Learning Missions

Hello again!

Today I am going to show you how I have been turning my project activities into real missions in which our students will be totally engaged. In this post you will have the opportunity to check not only the features of the activities but also how I have aligned these activities with infoedugrafias´ way of working.

First of all I would like to remind you that in our project, students and teacher have two ways to be in contact from anywhere:

-Google drive: the whole class share a google drive where students and the teacher can ask questions or make suggestions. It is a good way to keep lots of useful information not only for students but also for the teacher.

-Blogger: during the process of building their companies students are going to create some prototypes and artifacts that the teacher will share in their class blogger. This type of applications make students feel proud of themselves and it is also a good way to share their work with known and unknown people.

As I said before and according to infoedugrafias´ way of teaching this project have selected three steps to follow when carrying out a mission:

-First thing that teachers need to take into account is the objectives of the mission. It means that we should make our students being conscious about the main objective of the activity. Once they know it, we as teachers, have to give them freedom to work with the objective. Not all students will achieve the objective at the same time or following the same process, it doesn´t matter, the importance of the activity is the achievement of the goal. that is why it must be clearly explained.

-The second step that infoedugrafias propose is the group formation: we are not talking about make groups of three or four, we are here talking about collaborative groups in which everyone have a responsibility withing the group. I was explained in a post before when I talked about Fernando Trujillo.

According to this methodology I would like to share with you they way in which C.E.I.P Carmen Laforet in Vicalvaro(Madrid) is working. They have faced this collaborative way of working creating the following roles in each group:

Image from C.E.I.P Carmen Laforet

-The last step is starting the activity: In this step and as it has been explained before the teacher should be a guide for students in order to achieve the objective. Students should be guided by links and explanations provided by the teacher but at the same time they should feel free to create their product. This concept is very important when talking about missions instead of flat activities; students will have to create something that proves what they have learnt.

Once all these general aspects have been clarified, it is time to explain the first mission, its features, objectives, and so forth.

Mission 1: What are you offering?

The objective of this missions is making students think about what people nowadays need and what they can offer to the people. As we are learning ict, english and social science at the same time one of the ideas of this mission is making students differentiate the three sectors of the economy.

The first thing that students will enjoy is the warming up activity. After dividing students into groups according to the criteria we have shown before, we are going to start the lesson watching a video about the three sector of the economy and their activities. Here you have three examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQt3hEUTnXo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnX0AXuxRd0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRlkFcheyR0

Now is time to foster their creativity and entrepreneurship. The best way to make them think about their future companies is guiding them thought these questions:

who is going to buy your product? (age)

what do they need or want?

think about companies that already offer this service or product ¿how would you make costumer even happier?

where are you going to locate your business and why?

There are also many websites that give students and teachers advices about how to create a company and  what have to be taken into consideration. From my point of view I would recommend THIS ONE. It is easy to understand for students and it can really help them to start prototyping their projects.

Once students have thought about all these questions they will start working together in order to create an on line poster. This is the product we have been talking before. Divided into their groups and roles students will start using the on line tool called canva. This tool have been chosen in this missions because of its lots of applications, templates and alternatives to work with it. It is also easy to use and I am sure it will be a enjoyable way to foster their creativity.

The reason why I have also chosen the on line tool canva is because it gives us the opportunity to be aligned with the objective of infoedugrafias project, which is creating a poster online.

All these things have to be very well explained. According to infoedugrafias way of thinking the time our students spend on organising the information is very important, we should not forced them with deadlines because they will also need their time to familiarise themselves with the online tool.

Moreover our students need to know at every time where they are, what is the objective and what they should do to achieve it. It needs to be clear that while using canva they are free to add visuals, explanations, pictures, and whatever they want. They should be creative while designing something with the information necessary to understand what the company is about, but with no lot of writing. The images should be captivating and explanatory.

The last step of the missions is a self reflexion where students have to explain the steps they have been following, the tasks each of them have carried out and what they think they have learnt.

As an example of the product they are asked to do in this mission I have created this canva poster:

RESTING UNI de raul oviedo

The company I have created is an example of how imaginative student´s companies can be. The images included in the canva poster have been freely download from pixabay. 

As a kind of mind map I would like to make clear all these things:

Goals of the mission:

-To promote child´s understanding of economic sector

To enable the child to familiarise with canva and use it with an objective

To make them being capable to analyse their company: objectives and features

To foster their creativity and entepeneurship

To promote the child to develop the concept of being original

To enable the child to work with english in a different context

To improve HOTS since they have to analyse, create, evaluate and so forth

Competencies:

-communication in foreign languages

-science and technology

-digital competence

-interpersonal, cultural and social

-entrepenurship

-learning to learn

-processing information and use of ICT

-social skills and citizenship

-artistic

-autonomy and personal initiative

Digital artifact: a poster (infoedugrafia)

Online tool: canva

In this post I have been firstly talking about some general aspects that have to be taken into account while creating and teaching the missions. All these ideas have been created according to infoedugrafias teaching methodology. In addition, I have included the roles that students have in each collaborative group work.

To face this step of the project, I started first to think about how to aligned my flat activities with infoedugrafias and then turn this activities into real missions to accomplish by the students. After that I wrote a bunch of ideas in google drive about my activities and suddenly I realised that while I was trying to connect my activities with infoedugrafias´ way of teaching I actually was turning them into real missions. 

Therefore and as a kind of self reflexion I must say how difficult turning our flat activities into real missions it can be. It made me think about how engage students in missions and what is more how should I create the missions to properly assess the results. But from my point of view students are the ones how best will evaluate our teaching methodology.

See you soon teachers!

Second Mission: Advertisement

Here you have the second mission!!!

Following with the collaborative way of learning, at this time students are going to create a super advertisement. In this post Daniel Marques, a primary school teacher, have collaborated with us and the result is a collaborative learning mission. I would recomend you to visit Daniel´s blog ( https://21centeachers.blogspot.com.es/ ) where you will find lots of resources for teachers, you can also visit his twitter account https://twitter.com/21cenTeachers.

Mission:

In this super learning mission we are going to connect our project (setting up you company) with natural science,we are going to introduce one of the most important concepts: healthy habits. We all know how important is keeping healthy and how powerful these missions can be. As students are going to be engaged in missions we can adapt it and introduce any topic to them, the crucial point here is making them enjoy the activity, whatever it was.

As Daniel was creating an online project about healthy habits we decided to connect our projects and giving our students the opportunity to work with advertising and healthy habits. Before talking with Daniel I had already though about engaging my students in advertising which is a big term to take into account when setting up your company. So that Daniel and me came up with the idea to create an advertisement where students will have to advertise a product or service that keep people healthy. Therefore at the same time students are going to be creative and conscious about healthy habits. They need to think not only about being attractive for the audience but also offering something that people can take advantage from.

The idea of this mission is creating a video in which students have to appear doing or promoting healthy habits while offering a product or service. In our case, and as an example to show our students how to use the online tool, we have recorded the next video:



First of all, we have to give thanks to Jesus Cardenas, the main character of the advertisement, he is a good friend of us and a primary education teacher too. Moreover you can learn a lot from him about physical education exercises and dancing, especially, breakdance. Here you have his twitter and blog accounts:
https://physicalexersices.blogspot.com.es/
https://twitter.com/Yisustheteacher

The online we have used to edit the video is called: WeVideo . It is a very useful tool but students will need to have time to understand it. It is not difficult to use but once you have started to discovered the tools you can not stop using them. That is why, students should be focused on the message they are advertising rather than wasting the time with tool applications. As this is the first for them working with this application, they are going to be asked to create a simple video where the focus is on the language they use, and how captivating and effective their advertisements are. Therefore, the main objective of the mission is working with the online tool while they apply their knowledge about healthy thabits and setting up companies. And of curse and as it is necessary to accomplish the missions they are learning enlgish throughout the whole process.

Once they have created the video with WeVideo the teacher is going to upload it in the classroom blog. It has to be used as a way to motivate our students, children always love when teachers share their projects. Moreover, and it was said in the previous post, those projects in which students have to create a product is also motivating for them. It has to be taken into account how we have divided the group according to the criteria we have seen in the previous post, so that, roles have to be clarified before starting to work. It also has to be seen from teachers as students´ evaluation, if a group work is not working effectively teachers need to record all this information in order to make changes for the future collaborative projects. To assess this group work we can use rubrics, it can be filled by students or teachers.

To make the missions clear, all these points have to be taken into account:

Objectives of the mission:

To enable the child to familiarise with WeVideo

To foster their creativity and entepeneurship

To promote the child to develop the concept of being original

To enable the child to work with english in a different context

To improve HOTS since they have to analyse, create, evaluate and so forth 

To improve communication skills in L2 and digital skills 

To collaborate and cooperate within a group to create a common artifact

To get to know the three main sector of economic activity 

Competencies:

-communication in foreign languages

-science and technology

-digital competence

-interpersonal, cultural and social

-entrepreneurship

-learning to learn

-processing information and use of ICT

-social skills and citizenship

-artistic

Digital artifact: Advertisement

Online tool: We Video

In the last post I explained you the general aspects that we should take into consideration when you are designing your missions. Following with the idea of making our students work through a collaborative methodology, at this step, they are going to continue working in groups. Giving them their roles is something that works very well. It give us the clue to not only to see how they assume their responsibility but also how to create groups in the future.
Referring to the mission and the online tool, Daniel and me, we were thinking about a tool that will make them create something but that wasn´t very easy for them. Firstly, we were thinking about the activity that will make them use their enlgish and also engage them in both projects. Then we came up with the idea of creating an advertisement and suddenly Daniel said, WeVideo, that is the tool we need. I hadn´t personally used it before but after a while it convinced me.
After creating the video, we decided to upload it to our youtube channels. It is very easy and it works very quickly. Moreover we download the music of our advertisement from youtube too.
Following with the objective of the project I truly think that these two missions allow students to work freely. It means that we teachers, are giving them the tools they need to learn by themselves and by sharing their knowledge with their peers.

See you very soon!

Partner search - elevator pitch

This is the next step of my clil project!!

According to my lasts posts I am going to continue enriching my clil project: Set up your company. In the previous post I was talking about the importance of collaborative learning within the classroom, but also with online projects that we would like to join. This is going to be our aim today, looking for a project to join!
I was reviewing projects in order to find the most suitable option for us to join. This project should be focused on children´s creativity and collaborative learning, it means, a project whose target has to be
creating a final product. On the other hand, the project should be related to our subject (social science) and at the same time with english language.

I came across some awesome porjects like ESL times, Piratas y libelulas or The other Kids EDU and honestly, all of them made me think about creating new projects to join them but I should be focused on my current project and finally I decided to join infoedugrafias. This online project has been created to make children develop through teacher´s guide. The role of the teacher is seen like a facilitator who will provide them with the strategies to select the correct information, how to organise it, transmitting and communicating information and so on.

So first of all, the methodology proposed from this project was the same as the teacher´s methodology I included in my project prototype. Moreover infoedugrafias is open to any project, it means that any subject your project is related to can take part in the project. Therefore, these are the two reasons that made me join infoedugrafias: methodology and freedom.

If you want to know more about infoedugrafias you can follow them on blogger, facebook, twitter and pinterest.

The way that I have chosen to persuade them is creating an elevator pitch video. The idea of this presentation is to explain those potential partners how can I contribute to their projects but only in 20 seconds. That is why I have been designing it very hard. In the video you will see the points that I wanted to highlight. Basically the presentation was focused on getting their attention and explaining them the ideas we have in common and how grateful collaborating could be for us and for the children.




The process of the video creation was a bit hard but enjoyable. First of all I started to write the speech that I would present in a document using google docs. After 4 written paragraphs I stopped writing and I decided to create a mind map divided into:

Introduction including a short presentation and something to catch their attention

Showing an educational problem or weakness

Saying that with my project we will solve the problem

Inviting them to visit my blog

Once I finished my mind map I was ready to record the video. 20 second video could take much more than 20 minutes to record it, even more than 30minutes. The best idea and as a kind of advice I would say that if you are going to make an elevator pitch do not prepare it too much. just let thinks happen. You have all this information in your brain and it doesn´t matter if you change some words, the main idea is going to appear anyway. Take risks!

About tools that I have chosen to record the video, as I did before I uploaded it in my Youtube channel click to visit it. It is a good way to keep all my videos in the same place and to allow people to watch them one after another.

On this ocassion and as the video is very short, I did not need to change anything but if you want to add some effects, add music or anything you can imagine to your videos I would recommend you Adobe Premiere Pro. You can buy it here click!

As a self reflection, I would like to say that each challenge I am facing is making me work harder. On this occasion, creating the visual methapor has been a difficult task, but a very rewarding one as well. In relation to the elevator pitch the most difficult task was trying to summarize all this information in twenty seconds. Moreover and as I said before from my point of view is crucial not only what you are saying but also how you are doing it: your voice, your face, your body, etc. All these things are taken into account from companies and sometimes we do not notice them.
To sum up I truly think that the effort was paid off, I wish you like the presentation and how the prototype is improving.


Thank you very much, see you soon.