Designing a rubric for assessment

Hi inno-teachers!

And now is time to create a rubric for assessing our students! In this post I am going to present to you the rubric that I have designed in order to evaluate my students in my OEP: Namasté! Moreover, I will include some basic elements to take into account when designing a rubric such as the elements that it should contain or an interesting website to create it online.

Recovered from: www.xtlearn.net

Why is assessment important?

To assess means to ask students about their understanding of the subject matter. Assessment is an integral part of instruction because it determines if the goals of education have been met or not. There are different ways of assessing our students, but if we want to be good teachers, that critical moment in th teaching-learning process should contain some of the following characteristics:

• It provides diagnostic feedback.
• It helps educatiors set standards.
• It evaluates progress.
• It relates to a student's progress.
• It motivates performance.
• It allows teacher-self evaluation.

"Assessment is the engine which drives student learning". (John Cowan)

My second super learning mission!

Hi inno-teachers!

In this post I am going to present to you the second super learning mission that I have created to include in my OEP. I am going to follow the same structure that the one that I used on the previous entry. First of all, I am going to introduce to you the flat activity that has been modified; then, I will explain the whole process that I have followed and, finally I am going to show to you how the activity fits in my OEP (I will also include the sample of the digital artifact that is expected from the pupils).

Retrieved from: www.des.edu.ky

Before starting with the process, I would like to remind you the steps that are necessary to follow in order to turn a flat activitiy into a super learning mission. These steps are:

1. Decide a flat activity to change.
2. Think on how to motivate your students.
3. Join a collaborative movement (optional).
4. Set the new goals.
5. Explain the instructions to your students and how to create the digital artifact/s (if necessary).

You can see the poster that I created with these steps by clicking here. And now, we can start!

A super learning mission!

Hi inno-teachers!

Today I will present to you a super learning mission for my OEP (Open Educational Project). The vast majority of Open Educational Projects are characterizied by the development of missions that encourage students' motivation for learning.
The main differences that exist between a mission in a project and a traditional session in a classroom are the following ones:

• Most traditional sessions in traditional classrooms do not foster innovation and creativity.
• Missions promote problem solving and critical thinking.
• Traditional sessions aim to achieve closed objectives in the curriculum.
• Missions in OEPs are, in some cases, cross-curricular.
• Missions foster cooperation between students while traditional sessions usually don't.

Retrieved from: sbtexas.com

This post aims to transform a flat activity into a collaborative mission (the second mission will be published in another post in my blog). Hereafter, I am going to present to you the changes that I have made (in collaboration with two classmates) so as to enhance the activity and to ensure quality.

Let's find a partner!

Hi inno-teachers!

Let's continue enriching Namasté!, my open educational project! In my last entry, I presented a visual metaphor that summarizes how Namasté! project turns into a collaborative one. And now, I am delighted to introduce to you an elevator pitch to talk infoEDUgrafías (the collaborative movement that I have chosen) into accepting me as a new partner.

Firstly, I would like to explain to you what infoEDUgrafías is and why I have decided to join them. InfoEDUgrafías is a collaborative project for infant, primary, secondary and universitary students. The main aim of this project is that pupils create an infographic relating to any topic (for instance, the plot of a book, the parts of the plants or an important event in history). All infographics created by the students will be published on the webpage so as other pupils can benefit from the work. The way for participating and joining the project is very easy. Teachers who want to do it, just have to complete the form on the webpage. Once the works have been created, the teacher has to submit them to the following email adress: proyectoinfoedugrafias@gmail.com 

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

Beyond a simple project

Hi inno-teachers!

In this post I want to share with you how I have decided to enrich my educational project, Namasté! 

As all of you know, we all learn from and with others; we all take part in education. As an educational community, teachers, students, families and others educational agents interact among them, and this is a way of constructing knowledge. One of the best ways to get knowledge from others is collaborative learning. 

Collaborative learning is a method in which pupils team together to solve a problem or create a meaningful project. According to Gokhale (1995), individuals are able to achieve higher levels of learning and retain more information when they work in a group rather than individually, this applies to both the facilitators of knowledge, the instructors, and the receivers of knowledge, the students. There are three kinds of collaboration movements:

• Collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning.  (García, M.J., 2017 [lecture notes]).
• Collaboration out of the classroom connecting with other classes, communities, with the real world, so as to make service-learning projects, entrepeneurship projects, investigation projects, and so forth.  (García, M.J., 2017 [lecture notes]).
• Collaboration back to the classroom, involving external agents in the learning process so as our classes become a real learning community.  (García, M.J., 2017 [lecture notes]).

I have decided to choose the second collaboration movement (out of the classroom) in order to imply its benefits to the educational project that I have already prototyped. Hereafter, I will explain the changes that I have made in order to enrich my project.

Retrieved from: trivantis.com