Here is the power point presented in the webinar that took place last week. Thank you all for attending it and for your active participation.
[slideshare id=61131907&doc=3webinarthinkingskills-160420080903]
Image source:http://macd1214y.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/collaboration/
In yesterday’s OUP webinar we dealt with collaborative techniques for CLIL lessons and some collaborative web 2.0 tools were presented.
Collaboration in the classroom means that learners have to work together to achieve a common goal. In collaborative activities everybody has a clear role to play and the roles are interdependent, in a positive way. In order for a group to succeed they all must do their part, which means that everybody feels important. The benefits of collaboration for learning are countless. Among the most important ones mentioned in the webinar we have the follow
Collaboration…
( From: 44 benefits of collaborative learning http://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/c-learn/44.html)
One of the reasons why collaboration belongs in the CLIL classroom is that it promotes interaction and communication, which are fundamental to learn both content and language.
Here are some of the collaborative strategies presented in the OUP webinar:
In Think, pair, share, the teacher asks an open question or poses problem and gives students time to think individually; then, they get in pairs to explain and share their ideas and to think together; finally, they share their responses with the teacher, a bigger group, or the whole class.
Here is an example of an activity which could be done using the technique Think, pair, share: Explain the meaning of this sentence: ” Reproduction guarantees the survival of the species” (from Natural Sciences. Oxford CLIL. ESO 1, Unit 8: Earth, an inhabited planet).
Jigsaws are one of the most popular collaborative techniques. Here is the example I showed in the webinar.
Project: The metal Age (from: Social Sciences. Oxford CLIL. ESO 1, Unit 8)
Dictogloss consists in recreating a text collaboratively. It is a good way to start a CLIL unit when you choose a text which has to do with the topic, as an activation activiy. These are the steps to be followed:
Finally, we saw how to use the Snowball technique to co-construct a definition. (From: Social Sciences. Oxford CLIL. ESO 1, Unit 3)
These are the steps:
What about technology? What’s the role of technology when it comes to collaborative activities? How can it help?
Well, web 2.0 is collaborative by definition. Its essence is collaboration and communication, which are two characteristics we all want in our CLIL (or not so CLIL) lessons. Our students are millenials who are used to using tech and mobile devices in their daily lives to look for information, to interact with others, to network in order to share and exchange ideas, info, materials… Technology is an integral part of their lives and whenever they cannot use it in the classroom they may feel like they are powering down , not just literally when they turn their devices off but also in terms of learning and thinking.
Some of the collaborative tools presented in the webinar are the following:
We discussed the convenience of using a bookmarking service to save and tag our favourite websites for easy access anytime from any computer or mobile device. Examples of social bookmarking sites include Diigo and Delicious (among others).
We saw how to save a bookmark to Diigo using the Diigolet tool (browser extension) added to your browser bar.
Social bookmarking sites are also a great way for your students to network and share resources when doing a project, for example. Also, you can provide a bunch of bookmarks as an outliner for them to search for information. Other sites which can be used to save bookmarks in a more visual way or to curate content are Pinterest and Symbaloo.
Collaboration in the classroom is essential and we, teachers, should practice what we preach and collaborate with one another, co-create and design things together, exchange ideas and resources and network in a way that we enrich each other and keep on learning and growing professionally. When it comes to adding technology to all that, it is necessary to keep an open mind and to be willing to try out new things. Risk it! It’s well worth it.
This Tuesday 17th, I did a webinar on digital assessment. This post intents to be a handout for those teachers who attended it.
Digital assessment allows teachers to give students helpful feedback (formative assessment), to encourage them to do better and better (ipsative assessment, provides learners with feedback from fellow students (peer assessment), gets them to understand their own progress (self-assessment) and allows them to use their tools (21st century assessment)
Digital tools can be used both to design assessment activities and to assess learners’ performance in any kind of activity (digital or not).
Here are some examples of assessment activities which integrate the use of technologies: collaborative mindmaps (mind42.com) to demonstrate full understanding of a topic, audio forums (voxopop.com) to discuss ideas presented in the unit, interactive timelines for History (or other subjects) projects (dipity.com), interactive games which provide immediate feedback related to any topic (we saw: Save the world and Pyramid builder, infographics as a final product of projects (piktochart.com).
Some of the digital tools to assess learners’ performance that I presented are ePortfolios, rubrics and checklists.
According to Dr. Helen Barrett (2009), “an ePortfolio is an electronic collection of evidence that shows your learning journey over time. Portfolios can relate to specific academic fields or your lifelong learning. Evidence may include writing samples, photos, videos, research projects, observations by mentors and peers, and/or reflective thinking. The key aspect of an ePortfolio is your reflection on the evidence, such as why it was chosen and what you learned from the process of developing your ePortfolio“
Check Dr. Barrett’s website for more information on ePortfolios.
Students can create their ePortfolios with EduPortfolio or by creating a blog (wordpress or blogger) while teachers have different options to keep all their students’ portfolios organized and at hand, such as Netvibes or a list of blogs in their own blog.
“A rubric is a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor” (Heidi Andrade). Two good websites where we can find ready-made rubrics or create our own are Rubistar and iRubric. Check this tutorial on how to create rubrics with Rubistar.
Rubrics, when given at the beginning of a project or unit of study, promote thinking and learning by providing guidance to the students who know right from the beginning what we expect from them. Creating the rubrics with the students helps to get them involved in their own learning too. Rubrics are a good tool to assess projects and their final products, oral and written assignments, group work and collaboration.
Checklists to support Project Based Learning can be created online too.
To all the teachers who took part in the webinar, THANK YOU SO MUCH! It was a pleasure. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions.
“If you are not prepared to be wrong
you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Sir Ken Robinson
I’m preparing a webinar for OUP on digital assessment and one of the ideas that I plan to address is the importance of failure in learning.
Our students should always feel that they are in a safe environment where they can take risks and make mistakes and we should help them embrace failure as a valuable learning experience. To fail is, in fact, inevitable at one point or another. When failure is followed by constructive feedback that addresses both the strengths and the weaknesses of the learners, it provides a new opportunity to learn from it. Reflecting on what they did, how they did it and why, with the guidance of the teacher helps students to find new paths and alternatives and promotes learning. And isn’t that assessment’s primary purpose too?
Finland celebrates the International Day for Failure on October, 13. The idea is to celebrate our shortcomings and to spread the understanding that failing is part of the learning experience. I think schools all over the world should definitely join the celebration!
On a personal note, when I first accepted the challenge of participating in the OUP seminars I was excited and grateful but it felt like a big responsibility and I had to accept there was a possibility of failure. I’ve felt this way many times in my professional career. In fact, it is this possibility that makes my job all the more exciting. It means I get to do new things, to face new challenges and, most of all, I get to LEARN from these experiences, whether they are successful or not.
It was one hundred years ago when John Dewey wrote that “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”, and his message is still absolutely relevant nowadays. It will probably always be. He created an everlasting slogan no educator should ignore for it reminds us that it is our responsibility to keep on learning so that we can reinvent ourselves as teachers to meet the new challenges we face as the world changes. I just think this is something we do not need to do on our own. Hence, this blog.