Adil Tuğyan, an iTEC teacher from Turkey who has been closely involved with the project for a number of years, has created an emaze presentation to explain to teaches exactly how the project works.
Three teachers from three different countries - Spain, France, and Portugal - share their stories on how iTEC Learning Activities have helped them in introducing the principle of innovation to their teaching practice.
One of the aim of this project is to have the students ability to describe themselves and talk about their school life by using AR app.On the other hand,one should believe schools must move beyond a focus on basic competency in core subjects to promoting understanding of academic content at much higher levels by weaving 21st century interdisciplinary themes into core subjects:
At a glance
Lesson objectives
Give a simple description of the school staff and the school model as a short series of simple phrases and sentences by using “Simple Present Tense”
A "walk-through" of the lesson
The magical app "Aurasma" was used for making school bulletin board. The bulletin board made as for the new comers to the school. Teams are formed with team up.The school director came to the class and requested from the students to make a bulletin board of the school.This was inspiring for them. They have dreamt it and explored the school and the tools.Personally owned devices are brought to the class (BYOD) by the students.The teacher's role here was to give instructions and record activiesthe .They interviewed with teachers to get information about their school life and likes-dislikes. Some group of the students gathered information about the building.They used these informations to map them. The students who had the information about the teachers used it to animate them with "Crazy Talk" with their own voice. The other group of students used Sketchup for the building and animate themselves introducing the school. The aniamations about the staff and school building used as "overlays". Then they made teacher posters and some other made floor plan posters created by sketchup . These posters are used as trigger images. Posters sticked on the bulletin board in a hall way.When they hover over their tablet or smart phones on the images of the posters, the student created videos (animations) will automatically begin playing. It was emazig for them when the rest of the school got a show of it by the pilot students.
iTEC technologies and other tools used
Teacher feedback
The Aurasma app puts the power of augmented reality into my class.The students can simply be amazed with only a smart device, the free aurasma app, and trigger images, animations.The activities were the new ways to enhance learning and expand the horizons of students in an engaging and interactive way.Tablets and smart phones are being used in the classess nowadays.These devices are an integral part of more classrooms every day and are being used to complete class activities and participate in classroom collaborations.
The Students actively took role in the activities and motivated. The emphasis was on the students‘obtained and selfexperiences. They valued themselves as the main actors of their work. They were involved in their own pace of learning processess, critisized co-workers and themselves.They have collaborated and shared, critisized other's work.The 21st cetury skills are mastered by the students.The main problems faced were about curriculum and learning environments during the project.
Students feedback
They have said that they are extremely emazed and learned from the activities.They have said that they can simply be amazed with only a smart device,tablet and the aurasma app. They all have requested to do the project activities instead of the other lectures.They wished to have the other lessons to be like İTEC project.
Key innovations identified
The key innovations: Developing,implementing and communicating new ideas to others effectively.Being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporating group input and feedback into the work. Demonstrating originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
Success factors
View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term.Learning new technology, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, self awareness of globalization.
Successful outcomes
The students thaught creativily and worked with other students. They have gained the behaviors of the objectives for the curriculum. It is observed that learning and innovation skills of the students increasingly are being recognized as the skills that separate students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who are not. A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration has experienced during the project to preparestudents for the future.
Tips and advice to other teachers
I think the most core of success in teaching and learning environments reasults from "Personal Development" of teachers.A teacher should have the ability to gain the 21st century skills to the students.
Links
İTEC Project website: http://tevfikileri-middleschool-itec5.wikispaces.com/
iTEC Augmented School Staff Bullettin Board Video-Show
iTECAugmented School Staff Bulletin Board Presentation
iTEC Augmented Teacher Poster Making:
Animating Teachers
Children develop video to help enhance understanding of action verbs, pronouns, nouns, proper nouns, and adjectives and some other parts of speech to develop oral fluency using creative story –like plots. Bloom’s Taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation
Before teacher allows for students to group up and collaborate, he/she should show students copy of rubric, so they know what is expected from project.
The students will spend today brainstorming ideas with their group members on how to introduce/review grammar topic for classmates.
Second Week/Explore
Mini-lesson: How to Use Flip Video?
Students will learn the important parts of the flip video. I will use the promethean board and document camera to help zoom in and out to see the buttons on flip video.
The students will then spend rest of time getting a chance to use flip videos for short little clips to help become comfortable with flip videos.
Third and Fourth Weeks/Reflect
Students will spend these days discussing and creating their videos. Each group will have the chance to use different flip videos to create best picture of video. The teacher will conference with each group at least two more times to make sure they are on task, working together, and collaborating ideas. The teacher makes sure that the group is identifying grammar topic, giving examples, showing the examples using concrete items, and leaving the classmates to use new knowledge to apply to work. Map , Students use mindmiester to organize their ideas and the parts of speech they are to use in their videos to get a clear plan of the activities and features will be presented through the videos.
Fifth and Sixth Weeks/Make
Students with teacher’s help will edit their videos. This gives the children a chance to look at what they have and to decide on what to keep for video to teach classmates about grammar topic.
Seventh and eighth Weeks/ Ask and Reflect
Students will present their videos to classmates first and then the 9th grade students to get their feedback so as to make changes where necessary.They get the students back and take notes and and make slight changes on their products. Finally the videos will be presented to other English teachers to observe their relevance.
9th Week /Show
After taking students and teachers’ feedback ,the teams create their final videos to be presented to parents school staff and prople from the directorate of National Education at a school event organized at the school conference center
The groups carried out all the tasks in every stages very successfully and achived desired results and outcomes.The only serious challenge we confronted was the lack of the equipment existed at our school and to overcome this challenge I arranged a flexible timetable for the groups to work on their design prototypes comfortably.The time alloted for the activities was not enough for groups practices so I had to arrange some extra hours on pre-defined days to enable groups to complete their tasks in time.Thanks to those arrangements the groups were able to work efficiently on their prototypes.
The students have been able to learn;
The foremost innovation is that the students created their own learning materials by themselves using both mobile and computer technologies as weel as IWBs.Creativity of the students enhanced and their integration of traditional learning with computerized 21st century learning ( Blended Learning ) as well as briging three learning activities together in one story was a perfect example of innovation.
The learning story was very clear and students were well informed before the work process.Design brief was held in an easy way so ato make students understand what they were going through.The technologies to have been used during the work process were introduced clearly and students were given time to excel in them.The groups were created taking students learning habits and abilities into consideration so the groups worked harmoniusly and shared tasks by themselves under my guidence.Flexible working hours enabled students to work effectively and the studets were asked not to go beyond the topic but think creatively and freely.A fair and pre arranged and rewarding assesment plan was one of the factors that turned our work into a success.
Teachers can easily observe how creative students can be if they are given the opportunity and right stuff. Creativity, working as a team in harmony, using technology rationally, developing sense of responsibility, learning from each other without patronizing each other, learning the process of a learning activity, making thir own decisions within their groups and having their own atonomy, assessing and reflecting each other works fairly and properly were the successful outcomes of this activity for my students.
A careful planning, taking students interests into account, flexible working hours,choosing suitable technology for their students age groups, guidence and positive feedback, letting students work on their own way and finaly a careful observation would be my tips to teachers. We should keep in mind that Change start with teachers
My students have learnt the mentality of coding system, they have also learnt they can manage lots of things by the power of imagination. They produced their own games and animations. By means of their successful contribution to the lessons, they have taken their initiative about their learning. They have gained enough knowledge on some matters, for example, how does a computer game works or how does an animation behave. To sum up, they have learnt doing, implementing and living (really) the learning process.
Students will learning computer programming for a long term goal. They are starting to learn the mentality of coding. They will be able to create their own games and instead of being technology consumers, they will start to produce technology. For a second long term goal but not very long as the first one they will start to earn money from their own games.
We implemented our learning story at ICT and software lessons. I am English Teacher but I am responsible also for ICT and sofware lessons. We have choosen the learning story of Creating a game. My students are very keen on computer games. I tried to make them produce their own games and told them you could also also earn money from your own games by unsharing it on SCRATCH.mit.edu web site. They liked it very much. Because of the lack of computers at school and at their homes we used my computers and a projection device (of the school) and some equipments (wireless, keyboards etc.) We had only a netbook, an ipad and an iphone for studies. At ICT and software Lessons we gathered at a classroom which is equiped with a projection device. Before the lessons I took a color copy of example code and instructions on it or we used ipad for instructions and netbook for doing the work. There were 16 students in my pilot classroom. Our computers were nearly enough. And one group studied with iphone to learn code system at code.org web site. At a final product we managed to produce a vocabulary quiz game, a car racing game, an underwater shark game, and tried prepare a space rocket game and some animations (an aquarium, a footballer making some movements, a dance scene) I have seen my students are enjoying very much from their learning experience and we couldn't understand how this lesson finishes nearly at a moment's notice:).
The most different situaion was students were enjoying very much from their learning experience, The challanges were all about the lack of enough knowledge on programing languages. I have tried to make it easy for my students. The others were the lack of enough computers and some equipmentss like smart board and tablets etc. For ICT and software lessons that may be the best choice of implementing the lessons and we can also produce vocabulary games animations for English language lessons. I learned about that if a program or web-2.0 tool is a real helper for students' learning, students like very much and they even don't want to give up studying on it.
We are learning by enjoyable ways really. The challanges may be not being able to reach instruction materials beacuse we live in a village. Moreover we are not so poor but our parents are villagers and they work on the farm most of the time or they are shepherds. Because of that they do not even know how to use computers and they are in the opinion of computers may distract us from our lessons. However, I liked this learning system becuse we are learing from our own experiences. I learned about that learnnig may be much enjoyable if the learing tool is really well eqiuped and provide the needs of the students'.
The success factors may be scratch's enjoyable learning environment, the attraction of computer world's new developments, and teacher's eagerness on computer science and well desires. For example, I have read 2 computer magazines and 2 computure games magazines evey month and give as gift their poster promotions etc. to the students.
In my opinion my students are more social nowadays because they see they can manage to achieve lots of things by effort and learning enjoyment, they have some ideals and skills which they will need in their future career. They believe, by means of their imagination and desire they can reach every goal.
Reading about computers and giving themselves to the attraction of computer world, taking the responsibilty of project based learning, taking the advantage of students enjoyment of learning in project based lessons, prefering to be active teachers and not to prefer being ordinary, taking radical risks by the permision of school administration and national project coordinators.
The scenario “Design and building of a terrestrial vehicle propelled by helix” was proposed in the context of the technology subject. It was carried out by learners of 2º ESO, with ages comprised between 13 and 14 years. The performance of the scenario had too well differentiated stages: design, which took 4 sessions; and building, which was completed in 9 sessions.
The project aims to have students work in groups to design and to construct a 3D object (i.e. a car).
The scenario “Design and building of a terrestrial vehicle propelled by helix” was proposed in the context of the technology subject. It was carried out by learners of 2º ESO, with ages comprised between 13 and 14 years. The proposal was made following the parameters of iTEC---Abalar-iTEC in Galicia---that has as its leiv-motiv “designing the classroom of the future”.
Two classrooms with learners were involved in the scenario. Since the scenario was performed in an identical way in both groups and their characteristics were very similar, the conclusions of this report are valid for all 42 learners. In order to carry out the different activities, learners were divided on different groups of 2 or 3 members. There were 17 small groups in total.
The spaces used were: the ABALAR classroom, a computerised classroom for the design stage, and the classroom-workshop of Technology. The final testing of the prototypes was performed in the gymnasium.
The scenario involved contents from the entire curriculum of 2º ESO: the technological process; graphical design; materials, wood and metal; electricity; and the use of text processors.
This activity was made following the parameters of the iTEC project. This represented as the main initial advantage a detailed reflexion and planning of the scenario as well as of all the activities proposed. We tried---and I think we succeed—to put into practice the work philosophy of iTEC. We designed a radical scenario and a set of activities that was in accordance with the current educational trends. We got an improvement of the technological level of the students, even though we had to work hard to that end. All the above required a great effort in the preparation and tracking of the activities and in the production of documentation. This effort would only pay off if we are able to replicate this scenario in other schools. In my opinion, this should be one of the priority objectives of the people that work in the iTEC project.
Students highlight that, when they put into practice the concepts they have studied, they learn more and undertands the concepts much better. They also point out that it is difficult to work in groups because you have to deal with a lot of issues, but in the end, when they are solved, it is an optimal way of working. They also comment that this way of working is playful.
All groups were able to finish their prototypes, and the huge majority of prototypes worked well. Some of them even exceeded expectations---both teacher's expectations and their own ones--- because they were fast, or they had an aesthetic value, or they moved straight, or even because they worked (when the students did not think they would).
The level of motivation was high during the entire process, and it increased with every little achievement. The activities that they liked the most were the most formal ones such as: elaborating the list of materials every time they completed the design of the vehicle, or planning the work process. Motivation was increased by the preparation of the prototypes for the final test. There were a good atmosphere and fellowship, even when there were competitiveness too.
The complete realisation of this proposal had a certain difficulty for the level of 2º ESO, because learners from those ages find very exigent the design in a high level of detail of complex objects that afterwards they have to build. Usually, when they build objects in the classroom, they are not requested to build proposals as concrete as the one in this scenario. The 3D design was in itself a big challenge for them. In the light of the final results, and the fidelity between the vehicles designed and the prototypes they built, the scenario can be considered a success.
It is a demanding task for the students, since it is needed a previous technological training. They have to work on the theorical contents that help to design and build the object (the car). It is necessary to pay particular attention to the 3D desing so that the project may succeed.
We have worked with ecorinth objects for example with leaves and statues.
Here is our web link
itec5.weebly.com/radical-pilot.html
Students from different countries will create a tourist guide which is supported by 3D objects. They will study inside and outside of the school , take photos upload them Google Maps and make interactive maps by using Corinth Classroom software.
http://www.pinterest.com/kanlz/3discover-your-world/
Pinterest'te Yıldız adlı kullanıcının 3Discover your world! panosunu takip edin.
Francesca Panzica, a primary school teacher in northern Italy, uses iTEC learning activities and technologies to teach her class about other countries and cultures.
The pupils learned to use Google Maps, blogging tools, Google Docs, and the fundamentals of audio-visual production.
