donderdag 31 maart 2016

Wikiwijs maken

Vandaag heeft het onderbouwteam van het Ashram College een scholingsochtend gehad van Marian Schelvis i.h.k.v. het leerlab currciculumbewustzijn. Ik had eerst m'n bedenkingen, omdat ik hoopte dat de focus meer zou liggen op de stercollecties van VO-Content en ik een aantal jaar geleden wikiwijs al een kans had gegeven en die heeft ze toen niet gepakt.
Aanvankelijk dacht ik dat we binnen het platform van VO-content ook konden arrangeren, want die content ziet er immers erg goed uit, maar dat blijkt dus niet mogelijk. Het arrangeren doet men binnen Wikiwijs maken en dat is echt heel gaaf! Vanmorgen heb ik twee lessen gemaakt die leerlingen zelf op elke device kunnen volgen en maken en daar doe ik iig al recht aan de verschillen in werktempo van de leerlingen: differentiatie. Nu nog wat verdiepings- en herhalingstrajecten toevoegen en we hebben differentiatie in full effect
Elk device wat het is op basis van html-5, wat betekent dat leerlingen er bij kunnen met iPad, maar dus ook met hun Chromebook. Kortom ik ben fan. Het effect wat SMART Notebook een aantal jaar geleden op mij had: een platform waar ik al(!) mijn digitale content in kon samenvoegen als één les voor op het digitale schoolbord, zo enthousiast ben ik nu over Wikiwijs maken, omdat ik alle(!) online content kan toevoegen of beter nog embedden: Google slides, Google forms, Slideshare presentaties, YouTube filmpjes etc. Echt tof. Vanmorgen een Engelstalige les over de British Isles gemaakt met als thema kennis van land en volk en een les rekenen met aardrijkskunde met een eigen Flip the Classroom achting instructiefilmpje. Nogmaals: ik ben fan!

woensdag 30 maart 2016

Webinar: in real time collaboration

This Tuesday I was the presenter of a webinar where I would share how I set up a collaboration project within SMART amp™ in real time. Due to the fact that it was test week I was unable to do this during my lesson and use my students for this webinar. So I did prepare something else, but good enough to fit the topic of the day. SEE Emil Waldhauser from the Czech Republic was kind enough to help me out with the new setup of my webinar. We were going to show how to set up a collaboration in real time.

The topic of this webinar is not new to me, because I've done a few at SEE summits, Google summits, at the advanced teacher academy in Surinam and am doing one next weekend at the university of Madrid. One could say I'm an expert, I think I just have a lot of experience with setting up (global) collaboration projects with the use of SMART amp™ and am more than happy to share that experience.

I use SMART amp™ in my SMART Collaborative Classroom and have recently it been using in my exams class with the geographical topic of the building of a new landing strip of the airport Schiphol. They needed to emphasize with the different point of views from third parties involved. The needed to think of pros and cons about this idea. This is quite easy for me as a geograph teacher, because loads of things that happen around us could be used in a way like this: refugees from Syria, environmental issues, asylums for refugees in our own town, drilling for oil in the Arctic etc. Especially political issues matter and an easy to transform into good lessons.

When working together make sure that you as a teacher remark the students with the basic principle that collaborating with each other is based on equality. Especially when collaborating with students from other countries make sure that students have these two things in mind: reciprocity & equivalence. 

There are a few ways on how to set up in real time a collaboration project with SMART amp™ in your classroom.
- For students within gafe domain (in your class or between classes within same gafe domain).
- With externals
1. Students and/or teachers from other gafe domain
2. Students and/or teachers without gafe domain, yet added to yours by adding them to your gafe domain.

Make sure that technology works for you, since you're using education technology in your collaboration project. So all(!) students or classes need to have  gafe accounts and access to SMART amp™. Students need to have access to devices and either a wifi or WLAN connection. Best to create the workspace in advance and clarify the goals for your students.

Then on top of all preparations is the pedagogy. This is really important. Whether you have this big idea or topic that you want students to work on and collaborate with each other you could do two things:
Either let students decide which way the learning is going. They will have wild ideas and they just go as they please. This wil have some pros and cons of course:
Pro: learning how to work within amp and explore it's possibilities.
Con: does it aim for your goals?
- Or prepare good questions ahead and share with students what the goals are that you as a teacher are aiming for with the class. Clarify all that's needed to have a successful collaboration project.

The topic that I used for the webinar was: cultural heritage. 

During this collaboration lesson I would let students take pictures of things and have them describe what cultural things they are proud of and ar willing to share with others - ie. the world.

Main goals:
1. From a student perspective you as a teacher are able to determine what they think is their cultural heritage,
2. Learning from others about their cultural heritage from their point of view will (hopefully) bring more understanding amongst each other instead bigotry behaviour,
3. When showing and sharing with others I believe that it will definitely bring the quality of the shared work to a higher level, due to the fact that others instead of just the teacher are watching as well.

Good luck with your project!