Designing an assessment rubric

Hi everyone!

Have you ever created a rubric? I hope so, because nowadays rubrics are so trendy in education. It is true that they seem innovative but actually they were used some years ago. As far as I am concerned, rubrics are so useful to assess students. During my internship period, I just used simple assessment criteria, but I realized that it is not an accurate method. Rubrics are an accurate way to evaluate learners as well as a good option to save time when assessing students.

How can we do a rubric? Well, we must include these elements:

what to include in a rubric de Carmen Olmedo

I created this poster using Canva, because as I told you in previous post, it is a pretty good web site to do posters and online presentation. They look great in your blog entries.

Before creating the rubric, I did a mind map to have a clear idea about my Open Educational Project and its respective learning missions. I used the tool MindMeister because not only it is an easy web site to create mind maps, but also because I want my students to use it and create artifacts in their learning missions. I had to use it to see how it works before telling learners to go there. 

There you go the mind map which summarize my OEP (you can place the mouse pointer in the mind map to scroll down/up/right/left and read all its elements):

Class Blog about learning process, experiences, likes, and dislike. by Carmen Olmedo

Back to my concern, I planned a rubric to assess my students and based on my Open Educational Project. The rubric is quite general since I want to use it for any of the learning missions that I planned. Taking into account this, I will follow the next rubric to evaluate the different tasks and I will modify it if it is necessary for a specific task. If I need to modify the rubric, I will add a short sentence in each criteria but I do not modify the criteria I wrote at all. Hence, I used the tool Quick Rubric since I can change my rubric whenever I need it. 

Rubric to assess 21th students about PBL from carmen olmedo

I have embedded the rubric in my blog but you can click here and zoom it in. This time I used SlideShare to upload the document because I like the way in which it appears in my entry: the embedded artifact is bigger than using other tools.

As it can be seen, I have included five main elements to assess my students:

• Group work and individual work.
• Vocabulary and grammar.
• Thinking skills.
• Content knowledge.
• Final outcome.
• 
  

I am of the opinion that these five elements are crucial to assess learners and I will explain why:

I consider vital to take into account the group work as well as the individual work, although the final outcomes will be group task. Some students are good at working by themselves while others are good at collaborating in a group, but nowadays both facts are essential. In this way, each student will be assessed fairly.

Content is always vital and necessary to be assessed, since students have to learn some facts, competences and skills. Nonetheless, it is significant not only the content but also the mechanics or the accuracy with which they will transmit that content. In CLIL subjects, content and language are equally important. 

This content knowledge and vocabulary might be based on remembering and understanding, so Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) will be taken into account. I will assess some thinking skills related to creativity, analysis and evaluation. These days, these High Order Thinking Skills are not developed well at school but they are even more important than recalling and repeating. 

Finally, I will evaluate their final outcome because it will reflect their learning process and effort. The task, that is submitted, must always be assessed.

Apart from that, I would like my students to be self-assessed following the next rubric that I will provide them:

Students rubric from carmen olmedo

I do not want to just take into consideration my observation but also students' perception of their own learning. Besides, it is a way of developing evaluation and they will be conscious about their learning and aptitude. 

REFLECTION

I realized that creating rubrics is quite hard work, although it is true that teachers save time using them to assess students. In our ICT module, our professor uses rubrics to assess us and, what it more, we have access to that information, what I find crucial and handy. If I know what criteria the teacher uses, I know what is expected from me and I will base my actions on that. I believe our professor expend many hours planning those rubrics full of details. 

Doing this rubric was not as easy as I thought because it is necessary to bear in mind your Open Educational Project and your learning missions clearly. I had to have a clear idea about it to establish my specific criteria. 

In my humble opinion, one has to do several rubrics to create good ones as those that we could read in our ICT module. Furthermore, it can be necessary to carry out the learning mission to know clearly how to assess our students.

I decided to use a scale from 0 to 3 in order to be more accurate since I found quite simple to use a minor scale. The more criteria we plan, the more accurate we will be assessing students. 

I felt so happy to use the tool Quick Rubric because at last we could download an artifact with no watermark and freely. However, this web site does not offer possibility to embed the rubric or a link to share it with people. 

To sum up, this time I learnt how to use new tools such as Quick Rubric (which I highly recommend for teachers), SlideShare, and MindMesiter. I consider I kept working hard one more time. Besides, I changed my mind: this challenge changed my way of assess ing students, now I will use rubrics. 

Well, that's all for this post.

Hope you like my artifacts, see you soon and remember:

BE CLEVER, BE GREENER!

Turning another flat activity into a super learning mission

Hello everybody!

Continuing with my last post, I will explain our second super learning mission.

If you do not remember my last challenge, click here.

My second flat activity consists of shooting a video about plants summarizing the information that students learnt in the previous sessions. If you do not remember them, click here. 

I did a poster to explain the curricular facts about the mission:

Creating a video de Carmen Olmedo

Students' roles will change. Now the roles will be different:

• Role 1: one student will be the Flora detective.
• Role 2: another one will be the Tourism expert.
• Role 3: other pupil will be the Producer, who will edit the video and embed the pictures into the background of the video.
• Role 4: the last one will be the Climate advocate. 

To explain the instruction to our students we will use the following slideshow:

Learningmission2 from Ana Márquez

Once students have created their comic and planned their video, they will have to proceed and shoot the video. To do that, a green paper cloth will be placed on the wall and students will be able to shoot the video in front of it. Why a green paper cloth? Using that green background, students will be able to embed pictures or videos into the green background of their video. This paper cloth is cheap and can be bought in any shop.

First and foremost, students will write the full script for the video in Google Drive. After that, they will shoot the video in front of the green paper cloth on the wall using a tablet or camera. Learners will have to shoot a video for each scene that they planned in their comics. Once they have all their videos, they will have to edit them using their desktops in order to embed the pictures.

My classmates and I wanted to see if this crazy idea will work, and we proceeded to do it. We looked for an illuminated place where we could shoot our video. We placed the green paper cloth on the wall and started to create the video. We did eight videos: two videos for the opening and ending part; three videos in which each of us explains the content of Indian culture, its climate and its flora; and other three videos to explain the forecast of yesterday, today and tomorrow. 

It must be mentioned that we had written previously the full script in Google Drive. 

Furthermore, we use some colorful scarf to dress up like Indian women and we painted a bindi in our foreheads. In this way, we felt like native girls from India. 

Once shot the videos, we used the tool iMovie to edit our videos and embed some pictures related to India into the background. We add background music and some transitions to make the video more eye-catching. It was handy to be able to use iMovie since we have that tool in our laptops and the results always seem pretty professional. The result was the next one:

As learners have to write the script, shoot the videos, and edit them, we will use two sessions to do this super learning mission. 

When students finish the whole process, they will receive their corresponding badge, in this case they will get these ones:

Created by Lucía

REFLECTION

This challenge was so fun since we dressed up and we were in a Hindi's shoes. At first glance, I thought that this activity will be tricky because I did not know how easy to change the backgrounds of videos using iMovie is. I had used many times iMovie to edit videos, but I had never used this option: embed a picture into a video with a green or blue background. As well as that, we did not need a professional studio to do this video, just a simple paper cloth. As far as I am concerned, the result was almost professional. It will be a good activity for children, they will love watching their final outcome. It was funny even for us! 

I reckon that it can be difficult for students to edit the video, but with the help of the teacher they can do it. They just need to embed the picture into the background of the video (music and transitions are not necessary). 

We used iMovie which is intended for Mac but other tools can be used for this purpose if you have a Windows, such as Sony Vegas, Touch Cast, or Tech Smith. 

I have to say that this super learning mission is perfectly aligned with my Open Educational Project since it includes a part about plants (flora in India). In addition, it is linked to the collaborative project I am collaborating with, 30 Goals Challenge (revamping a lesson) because the lesson was transformed into a learning mission, we added a technology component, and we made the lesson more hands-on. Furthermore, we are also collaborating with another goal from that web site: recognize with a badge. This is the one Lucía is collaborating with, that is why students will receive a badge based on their roles in both learning missions. 

Retrieved from:  teacherrebootcamp.com

It was a pleasure to work with my two classmates Lucía and Ana H. in order to create two super learning missions which are cross curricular. Collaborating is vital and we go further when we do it. We have achieved these two super activities which are cross curricular, in which children collaborate and use ICT tools. Additionally, we are collaborating among us and with the worldwide projects we joined. Thanks to all that, we are enriching our Open Educational Projects. 

Firstly, we thought that it would be impossible to join our three projects, but eventually we did it and I feel so proud of us. 

Doing this activity, learners will practice their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills and they will use past, present and future tenses while they are explaining the weather forecast, so I consider we achieved a pretty complete activity. 

Well, that's all at the moment. 

See you soon and remember,

BE CLEVER, BE GREENER!

Turning a flat activity into a super learning mission

Hello everybody!

Last week, two of my classmates and I were working on a new project. We were turning flat activities into super learning missions!

How could we turn flat activities into learning missions? I created a poster to explain it using Canva:

how to turn a flat activity into a by Carmen Olmedo

First of all, I would like to explain my flat activity which consists of reading an infographic that I made for my students. This infographic is about types of plants and its reproduction. Besides, it includes some videos to clarify some difficult concepts. Here you go the infographic if you are interested in it. Before watching the infographic, it is supposed that learners have to take notes about the infographic to accomplish a following activity.  

As you can see, this activity is kind of flat because the content is provided to the students, they just have to watch and take some notes. That is why two of my friends and I collaborated to change our flat activities into super learning missions! They are Lucía Carrasco and Ana Márquez, enthusiastic general teachers of Primary Education. We are hard-working teachers and we were working many hours on this project as well as on the next one. I must explain that we turned six flat activities into two super learning missions which are linked. It will be necessary to accomplish the first super learning mission to do the second one. It must be clarified that the new activities are still intended for fourth graders. 

To start with, let's explain the first super learning mission and everything will make sense in my next post. My classmates and I wanted to mixed all our projects so we planned the first super learning mission in which learners will have to investigate on the Internet for information about:

• The country of India.
• The climate of India.
• The flora of India.
• The forecast of yesterday, today and tomorrow in India.

Once students get the information, they will have to create an infographic using the tool StoryboardThat. In this infographic (which is a storyboard, similar to a comic), learners will have to plan their video; that is, students will be told that they have to create a video explaining the information that they get about India. To do that, they need to plan their video. So they will use a comic to do it. They will have to add the number of scenes, the background, and a summarized script.

I created an infographic to summarized this activity and explain some curricular facts. I used the tool Canva since I had used before and it is the perfect tool to create posters. Here you go the result: 

Creating a comic by Carmen Olmedo

So, learners will have to:

1. Look for the information.
2. Select and summarize the information.
3. Create a comic with the information and planning the future video.
4. Create the video and edit it (next learning mission). 

They must include an opening and ending part in both tasks (the video and the comic). 

Students will accomplish this challenge in groups of four. They will need a computer per group to look for the information. In each group of students, each student will have a different role:

• Role 1: the builder, who will create a storyboard using the tool StoryboardThat.
• Role 2: the writer, who will write on the computer or in a piece of paper. 
• Role 3: the presenter, who will explain how they did their work and show the result. 
• Role 4: the supply specialist, that will be in charge of looking for the information. 

Nonetheless, every student will participate in the whole activity sharing ideas.

When they complete the activity, they will get a badge according to their fantastic job and role. Here you go the budges. 

Created by Lucía

We, as teachers, will use two sessions to do this super learning mission because learners have to look for the information, select it, summarize it, and create the storyboard (in 45 minutes will be almost impossible). 

We did an online presentation to show students and explain the learning mission. Here you go the presentation:

Learningmission1 by Ana Márquez

Consequently, we tried to carry out this activity as if we were children. In this way, we will see if it works. We used the tool StoryboardThat to plan our future video. The result was this one:

If you want to zoom in our story board, click here.

To create the storyboard, pupils have to summarized their future work, that is why they will need to use Google Drive to write some notes, the whole script, and so forth. 

REFLECTION

Thanks to this challenge, I realized that using a infographic is crucial in order to plan a sequenced activity: a video, a story, etc. I had used StoryboardThat once, but that time it was not useful for me. Now, I know that this tool is pretty good for children since they love comics and they can create easily one. Moreover, it helps you to organize your work and ideas. StoryboardThat is easy to use, learners just have to add a background, the characters, and the bubbles. 

I really like this tool, although it is a pity that it is not possible to add your personalized background since that option is for the premium tool. 

Apart from that, with this activity that we created collaboratively, learners will go further: they will investigate, analyze, summarize, evaluate, etc. doing an task that is cross curricular. It involves content such as forecast, climate, vegetation, countries, culture, as well as the development of the 4 language skills (writing, speaking, listening and reading). My classmates and I could create a richer activity since we collaborated together so it was so rewarding.

Using Google Drive was the perfect idea since it much faster than Word and children do not need to save their works (these are saved automatically). 

I have to say that this project is perfectly aligned with InfoEDUgrafías, one of the projects I am collaborating with, because students will have to create an infographic by doing a comic. An infographic is a graphic visual representation so it can be a picture, a comic or a poster. Besides, it is also aligned with my project since we are still working with plants. 

However, this super learning mission is not completed! See my next post here to see the final outcome.

See you soon and

BE CLEVER, BE GREENER!

Elevator pitch to find partners

Hello everybody!

These days I was looking for partners to join them and contribute with my Open Educational Project (OEP). I looked among lots of projects such as The other kids EDU, the ESL times, the Twima project, Maderas que son violines, Piratas y Libélulas, No me cuentes historias, ¡dibújamelas!, etc. Then, I asked myself: where could I fit with my project of natural science about plants? Then, the 30 Goals Challenge caught my attention. It is a web site carried by Shelly Terrell, an enthusiastic and active teacher trainer and e-learning specialist. In her web site I found a challenge about Revamping a lesson. The goal is "improve a lesson plan or activity to create a meaningful learning experience for your students." So, I took the challenge and I revamped my whole OEP following her suggestions to do it: 

Retrieved from http://www.30goals.com/

• "Transform the lesson into a learning mission. 
• Add a technology component.
• Add some humor to the lesson.
• Bring your textbook to life.
• Make the lesson more hands-on.
• Get students moving.
• Change the environment.
• Start the lesson in a new way."

Then, I decided to take all her ideas and incorporate them into my OEP. Moreover, taking into account that one of the challenges was "bring your textbook to life", I remembered visiting the project InfoEDUgrafías which encourages you to use computer graphics. Computer graphics are visual displays of data made on a computer. So, I thought that doing computer graphics could be a way to "bring the textbook to life". 

Retrieve from http://infoedugrafias.blogspot.com.es/

PROCEDURE TO JOIN A RUNNING PROJECT

As a consequence, I revamped all my OEP, I changed all the activities that I had planned for my students. If you do not remember my OEP, click here. So, I have summarized my new lesson plan in a document that I uploaded to Issuu again. How you can show your documents once you have embedded them in your post is wonderful. I highly recommend Issuu to upload documents. 

According to my work about infoEDUgrafías, in my OEP, I do not use any textbook because I will use some computer graphics that I made using the web site Piktochart, which I find so useful for learners and teachers. It is so easy to use specially if you have used Genial.ly previously, because the web page template, tools, and options are so similar. Perhaps the greatest benefit of it is that you can download your infographics. Here you go an example that I created to my OEP:

Once done all the changes to fit with a partner/s, I decided to do an elevator pitch to catch the attention of my future partner/s. An elevator pitch is a short discourse which will lead to a deeper dialogue about what you can offer. It should last no longer than a short elevator ride from 20 to 30 seconds. 

To do it I did a draft about my discourse since I just had 20 seconds, a short period of time in which I wanted to tell many things about my project. I follow the next ideas to do the draft:

• Make a catching start point using questions to catch the attention of the audience. 
• Define the problem of my discourse.
• Explain the solution and the main point of my project.
• Tell what I pretend with my elevator pitch. 

So, taking into account that, I did this draft that you can see here. I used GoogleDrive to do it. 

Here you go the result. 

To do the video I used the tool iMovie again. Firstly, I used WeVideo which I found a pretty good program although it is free just 90 days. Despite that fact, it offers many options and special effects to add to your video. However, the final video had a big watermark which distracted the attention and covered part of my face. So, using iMovie was the right idea because I have it and to do an elevator pitch is perfect: easy to use and with eye-catching results. Anyway, an elevator pitch should be short and simple, so I just needed to add my blog in order that my future partner/s will be able to see my project. I strongly believe that iMovie is excellent and I recommend it. 

Eventually, I wrote some positive feedback to my hopefully future partners InfoEDUgrafías and the 30 Goals Challenge in their web pages.

REFLECTION

Doing this post was quite challenging because I had to incorporate different types of collaboration in the classroom as well as the requirements of the goal (which were about 8 different challenges). I started this whole project two weeks ago, even before than doing my previous post or challenge. Now I am feeling quite proud once I have incorporated all that issues into my project which I thought I would be impossible, but I planned different activities taking into account all those ideas and techniques. Actually, it was like a jigsaw. 

My elevator pitch might seem quite simple but it took me many rehearsals to get to the final discourse. I memorized my draft which also took many minutes but I consider I spoke about all the main points of my project. Furthermore, I believe that it is quite attractive. On the other hand, I realized how difficult is to prepare an elevator pitch since at first sight it might seem easy to speak just 20 seconds, but when you were working really hard on your project, 20 seconds is not enough at all. 

I must admit that elevator pitches are a great idea to do with students because rehearsing is essential in order to improve thinking and language skills. 

Without my being aware of it, I created a project which will fit in two of the running projects that I have mentioned above. As a result, I feel so satisfied with it. Now I hope they accept my as a partner because I tried to do my best. 

Finally, I would like to add that it was a pleasure to discover wonderful current projects with awesome teachers who are changing the education system right now. I was not conscious about all this. I have to admit that I am so impressed and hopeful. 

And do not forget,

Be clever, be greener!

Turning my OEP into a collaborative one

Hello everybody!

Last days we were working in our Open Educational Projects again to make them collaborative ones!

A collaborative project (following the definition of Teach the Earth) allows “groups of people to work together to create online content."

In order to enrich our project we should make it collaborative, but how?

Well, let me explain that there are several types of collaboration (open collaboration, close collaboration, cooperative learning, and so forth), but we will focus on three kinds of collaboration:

- Collaboration in the classroom through cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is “working together to accomplish shared goals” (co.operation.org). Learners do more difficult tasks that are planned to do in groups, if not they will find the activity hard, difficult, and exhausting. In this way, students learn beyond simple contents and deeper skills than if they do the task by themselves. In addition, pupils learn to collaborate, which is vital to be better citizens and solve crucial problems that we are facing concerning social and environmental issues.

- Collaboration out of the classroom, through projects with external collaborators such as other classrooms, schools, companies, experts, and so forth. As well as that, collaboration out of the classroom is not only good for learners but also for teachers who can exchange ideas with other teachers, experts, or learning communities.

- Collaboration back to the classroom, in which learners will spread their learning (of the two previous collaborative learning) to the world so that they will collaborate with the learning community. 

In the web page developingchild.harvard.edu we can find a pretty good definition of LEARNING COMMUNITY. It is a long one but worthy. 

“Learning communities provide a space and a structure for people to align around a shared goal. […]They connect people, organizations, and systems that are eager to learn and work across boundaries, all the while holding members accountable to a common agenda, metrics, and outcomes. These communities enable participants to share results and learn from each other, thereby improving their ability to achieve rapid yet significant progress.”

Now that we have learnt a little bit about the theory of collaborative projects, let me explain how I turned my Open Educational Project into a Collaborative one.

If you do not remember what my project was about, you can click here.

So, I just followed the previous steps about collaboration and I changed the activities that I planned for my students into the following ones:

• ·      Collaboration within the classroom

I have changed all the activities of the didactic unit about plants. Some of my activities were individual ones but now all them are collaborative, and children do not have to do any task by themselves. Then, children will accomplish many tasks in pairs or in groups of four students. They will work in groups but not always in the same ones, because I will mingle the students each time we change to a different activity.

So, students will do all the planned activities in groups of four and they will have to do a final mission. This final mission consists of making a big display about plants and taking care of them. So the whole group of students will have to accomplish this mission using handmade displays or ICT tool such as MindMeister or Canva to make displays and print them.

• ·      Collaboration out of the classroom

In this case, the teacher will have to find a ‘sister’ class or the whole groups of students with the teacher’s help can find it through social networks. It will be advisable to find a class from a foreign country (because the benefits are much better).

My students will be divided into pairs and each pair will be paired up with another pair of students from the ‘sister’ class. They will have to create a wiki using Wikispaces in which they will compile photos of plants and they will categorize them (flowering plant, non-flowering plant, sexual reproduction, asexual reproduction, gymnosperms, angiosperms). My students will have to communicate with the other students through emails, so each pair of students will have to create their email account. They can use Gmail or Hotmail.

To do this, we will go to a botanical garden (field trip) where students will be able to take the pictures that they will need with their tablets.

• ·      Collaboration back to the classroom

To collaborate back to the classroom, the whole group of students and the teacher will get in touch with a biologist via Twitter, Facebook, or any social network. The students will invite the biologist to come to the school and make a speech about how to take care of the plants and the planet.

Once the whole process will be finished, the students will make a summary about their learning process of each collaboration form and they will spread their learning to the world. Parents could see what their children do, teachers can see an innovative way to engage children in learning, and many people can learn from our learning process.

I created a flyer to summarize the change of my project so that it will be easier to understand it.

I used the tool Smore because it allows you to create larger flyers with plenty of information and pictures. I tried different web sites such as Canva or Easel.ly but I found some problems. In the case of Canva you cannot include much information although their templates, pictures, and drawings are fantastic; and with Easel.ly I could do an appealing min map but I preferred something different with pictures and with a layout similar to a flyer. Smore might be similar to Piktochart, tool that I have used and which I will speak about in my next post.

Smore is easy to use since the templates guide you to create a display as well as the website include a short  and helpful tutorial. It might be the easiest application because it does not include many options, although you may do a great job.

PROCEDURE

So, to turn my Open Educational Project about plants into a collaborative one I followed the next steps:

1. I fulfill a little research about the three types of collaboration to understand them in depth.
2. I think in ways to change my projects following the characteristics of the three kinds of collaboration.
3. I looked for the right tool in which I could represent how to turn my OEP into a collaborative one.
4. I did the flyer about the key points of the change.

REFLECTION

Actually, with this challenge I learnt many things. First and foremost, the most important fact that I learnt is that there are different kinds of collaborative learning, even more than the three types in which I worked this time. This fact is an important issue that it should be taught even at universities since it is essential in order to change our "Industrial Revolution" education system. Students are so different from those in the 19th century, so this is a way to do the best of the education system and of our teaching.

As well as that, I am feeling very proud of my job because I improved my project and now I know how to implement collaborative learning into my teaching process. I hope my future students will be happier and more motivated if I use it. On the other hand, firstly, I thought that it was almost impossible to integrate the three collaboration learning into my project, but finally it was possible. I did the best of myself to do it. 

I firmly believe that students learn through experiences and not by heart, so collaborative learning is a nice approach to do it. Besides, collaboration is a really good value that help to improve our behaviors with other people and with the environment. 

That is all for this post, so I am looking forward to reading your feedback and suggestions, and do not forget:

BE CLEVER, BE GREENER!