I had never been assigned such a complete task. I have had to think carefully what I would like students to learn and then fill up the template that we were given. In addition, regarding the online tools, I had never used a video editor like Powtoon and I have to say that I have found it very useful and easy to use. Thanks to it I have been able to create an interesting presentation for my educational project. I have used also some other online tools to share my work; I uploaded my template to SlideShare and my presentation to YouTube. 

In case you have any idea that could either improve or be useful for my project, let me know by dropping a comment here or contacting me on social networking websites.

See you soon 21cenTeachers!

ANALYSIS OF AN OPEN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

Hello everyone! It is time to show you the result of my last challenge: to analyse an educational project! Are you ready?

In this entry I am going to analyse an open educational project from EDIA-CLIL Projects. EDIA-CLIL Projects is a website where we can find a bunch of CLIL educational projects which are designed for Secondary Education. This projects has been created by INTEF (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado).

I have decided to analyse in depth the next project: A TV program

Image from Pixabay

A TV program is a CLIL educational project which is intended for second grade of secondary school but it could be adapted for Primary Education. In this project, students will learn english and improve their skills in new technologies while they accomplish five missions and create a final project: a TV program. In accordance with the INTEF, the two main objectives of this projects are the following:

• Learn english in an interesting way.
• Develop digital skills.

To analyse this project properly I will base my assesment on some key aspects that we can observe in this rubric which we were given by our ICT teacher. Now, let´s do it!


KEY KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING AND SUCCESS SKILLS

This project aims to teach students content and vocabulary related to the world of TV such as types of TV programs, film genres, TV guides and so on. Because of this, it can be carried out within the subject of English.

Vocabulary: TV programs, adjectives, types of films and TV programs, professions related to TV.
Structures: Telling the time, Past and Present Perfect tenses, WH- questions.

I totally agree with the INTEF in respect of the two objectives of this project which are mentioned above. However, from my point of view this project also enhances a great variety of skills such as critical thinking, cooperative work, group management, personal autonomy and creativity. The development of all these skills make this project a very complete and effective learning adventure. It allows us, as teachers, to have a perfect idea of how we must teach our students and provide them with full of opportunities to acquire the language at the same time that they develop other important skills and values.

Also of note is the explicitness of the instructions that students are given as it will allow them to feel comfortable with the challenges and to succeed.

CHALLENGING PROBLEM OR QUESTION

Regarding every challenge and the final mission that students are proposed in this project, it can be said that the whole project is based on a challenging final mission. Giving them the opportunity of creating their own TV programs will engage students in the learning process and motivate them. In other words, the whole educational project an its missions resolve around one objective: being able to create a final magazine program which will be later published on Youtube. This makes the missions meaningful and appealing for pupils.

Also, I have taken notice of the existence of a purpose for every step within it so it can be said that everything is interconnected and it is definitely a relevant topic (television) for students.

Regarding the level, I think this project is appropiated for this grade (2nd grade of secondary education). As I said before, the final mission and the rest of activities are very interesting and motivating for students of this age. 

SUSTAINED INQUIRY

In addition, I have observed that the way in which the project is presented to students leads to a sustained inquiry process. The students are the ones that manage the learning process by investigating different information related to TV programs. The teacher stands aside and acts as a guide by providing children with the information and tools that they will need to accomplish the different tasks proposed throughout the project. 

AUTHENCITY

As said above, the project can be easily related to students´real life since it is about a topic which is very popular among teenagers: TELEVISION. In addition, this project offer a great variety of activities so they can improve their english skills in many different ways. From my point of view this is a quite original project that would be even carried out in Primary Education as long as some changes were made. It also requires the usage of digital applications and online tools; the magazine program will be recorded with Wevideo and later published on Youtube. It is also promotes cooperative work which is a very valuable twenty-first-century skill in our society.

One thing I discoverd is a website called Classbadges which seems very interesting to me because it might be a good way to motivate and award students that work hard.

STUDENT VOICE & CHOICE 

It is also important to say that students have voice and choice along this project. In other words, students are encouraged to investigate by themselves, to ask as many questions as they need, to create different artifacts, to develep their critical thinking either in groups or individually, etc. Moreover, they are in charge of carrying out all of the missions in a proper way and they have freedom to decide on the style and create the artifacts that they like. Furthermore, it can be said that the teacher acts as a guide by providing students with many examples and clear steps to follow, but the students are the ones that conduct their own learning process.

REFLECTION

Students have to write their own reflections about each mission. For this purpose, they will create a learning diary within their Weebly site. This way they are given the opportunity of reflecting on all their job. It will also help them think of what and how they are learning, their own weaknesses and strenghts. the difficulty level of the missions and the handling of online tools.

For example, once they have finished their final project they will have to complete two sheets which you can see in the image below. Also they have to publish a final post summarizing all these reflections and thoughts.

CRITIQUE & REVISION

This project encourage students to give their opinion not only about others´ work but also about their own work; this means that they are receiving feedback constantly either by their classmates or by the teacher. Additionally, every step or mission of this project will be evaluated either by the students themselves or by the teacher. Every mission will be evaluated by using its corresponding rubric. There are up to eight rubrics, each one with a different criteria, to evaluate the different missions or tasks of this educational project. Thanks to this rubrics, students will know the different aspects that they have to target in each challenge so they will be able to cover all of the points and succeed.

For instance, this is the rubric that students will use to self-evaluate their own final projects. They will have to take into account all the aspects and criteria that appear in it: Project assessment rubric

As you can see below, the work done by students will be evaluated by themselves, by their peers and also by the teacher. This will make the evaluation a more complete and profitable step.

PUBLIC PRODUCT

Students will come up with their own creations (a TV magazine program) which will be available for others in different sites like Pinterest, Weebly or any other platform that students might think of. This way they can promote their work on the web to make it accessible for others so their work is going to be visible and have an impact in real society.  For this reason, it can be said that the project fulfils the aim of creating a public product.


Now, I will embed the slideshow I have created. It shows the main features of my analysis in a visual way. To create it, I have used an online tool that I did not know: Genial.ly. I found it very interesting and easy to use and it allows us to create really interactive and attractive slideshows.

To finish, I would like to give my opinion about this open educational project.

First, I think this project will definitely help children improve their ICT skills since a great variety of online tools have to be used to accomplish the different missions of this project and to keep up with the lessons. Some of the online tools that they have to use are: Pinterest, Weebly, Canva, Wevideo, StoryboarThat, etc. Also, it will help children develope their english skills (listening, writing, speaking and reading) because they are given the opportunity of practising all of them throughout the different activities.

Furthermore, it fosters students autonomy regardind the teaching-learning process. A student-centered approach is used throughout the whole project. Every step goes from easy to difficult and students are provided with many examples to ensure students are able to do it later by themselves (scaffolding).

To finish, it is important to say that a pedagogical approach based on flipped classroom model can be followed during most time of this project since there are many activities (watching videos, searching information, writing down doubts and doing collaborative online work) can be done by students at home.

I hope you enjoy the post! See you soon!

3, 2, 1 Interview with Laura

Today, I´d like to share with you all an interview which I did with my classmate recently. Additionally, I will try to explain to all of you the process and the steps I followed to carry out this interview and how I finally obtained my artifact.

Laura is a 24-year-old student from Santander who is currently attending a Master´s Degree in Bilingual Education at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Below you can watch the video of the interview in which you can know a little bit more about her likes, hobbies, ambitions and future plans.

Now, I will explain to all of you the steps I followed to cope with this challenge and finally come up with this artifact.

Firs of all, when we were challenged to interview our peers by María Jesús, our ICT teacher, we were quite surprised since none of us had never done anything similar. We were advised to do a 3, 2, 1 interview which is basically a short interview where the interviewee is asked a few questions. The main objective of this sort of interview is knowing a little bit more about the interviewee, in this case Laura, in a short period of time and in an appeling way.

Once we knew what to do, I started thinking about what people would like to know about Laura in order to decide the questions I was going to ask her. So I made a draft with different questions according with what I thought people was going to be interested in knowing about her. Then I analized the questions and I finally picked out the six questions I was going to pose in the interview.

Here you can see some of the questions I decided to ask her:

Where do you come from?

What do you enjoy doing?

Do you have any special hobbies?

If you weren´t a teacher, what field would you like to work in? 

As a teacher, do you feel that new technologies are important for us?

Once the interview was clearly defined, we agreed on carrying out the interview. I decided to record a video with my mobile phone rather than an audio because I think it is more attractive and inviting for others. Then, when we finished recording the video I started looking up information about different video editors. Finally I used a mobile phone application called Imovie to edit the video. This application allowed me to add sounds, effects, images and even a piece of different video. I found this application very easy to use since I had never worked with it but I managed to edit my video in a while.

To finish, I think this challenge was quite interesting. I have learned many things that I did not know becuse I had never done anything similar to this. I have also found out that 3, 2, 1 interviews are a very useful way of knowing more about people in a few minutes. Finally, it was a great opportunity for us to practice our conversation skills.

I hope you enjoy it!! If you have any comments, suggestions or questions, please let me know by dropping a comment.