Summary of Creative use of Tablets Course

What did I learn during this course? I guess that the major impact of this course was the fact that I started to think differently about using tablets in the classroom. Especially I learned about collaboration and personalized learning, which I probably try to implement on next semester.

Thanks for European Schoolnet Academy for well organized MOOC and thanks of hundreds of colleagues, who were very active on social media and course forum during the course. I have to admit that I wasn't active at all in this respect. I concentrated on unsocial media, namely this blog.

For the reviewers of my learning diary I have to give many thanks, for giving such encouraging feedback. Positive feedback feels good especially after a hard work. I try to remember this better, when I go to my classroom next time.

My Lesson Plan [Module 4]

Learning Design for Political parties

You can find my lesson plan also from Learning Designer. Follow this link.

Context

Topic: Political parties and party politics

Total learning time: 75

Number of students: 25

Description: This is a lesson plan for civics class on uppers secondary / high school level.

Aims

The main aims of this lesson are to understand some ideologies behind the main political parties and to learn to formulate point of views concerning political questions. Also there is an aim to learn to find differences between parties. Students work in groups and they need to form political parties and describe the goals and the opinions of these parties in a wiki page or in a blog. Also they have to comment on each other’s wiki pages or blogs. Writing and commenting is done with tablets.

Outcomes

Knowledge(Knowledge): Students learn some basic knowledge about parties and political ideologies.

Comprehension(Comprehension): Studens learn to understand different kinds of political goals and reasons behind those goals.

Application(Application): Students learn to apply political ideology on some key questions in ongoing social debate.

Evaluation(Evaluation): Students learn to evaluate different kinds of political views.

1. Instructions for the lesson

Read Watch Listen 5 minutes 

Teacher will give the instructions for the lesson. First students have to create a fictional political party based on some main political ideology, which had developed during 19th and 20th centuries. For example conservative, liberal, socialist, nationalist or green party. Party can also be some sort of populist movement. Then they have to introduce their parties on a wiki page or a blog and comment each other’s pages. In the end there will either be a discussion or an argument and a Kahoot quiz.

2. Creating a political party

Collaborate 20 minutes 

Students have to do some inquiry concerning the ideology they have chosen. They do this with tablets. Then they have to form a political party. Setting up the party includes creating a party program, choosing a leader and making up a name for the party. The most important thing is the party program. It should some way reflect the ideology behind the party. Teacher may give some key question in which students have to answer in their party program.

Investigate 

Students familiarize themselves with political ideologies on which their party should base on.

3. Writing a wiki-page or a blog, and commenting other group's texts

Produce 20 minutes 

Students will write a description of their party to a wiki page or a blog. Students can use whatever platform they want, but easy option is to use ready-made wiki or blog sites in Moodle. Students may use pictures or videos if they wish and these can be embedded to their own wiki page. The most important thing is to write down some key goals and thoughts how they think that the society should be developed. These goals and opinions should reflect the political ideology which the students have chosen. When they are ready with their own wiki or blog, they can start to comment on each other’s works. This commenting has to be made from the group’s political perspective. Students write their comments with tablets to other group’s pages.

Collaborate 

Writing, producing and commenting is made together.

4. Short discussion or an argument, if there is enough time for it

Discuss 20 minutes

Students will introduce their parties and their goals to each other. There can be a short argument about some key questions if there is enough time.

5. Summing up with Kahoot! 

Practice 10 minutes 

In the end of the lesson we will play a Kahoot quiz with tablets (www.kahoot.it). This can alternatively be a Socrative quiz. The quiz is about existing political parties and their goals and ideologies. Students can play the Kahoot quiz in teams or pairs, because then they have to discuss and negotiate how they are going to answer each question.

Personalized Learning [Module 4]

One thing I learned during this module is the fact that I could personalize learning much more on my lessons. I have some materials in Moodle already, but I am not sure if those are in proper use. I think I should think about some good assignments and lesson plans where students can set their own goals, design their own learning tracks and do the self assessment in the end. I have to think about this more.

For personalized learning I have used several different materials which I have uploaded to Moodle learning environment. Students can choose which materials they use, when they study some subject. For instance there is PowerPoint-slides embedded from Slideshare or slides in pdf. There is also embedded Youtube videos (CrashCourse or Khan Academy or some videos in Finnish language), links, texts and timelines. I have embedded some examples of timelines earlier to this blog. The main problem with videos is the fact that they are usually in English. Some of my students can manage with that easily, but there is also many of those, who struggle a lot when they watch these videos.

Below is one good online material, which can be used in personalized learning in history. I have embedded these on my Moodle history courses. With GeaCron application students can easily investigate how state boarders change through history.

I use Google Forms in self assessment and collecting feedback on my courses. I sometimes try to ask students's preferences of learning through these Google Forms questionnaires. I have also linked some learning style tests, which are available in web, to my Moodle courses and then I have sometimes encouraged my students to do these tests.

Overall it's pretty useless for me to try to collect information about students's learning styles. We have five period in our school year and student groups change after every six week period. So there is not much use to try to understand their personal propensities, because there is not enough time to apply this information.

But on the other hand I think that it is much more important for students to understand themselves, what is the best way for them to learn. That's why I try to encourage them to reflect and think about their learning and for example try some learning tests which are available in the internet.

Flipping the Classroom in a Dream World and in the Real One [Module 4]

There is a given starting point in this flipped classroom thinking, which is the idea that students are automatically motivated to study at home or somewhere outside the classroom. They are thought to be interested and willing to inquire the given subject. I have to admit that I struggle a bit with this kind of view. I've seen so many students who don’t bother to watch any kind of video no matter how interestingly it may look to me. And they don’t read texts or listen audio materials which I have carefully uploaded to the web for them. I think that this starting point - that students are always motivated to learn - should be problematized a bit. Why should we suggest this in the first place? Is there any basis or evidence for this kind of presumption? And another question is the limited time. Some students just don’t have time enough for all the homework at their spare time.

In some cases this will work, some students are motivated to do this, but the major problem is with those student who doesn't work at home. And if I build my whole teaching on this supposition that knowledge is absorbed from the web at home and then in school we just apply this knowledge and practice skills, quite many students will simply drop off since they don’t have any glue what we are talking about on my lessons. The very idea that we should practice skills and apply knowledge together at school is excellent, but the supposition that students will do all the needed work outside the classroom just like that is far too idealistic.

Of course there are some ways to motivate the students to work outside the lessons. We just should bare in mind that the motivation won't pump up automatically with each and every student. So after all I am in favor of flipped classroom and I have tried to develop this kind of teaching practices.

I teach history and civics and in my subjects thinking is done with concepts. Concepts are a kind of tools which we need in order to think properly and if you don’t master the needed concepts it would be the same thing as try to build a house without any tools. Concepts have to be learned, memorized, practiced, and applied and we don’t have enough time to do all this at school. Therefore it would be wise to take over these tools at home and learn to apply those with other students at school - for instance through discussions, group work and arguments. This has been my teaching philosophy for last years and there is some similarities with the idea of flipped classroom.

I have tried to apply this philosophy with assignments, texts, timelines and videos which I have uploaded to Moodle learning environment. The idea is that students will read the textbook at home and work with simple assignments, or they watch a video from Youtube and make these assignments. I have used assignments in order to take care that students will get some sort of basic understanding of the given subject. At the classroom I've tried to to encourage the students to discuss and argue with each other and implement some critical thinking and analysis. At least sometimes and for some part I have succeeded, but there is still far too many students who won’t participate and who don’t bother to strain their brains.

Some Group Work Examples [Module 3]

On my Finnish history course students had to create fictional headlines for newspapers. We were studuing a period in Finnish history in which people were dividing into two parts. After this development Finland ended up in a civil war (1918). Before the civil war broke out there were some economic and political problems which drove people apart. There were the upper class people who owned the lands and production facilities and then there were the working class people. On the lessons students were divided into these groups and they had to write  newspaper headlines to Padlet wall from their perspective. You can see results below, from embedded Padlet walls.
The right wing newspaper was called "The Fatherland":

Created with Padlet

The left wing newspaper was called "The Proletarian".

Created with Padlet

Assessing Group Work [Module 3]

This module made me think closer about the assessment of group works. I have always found it difficult, but I think I found some ideas from the videos and also got affirmation for my own thoughts. I think that the assessment should both guide learners to wanted direction and at the same time be fair, just and objective. And by just and objective I mean that every learning process should be measured in the same way and with same scale so that the grades can be comparable. It's not easy to combine these two goals ("guiding and grading") to same assessment method.

The assessment should be made clear for the students so that they know how they are expected to work both as individuals and as a group. In collaborative learning teacher have to decide whether he/she is going to assess the process of learning, the collaboration, the outcome or all of these. Is the focus of assessment going to be in increasing of knowledge, in collaboration skills or in development of other kinds of skills? I think that the assessment should be formative and it should focus at least partly on the learning process.

It would be ideal to assess the development of skills, but its so difficult area itself to evaluate, let alone assessing it as part of group work. So it’s probably better to try to improve students’ skills through discussion or other methods instead of assessing those.

Here are some aspects that are useful for a teacher to think about while planning the group work assessment

• How should I assess the learning process and how the outcome?
• How I can assess the development of skills?
• What about increasing knowledge? Should I put weight on this?
• How about the effort of an individual? How can I take it into account?
• How should I evaluate the collaboration of whole group?

Teacher should make decision where is going to be the most weight of the assessment. Teacher should not take only one perspective into account (for instance the outcome), but there should be some sort of understanding on which areas the main focus is. Only this way students may have clear instructions how their work will be assessed and where their main focus should lie.

What it comes to group work usually I have assessed the following 

• individual effort and output
• group output
• the working and learning process
• collaboration

Useful methods of assessment

• assessment criteria set by teacher
• self assessment
• discussions
• peer review 

I have sometimes used a kind of peer review as part of assessing group work. In this model one group will assess the work of another group and this will have impact on the final grade. One can always build a combination of peer review, self assessment and teachers grading. A certain percentage of grade will be formed on the bases of self assessment and peer review and rest of it is up to teacher. For instance Moodle Workshop supports this kind of assessment. (Take a closer look at the Moodle Workshop with this video. Workshop is not originally developed for group work but it can be applied to it.)

Facing the Challenges of Collaborative Work [Module 3]

I find clear instructions and learning goals an important factor in successful group work. The task should also be easily divisible so that every member in the group may have a meaningful job to work with.

When we are working in groups, I try to observe the collaboration of each group and I give support and guidance and try to motivate if necessary. I try to keep each group member on track.

Finally I use assessment in order to keep every student focused in the group work. For example my student work with different kinds of problem-based tasks during the economics course and they write their reports or views or suggestions to a group’s own wiki page in Moodle (learning environment). During the course I guide and observe students’ work and in the end of the course I assess this “wiki work” of each group. This assessment will be part of their course grade. (And if I want, I can check each group members writing activity from Moodles logs.)

But so far on every course there has always been some freeloaders who try to work as little as possible and probably this will be the case in the future as well.