Module 1: What does the future classroom look like?
Why should we change our classroom practices? Great interview! Getting out from one's comfort zone may undoubtedly being a little discouraging at first, but soon we'll realize how stimulating the challenges that changes offer are. Designing learning experiences in active, dynamic learning environments is the 21st century teachers' task.A way to cope with the major issues that such adventure involves is relying on cooperation, technology and a fresh, positive attitude towards everlasting learning. As a matter of fact, isn't this the substance of life?
Past, Present and Future Classrooms. In my opinion the shift to a flexible conception of the spaces, the times and the ways of learning has to be taken for granted. I mean that teachers , administrators, stakeholders are required to adopt a perspective of continuous change in order to always be able to deal with the challenges of contemporary world. I really appreciate Dr Verswijel's simple but profound and effective picture. He succeded in offering both a diacronic and syncronic view of the need for educational institutions all around the world to take in charge the social, economical and cultural revolution our planet has been experiencing in the last decade. It's kind of a cognitive shifting we aren't honestly prepared to face yet.
21st Century Skills. Roger Blamire's presentation perfectly clarifies and effectively summarises important concepts such as the difference between skills and competences and the transversal elements which play a fundamental role in the contemporary idea of learning processes. The need to present our learners with learning activities as well as learning environments - in a nutshell- learning experiences- that provide them with the necessary opportunities to implement and thus increase their higher-order levels of thinking happily meets with the incredible variety ofaids and solutions that technology has been offering. But , as a teacher, I mustn't forget that it isn't a simple matter of mastering a handful of magical devices and tools! The challenges that future classroom scenarios offer need a positive, energetic attitude towards lifelong learning: strategies, techniques, means, all must be set within an everchanging framework.
The Future Classroom Lab in Brussels.Paraphrasing Bjork's song: "All is full of learning". The Future Classroom Lab seems kind of an evolution of the old ateliers. A huge amount of research on education flows into this conception of the spaces, the times and the ways of learning. I've been trying organizing my classroom space by dividing it in various zones each of them dedicated to a different learning activity and/or learning style. It's not easy, unfortunately, because I can't make important decisions on my own. As a matter of fact, this kind of choices implies a learning and teaching vision to be shared by all the actors of an educational institution: principals, teachers, stakeholders...I do hope such awareness will spread quickly.
What does my classroom look like?This isn't exactly my classroom, but it's a space my students can use quite often. Compared to the amazing classroom we've admired in the video, well, it's quite smaller and it only presents two zones which could remind us of the Interact and the Exchange zone. Well, it isn't a Future Classroom Lab yet but it isn't a traditional classroom either. It represents a significant step forward towards that goal, indeed.
Module 2: Your future classroom – towards a realistic vision.
Future Classroom Scenarios. Both scenarios take into consideration those key principles Dr Ellis has referred to: they are realistic and could be implemented in real classrooms, they are innovative and show a great use of technology, and they are definitely based on valuable pedagogical approaches. The activities are undoubtedly engaging and relevant to the learners. Finally, they include 21 Century skills. When it comes to Cons, their implementation in schools needs the involvement of the all the actors, including teachers, principals, administration and stakeholders as well as policy makers. In a nutshell, in order to Future Scenarios like these to become actual learning environments in our schools we need a dramatic change in attitude and vision
The role of trends and stakeholders. The idea of school as a global community has definitely replaced that of a closed environment: we can't even thinking of starting a process of innovation without involving other actors inside and ouside of the school. We need the support of all the people who have whatever kind of investment in the school, as Dr Rogers underlines. In my view, some stakeholders should have a more active role than others in designing and implementing a learning scenario, namely the teachers, the families and the employers: all of them are strongly interested in having young people be competent, motivated and able to cope with the challenges of an ever changing world. Besides, we need to consider the most valuable trends, mostly in education sciences. I mean that not any trend, despite how widely they may affect a temporary vision, is worth taking into account when designing scenarios. The effectiveness of a trend should be verified in the light of the most enduring views that human sciences have been supporting in the decades.
Trends & stakeholders: the classroom of 2025.Innovative vs Mainstream.The latter will definitely replace the widely used adjective "innovative" : the best contemporary experiences, the ones that already let the future come true, will be mainstream, as Gill Leahy says. The access to any kind of resources, learning outside, inquiry-based learning, the teacher acting as a mentor, a coach providing guidance and feedback and conversely the learners being in charge of the learning experience: all of them will be the ingredients of the classroom of 2025. But, most important, The classroom will definitely turn into a learning community, an interactive. social learning space with no materials boundaries where collaboration will be the key of the success of all those who are involved in the learning-teaching process.
Trying Slack in the classroom. I had never heard of this tool https://slack.com/ before, but it sounds a great opportunity to support that shift to what Professor Laurillard has referred to in the last video as a more dynamic social learning environment. By promoting and making easier and easier an ever more interactive wide learning community it succeds at supporting an aspect which is crucial to the process of designing FCS: "children learning from other children, classrooms learning from other classrooms, teachers learning from teachers."
Module 3: From vision to reality – technology in your future classroom
Collaboration in the Classroom. Is real collaboration really occurring in my classroom? This is, according to Dr Butler, the first question teachers should ask themselves in order to start implementing learning experiences in their classroom. Hence, a series of fundamental questions help teachers build a "shared understanding of a metalanguage". It is a matter of quality, of quality of collaboration, and theuse of technology aims at enhancing that quality. As the iTEC teachers underline, the technologies make the sharing process easier. The teachers interviewed have definitely offered a wide range of valuable strategies and it's honestly hard to think of other good advice. Well, an effective aid at achieving real collaboration may come from the teacher's attitude. I mean, what does the teacher's role consist of in such a learning environment?
21st Century Skill in Focus: Collaboration and Technology in the Classroom. Technology plays a fundamental role when it comes to design the learning environment that promotes collaboration. Web 2.0 applications are powerful instruments in developing collaboration activities in the classroom and outside. My students and I make a consistent use of different tools for multimedia presentation, brainstorming, word cloud generators, collaborative writing, etc. Our students are into technology, thus the use of technological tools in the classroom is an exciting opportunity. In addition, those magical apps foster creativity and offer all of our students the opportunity to play an active role in the classroom. Yet, we mustn't forget that our focus isn't the technology itself.
21st Century Skill in Focus: Creativity and Technology in the Classroom.Irene Pateraki underlines the increasing importance of the key skill of creativity in contemporary world. She focuses on the interdependence of creativity and collaboration. We have already discussed the powerful role that technology plays when it comes to achieve real and effective collaboration in the classroom. Thereare lots of tools that helpstudents develop creativity. I would recommend Genial.ly among others. thanks to this tool students (and teachers) can create animated interactive visual content: it allows for creating multimedia slideshows and commenting using text. It is an online tool for creating rich presentations that may be embedded on blogs or wikis and thus shared with other students and schools. As with the cons of using technology to enhance creativity, we should choose carefully our tool depending on the objectives, the outcomes we want our students to achieve.
Using Technology in the Classroom: Example Lessons. I would definitely place the three example lessons on the stage three of the IMM. The technologies employed, Socrative, IWB, Popplet, Padlet, the Visualizer, are used not only for providing but also for producing content, the students being active producers of content. I especially like the way the students, thanks to technology, can use all learning styles and collaboratively build their knowledge.
Our Innovation Maturity. I think that the results are a quite faithful portrait of the general situation in our classrooms. Schools and stakeholders need to make a significant effort in order to help FCS fully develop. As for the teachers, they should acquire greater confidence both in the effective use of technology and the management of the classroom in order to help it take a further step beyond in this journey towards FCS.
Ideas for Aurasma. I have never used https://www.aurasma.com/but I'm definitely going to download it on my device and have my students do it to. I think I will use it both to let students enjoy background information when watching a picture and, very importantly, to allow them to create their own augmented reality. It seems to offer great opportunities to develop creativity in the classroom.
Thinglink. It's a powerful tool I'm definitely going to use and have my students use in my classroom. It allows learners and teachers to turn an image into a multimedia launcher. I would use it in various steps of a learning path but I think it would perfectly fit the needs of the Explore and in the Create steps. Here's my quick try: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/886983864252104705#openEditor.
Module 4: Learning activities for 21st century skills.
iTEC Learning Activities. Well, to sum up, the goal is once again helping students to develop 21st century skills. This implies that FCS must be fully connected to the experiences our learners have outside of the classroom, hence the need for designing a vision of learning and teaching that responds to trends, that encourages innovation and particularly, technological innovation. Thus, Learning Activities are implemented in a FCS, activities that don't fit any particular learning objective but can be used in different lessons.
Examples of iTEC Learning Activities. Students involved in an eTwinning project interview elderly people in their small Griko speaking town. Firstly they will do some online research about the history of this minority language and identify some reliable sources with the help of the teacher. They will brainstorm in groups ideas in order to identify questions to ask their grandparents and elderly people. They discuss the ideas. In groups they interview people: each group will have a specific topic to investigate.Some students will record on their smartphones, other will take pics and/or record videos. In the classroom the students in groups will edit and create presentations with the use of a number of tools for multimedia creation. The products will be shared and peer reviewed by means of answergarden or other tool.
Edukata - Learning Activity Design Toolkit. Once teachers have realized the importance of promoting 21st century competences in the classroom by means of the wonderful tools technology offers, they have to cope with a major issue: how to turn their ideas into concrete, effective, organic learning experiences. Discovering the existence of a method that can significantly support teachers in facing this challenging task has been really helpful to me. I'm definitely going to explore http://edukata.fi/in order to get ready to go on in my personal path towards the building of FCS.
Learning Activities for the Flipped Classroom Scenario.
21st Century Learning Design Rubrics. Among the tools we have been exploring in this course the 21CLD rubrics are , in my view, the most valuable. As Dr Butler has underlined several times, the starting point of a process towards the designing of a "learning environment that actually capitalizes on 21st century skills" is a shared understanding. The rubrics are a powerful instruments that allow teachers ask themselves some major questions ("what I need to intervene on, what I need to develop...") in order to ensure they are effectively incorporating those skills in their learningactivities. As for an activity that could achieve the maximum score, students creating a collaborative writing collaborative may be an example for the collaboration rubric.
Tool for Teaching: Socrative. It's a student response system that allows teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Students login with their device and interact real time with the content. Student responses are visually represented for multiple choice, true/false and Short Answer questions. This tool enables teachers to easily interact with students and to give feedback on the spot.
Module 5: From Learning Activities to Learning Stories.
Introduction to Learning Stories: Learning Scenarios are broad descriptions of the innovative environment in which learning takes place. They consider all the resources (and the relations among them) needed to allow a vision of innovation to become real in the classroom. They provide the element of innovation. Learning activities are the concrete instruments teachers and learners are provided with in order to turn that vision into reality. They provide the element of educational interaction. Learning activities need to be woven together through a storytelling structure that adds motivation and engagement to the learning experience. Learning stories bring learning activities together putting them into the context of a concrete classroom with its curriculum and its learners. They offer the teachers of that classroom a storytelling framework where they can embed learning activities. This way teachers are allowed to adopt and adapt learning activities so that they can meet the educational needs of that concrete context.
From Learning Activities to Learning Stories: an example. Turning "generic Learning Activities into an innovative and contextualised narrative" : here's the purpose of a Learning Story. The example provided helps us to fully understand this fundamental process. The role of the teacher may be that of a "dreamer" who allows learners to make their own "dreams" come true by providing them with a framework where all this may occur. I definitely imagine the three key elements we have examined so far - Learning Scenarios, Learning Activities, Learning Stories - as interdependent factors that, by feeding each other, allow for 21st century skills to be effectively pursued and achieved in the classroom.http://itec.aalto.fi/learning-stories-and-activities/
Learning Stories in Action.Learning story 1:"Tell a story". ITec methodology allows teachers to rethink teaching by embedding it into "student-centered, project-focused and collaborative learning environments that support the development of 21st century skills". A Learning Scenario offers the pedagogical and technological elements teachers need to implement Learning Activities by incorporating them into a narrative plan, the Learning Story. I definitely see this earning Story working in my class. I especially like the Explore activity (browsing videos in search for inspiration); the Ask activity (meeting outside experts); the Map activity with the use of Popplet; the Make activity with a further involvement of outside experts. What I mostly appreciate is the way students are in charge of their learning. Moreover, I definitely agree with the teacher as for the flexibil quality of such a learning experience.Learning Story 2 "My pet". Involving seventh graders students as "experts" and giving them the task to evaluate and give feedback to the secon graders is an idea worth sharing and implementing in our classrooms too.Finally, Learning Story 3 - "Book trailers"- provides a great example of how powerful can iTec methodology prove at turning a classroom into an engaging, stimulating environment for the students to live in.
A tool to create Learning Stories: the Learning Designer.
Tool for Teaching: Popplet. This tool is great for brainstorming or creative planning. teachers and students can create a concept map of facts or concepts in any subject area. I've used it several times in my classroom for research projects, having my students collaborate together (online) to create group mind maps ans share them with eTwinning partners.
Module 6: Have you seen the future classroom yet?
Peer-review as professional development and student activity. Professors and students from MIT offers an interesting and shareable perspective on peer review: it's central and involves some features that are definitely crucial in any learning experience. Indeed, it promotes collaboration, critical thinking and self reflection, it consists of a"qualitative understanding" of one's work, "opens up possibilities", and, far from being a mechanic process, "it's a trmendously creativeendeavor" that "complicates and enriches our thinking". Well, I have had a personal experience of peer review on an e learning platform and I I have thus directly experienced how satisfying and challenging at the same time it may be. "No one write alone" is a great slogan indeed, one that communicates that sense of warm communion with other fellows sharing some kind of objective with you. It is difficult to say how much I learn from following those courses and how much I owe to the incredible amount of insights into my own activities I took from my peers' feedback...As for my students, I'm convinced about the valuable pedagogical enrichment that would derive from a teaching perspective that includes peer assessment among everyday's activities. When it comes to the techniques, well, I must confess that I defininitelyneed some kind of training. One of the professors underlines that you have to be focused and specific while another one favourably refers to the value of the fresh attitude of a newbie at recognizing features.
Tool for Teaching: StickyMoose. I've already used it on the Etwinning projects I took part in and, yes, it's a useful tool for voting.Its major qualities are its being quick to use and versatile: teachers can take advantage from its characteristics to pursue various educational purposes, brainstorming and peer feedback among the others.
My Learning Story: "Let's discover Griko!"https://v.gd/XPTZfr
