Prototype of an Open Educational Project

Hello everybody!

Are you becoming greener and greener? I hope so! But today my concern is another one.

Last week we analyzed an Open Educational Project, and this week we created one!

First of all, I would like to present my prototype of an Open Educational Project with this video:

I also create another video to explain my prototype deeper than with PowToon. Here yo go the key points of my prototype about Plants. 

The process to create the prototype was the opposite:

Firstly, we use a template as a guide to create our open projects. We could change as many times as we want the template but we had to make it easy in order to change it when somebody proposes an improvement. I created a didactic unit about plants which is intended for 4º graders.

Once created the prototype, I made a video to present it, which I think is appealing. I used the tool PowToon, which I believe it is funny and so easy to use. However, I preferred to show my video first, since it is an eye-catching presentation about my prototype.

Then, I uploaded the documents that I created for the didactic unit about plants. I use Google docs, a website so useful to upload your documents and share with just your friends or everybody. Here you go the documents (and also the prototype if you would like to download it):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3GFZ04HBCEAZks0bmQwcFpfT1U

This time, I preferred to use a different tool than a video on twitter, that is why I chose PowToon also, because it was something different for me and so eye-catching. It is a rudimentary tool but much more fun than if you record yourself (I did for another challenge also). Anyway, I wanted to shoot a video about the key points of my prototype so that their are easy to find. Apparently, it seems easier for the human being to watch a video than read a document.

To share my prototype, I use Issuu a website to share documents. This website is great so that your publications look great. It is free and you are allowed to watch everybody's publications or magazines. I had not used this website before, neither I knew it, but I like the way in which my documents are presented so as to embed it to my blog. 

With respect to Google docs, I used it before since it is great to do collaborative projects with your peers, but I have never uploaded many documents in order to share them with everybody. It is a good initiative so that each teacher can share their fresh ideas and can read about new ones also. In Spain, teacher are worry about sharing content since most teachers think that they do not want other people to use the material in which they spent so much time. Nevertheless, it is about taking advantage of the sharing and improve our teaching methods and resources. Our main goal as teacher is to help children to learn content, develop skills, and help them to be better citizens, right? So, teachers lets share! 

In my prototype, I will use iDoceo which is an application for iPad. It is not a free app but you will use it daily if you are a teacher. So, it is worthy. With this application you can evaluate your students through rubrics, it also has many tools such as notes, contact list, etc. You can share the students' mark with their parents and also with them. In the case you meet with parents, you can also show them only their child mark following the teacher's standards.

Example:

Screenshot of my Ipad by Carmen Olmedo

Besides, the teacher can see the mark average of the group of students and in which standards students fails or got good marks, for instance:

Screenshot of mi Ipad by Carmen Olmedo

Finally, my last post was about analyzing an open educational project and it was time-consuming but easy to do it. Now that I created one, I realized that it is more difficult to create one and also to evaluate your own prototype!

In my prototype, I want students to make an online poster about taking care of the nature. If they can, you can. 

Remember:

Be clever, be greener!

Open Educational Project

Hello everybody!!!

Last week we were working in a challenge about evaluating an open educational project. We have to follow the next requirements to analyze it in depth:

         Source: "Essential Project Design Elements Checklist" from Buck Institute for Education.

We could choose among three open education projects which were:

- EDIA CLIL projects: http://cedec.ite.educacion.es/es/rea-ingles

- CLIL Teaching Projects:  https://clilingmesoftly.wordpress.com/clil-projects/

- REA For CLIL - INTEF: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

I chose the last since I saw it was a blogspot similar to mine but with a different purpose. It caught my attention because every project was organized with respect to subjects or topics, which I found easy.

Once chosen the web page, I definitely looked for one project related to taking care of the Earth. Consequently, I found one about means of transport and pollution. I though it was the perfect topic to my blog!

This project called "Transport and pollution" was created by Teresa Guzmán and it is a complete didactic unit about means of transport with all the resources available in GoogleDrive.

       Source: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

Here you go the project: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/2014/06/teresa-guzman-proyecto-final.html

Analyzing the project, I noticed some good ideas and bad ones.

- To star with, about the key knowledge, understanding, and success skills, I could see that the topic is included in the Spanish curriculum and the didactic unit includes thinking skills (in activities such as elaborating a conceptual map). Furthermore, pupils will be able to work in groups as well as individually.

- Secondly, with respect to challenging problems or questions, in my humble opinion, most activities are too easy for 3º graders and one activity is too complicate for them.

    Source: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

 Piece of the text about airplanes:

             Source: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

- Next, we can observe sustained inquiry in some questions that students will have to ask. Besides, all activities all gradually planned, from less challenging activities to more demanding ones. However, students do not have to find and use resources, ask further questions, or develop their own answers.

- Then, about authenticity, I saw some good things such as the topic that is connected to our world, one of the activities is connected to the means of transport that children use to go to school everyday, and also because the teacher will use some resources from the Internet (memory games and videos for children).

     Source: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

- The following requirement is about the student voice and choice. In this way, pupils will make their own choices to carry some activities such as a display about means of transport. On the other hand, we do not know anything about the time each activity will take and about the PBL (Project Based Learning) experience.

- With respect to the reflection point, there is no way in which students will have to reflect about their own learning process.

- Next, about the critique and revision, the author tells what she will evaluate (the oral presentations, self evaluation sheets, and daily observation), although we do not know how she will do it. It would be great if we could see the evaluation sheets!

- Finally, the public product is not done properly. There is a final project about what they have learnt, which is a display, but it is not publish beyond the students.

        Source: http://reaaicleintef.blogspot.com.es/

To conclude, I could observe some good and bad point, so I made a proposal about the bad ones. If you are interest in my changes, see the online presentation below.

Once analyzed the open educational project, we had to create an online presentation using Genial.ly about it. Genial.ly is a good tool to create appealing presentations and also helps us to organize our ideas. As a consequence, we have learn a different way to create presentations, different from PowerPoint. 

However, one of the disadvantage of this tool is that we have to pay money to use the full version, in which we can download presentations and use more templates. We hope to be ambassadors of Genial.ly soon!

I like Genial.ly because it is also interactive, we can add tags, links, new windows, etc. to each element in the slides. Nevertheless, you have to guess in which element I put the tag! Things to improve... but still genius Genial.ly!

Here you have the result!

To conclude, we can say that the open educational project REA For CLIL - INTEF is a good resource to keep learning. It is a pity that its owner is not publishing projects any more, but there are a great bunch of them that we can use. Whereas, I consider that the project that I analyzed might not be a good example of an open educational project,  but I realized that the main goal of teacher is not to teach content, it is to help children to grow up as good citizens.

Moreover, I have to say that analyzing is a necessary requirement to know how good a project is in order to be used. At first sight, it might be acceptable; however, it is really useful to evaluate it so as to know if we can take advantage of it as teachers. 

Be clever, be greener!