PBL Week 3

DEVELOPING  STUDENT-DRIVEN ACTIVITIES  FOR PBL

IT'S NOT THAT I'M SO SMART,

IT'S JUST THAT I STAY WITH PROBLEMS LONGER

Albert Einstein

The key ideas for this  week                                                                                       

SCAFFOLDING

What is  scaffolding?

Developing  Student  Resilience

It is important to support learners, to help them and provide a positive feedback.

When learners fail or make mistakes we should make them understand that failure is not wrong and that we can better and we learn from making  mistakes.

As educators we are expected to work with our  learners and provide support so that they can manage and when we work on PBL tasks  we should be with them and encourage them never to give up.

Here is our padlet where we share our experience as teachers or learners but were able to cope with the difficulties we had met.

Created with Padlet

                            AN  ENTREPRENEURIAL   MINDSET    AND PBL                                                                                              
Thinking about  the way we can work in real life and what skills we do need to learn and   
work together on PBL                                                                                                                   

The week was really interesting and we could follow a webinar by  Kornélia Lohyňová  who presented the skills which we need to work on PBL: an enterprenerial mindset . What she described is related not only to business but any activity we can carry out at school.
It was a great webinar as she provided us with  links to new tools.

                   


The  tools which were  shared  : 


  https://canvanizer.com/       This is  a tool used for brainstorming and working together.


http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/design-examples/

The Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators provides teachers with a toolkit:  it contains the process and methods of design along with the Designer’s Workbook, adapted specifically for the context of K-12 education. It offers new ways to be intentional and collaborative when designing, and empowers educators to create impactful solutions. The toolkit can be downloaded for free.

www.tesguide.eu

This is a school which supports teachers who want to mainstream entrepreneurial education in teaching methods and learning processes they set up in classroom every day.

Link to the guide  http://www.tesguide.eu/web_article/the-virtual-guide.htm

Some useful links 

  http://www.tesguide.eu/search/tool-method            good for tools

 http://www.tesguide.eu/bpsearch             school and good practices


Now I am going to continue working on my PBL by using the LearningDesigner Tool and I will try to check these tools and guides later to see if I could start using them. 

The journey is continuing online! 
Next  stop : ASSESSMENT  !

PBL Week 2

PBL AND THE IMPORTANCE OF TOOLS AND COLLABORATION AMONG TEACHERS AND LEARNERS

The beginning of the module was based on these inspiring  words

                   Developing effective collaboration for PBL

COMING TOGETHER IS A BEGINNING,

KEEPING TOGETHER IS PROGRESS,

WORKING TOGETHER IS SUCCESS

Henry Ford

This post is going to be on line late as  I have been working hard in the last two weeks. I am busy with the final year exams and still working on another MOOC, which is really demanding. But  I couldn't forget to write about the great information  I have learnt so far.

THINKING ABOUT COLLABORATION- A EUROPEAN PROJECT

PBL is  also  collaboration among students, classes and teachers working in different parts of the world.

We were introduced  E-twinning which is a European project where classes work online, this is the beginning of more  engaging activities too.

Links and  interesting documents can be found online:

 https://www.etwinning.net/it/pub/index.htm

 E-twinning website

More information about  it and its impact on learners - just see what in the UK they think about it:

 https://www.britishcouncil.org/etwinning

Teachers sharing ideas about the project:

The voices of the students :

More interesting information can be found on social networks :

https://twitter.com/eTwinningUK

https://www.facebook.com/ETwinningeurope/

E-Twinning  EMILIA-ROMAGNA :  https://www.facebook.com/etwinninger/



https://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/integrating-technology-with-project-based-learning-four-indicators-to-blend-the-learning/


THINKING  ABOUT THE TOOLS

An interesting part of the MOOC was  about  the tools which we can use in order to work online and collaborate when we can do projects. The outside world is brought into the classroom and students can really become more engaged while they are learning together but in a different way.
I searched online and I could see a lot of interesting tools which were presented  in videos and in blogs. Internet is for me a great  library on line where I can learn a lot and teachers share their tools, projects and more.
Here are some which I think are really worth using:


GOOGLE DOCS  AND TITAN PAD FOR COLLABORATION

A great teacher and blogger shared a list of useful tools which seem to be working for her:

http://www.slideshare.net/coolcatteacher/50-ways-to-use-technology-in-the-classroom

50+ Ways to Use Technology in the Classroom from Vicki Davis



And finally our padlet where we shared the tools which we like or have used:

What we have shared

Created with Padlet

I would like to share this LIVEBINDER which I feel has a good collection and has been created by an expert working for  SIMPLEK12- an organization of teachers who aim at implementing learning by using technology:
https://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=825320

Collaboration Tools

In the third module we also focussed on some tools but I will describe them in my next post.

PBL My reflections while doing an interesting MOOC

The  journey
       has   just  started
                  I am going to learn more about  PBL

In my previous post dated  June 6th I wrote about a new interesting MOOC which I was going to do online. Europe is taking care of the many teachers  who are willing to learn how to enhance their teaching and we have been offered this course. It is a great MOOC and more than 2,500 people  are enrolled.  Thanks to  TEACHER ACADEMY  we are now learning more.

My journey has just started and I must say that course is providing me with lot ideas and it is a stimulating experience as we are working together, we are sharing ideas about how we are working and how we would like to work.  
The activities we need to do  are scheduled in four weeks and  we need to reflect, learn about new ways of working or getting to know more about  PBL.
The tutors use  social networks and we are required to write a learning diary about this experience. 
I have already started writing and working on the resources as I have not been trained but  thanks to  the  internet and social networks I have already learnt about it. I must confess that I am curious to see how I can develop such a useful project .





Tweet riguardo #pblcourse





In my website I have started writing and collecting some useful weblinks :

https://sites.google.com/site/thenewworldoflearning/pbl-a-mooc-2016


I have written my learning diary too but  I need to think more about the project so  I will have to work on it and think more. I will share my ideas with other teachers and then I will continue my project in the next three weeks.

Meanwhile I have to think about  which class, what topic, which tools I might choose for my
PBL activity to be shared with other teachers.

I am also worried about the tools as in my present school we do not have good technology and my students do not know how to work with some tools.

A useful source of information for  TOOLS  is here:

http://www.elltoolbox.com/pbl.html
http://dailygenius.com/google-tools-in-project-based-learning/

 https://www.graphite.org/top-picks/tools-for-project-based-learning#/tools-for-project-based-learning

I will write more in my padlet and share it with  other teachers online.
I am looking forward to next week.

EUROPE AND EDUCATION : Professional Development for Teachers

Europe and Educators : a great  level of engagement for teachers who have chosen online Professional  Development


My first attendance online was a Mooc by Futurelearn.com, then I discovered Coursera and many MOOC course providers.  
As a teacher who is interested in self-development and getting to know more as regards my profession I wanted to find online courses that might be  focussed on English language teaching and learning and  teaching  in  virtual environments. I was pleased to learn more by doing some MOOCs and I must admit that some were really " engaging" in terms of  support, weblink references and interesting topics presented.

Last year I discovered  http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu/ 
and I could get more engaged into MOOCs dealing with new technologies and  other European  projects aimed at  training teachers and sharing  projects. 

Now Europe has added more websites related to education and supporting education and  teachers'  development:
Tweet di @OpenEduEU


This year I came  across a new website which is promoted by the European Union: schooleducationgateway.eu

http://www.schooleducationgateway.eu/en/pub/index.htm

I was surprised to learn that they are going to start some courses for teachers dealing with important issues like integration of students with special needs, project based learning and many  more interesting topics . They have  created an institution named   Teacher Academy - here is the link to the web page:

 http://www.schooleducationgateway.eu/en/pub/latest/news/teacher_academy_europes_answ.htm

They have just started and in the next months there will be many more online courses for busy teachers. I have just enrolled to see how they are going to run their course.

The first course is about  Project Based  Learning: it started on 6th June .
Here is the  video presentation online :

Last Sunday I could enter the platform and see what they were going to present in the MOOC.

The course makes use of content coming from eTwinning Professional Development activities and is  based on the hard work of eTwinners like Kornélia Lohyňová, Bart Verswijvel, Anne Gilleran, Rute Baptista, and many others. Next to this content, the course uses a variety of content coming from other sources, in particular the work of the Buck Institute of Education and Edutopia. 

We will be asked to watch videos, to have access to resources online, to think about our  projects, to discuss about what we have presented, to assess projects  designed by other teachers and to write a diary online about what we have learnt. I have already done this experience online  with European Schoolnet  Academy and I am going to present the new one in the next weeks.

The activity seems to be challenging and  I am going to start it now once my school year finishes by 15 June. Later I will be busy with the final year exams with secondary school leavers but it will be nice to continue learning about new approaches, new tools and discuss and share ideas with other  teachers.

Practical Project Based Active Learning- https://www.flickr.com/photos/aalto-cs/8682735735

Attribution   CC BY-SA 2.0- photo by  Seungho Lee