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.
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:
- I fulfill a little research about the three types of collaboration to understand them in depth.
- I think in ways to change my projects following the characteristics of the three kinds of collaboration.
- I looked for the right tool in which I could represent how to turn my OEP into a collaborative one.
- 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!
