Lego met aardrijkskunde II

Na twee leuke en zeer geslaagde lessen met LEGO bij aardrijkskunde met 2-vmbo, werd het tijd voor verbreding èn verdieping. De uitdaging was nu om met 3-vmbo klassen aan de slag te gaan en hen verschillende aardrijkskundige begrippen m.b.t. tot het SE-onderwerp 'Grenzen en identiteit' over het hoofdstuk Rusland. Dus begrippen als separatisme, nationalisme en gewapend conflict kwamen aan bod. Begrippen die de les na de LEGO-les getoetst werden. Zo kon ik mooi toetsen of de begrippen een beetje beginnen te leven bij de leerlingen na het uitbeelden mbv LEGO. De leerlingen gingen weer in groepjes bouwen en de foto van het eindresultaat moesten ze deze keer op Instagram plaatsen met het gebruik van de juiste hashtag; respectievelijk #ak3Mb en #ak3Md. Je kunt zelf even Googlen via instagram op deze hashtags en de resultaten bekijken.


Tijdens de les kwam een collega Duits langs om te kijken wat ze aan het doen waren en we konden beide zien dat de leerlingen actief met de begrippen bezig waren, mij geen vragen stelden, maar vooral overlegden in hun groep en incidenteel naar hun boek grepen en vooral hard(op) aan het nadenken waren. Leuk om te zien!
Ik heb twee klassen 3-vmbo en als ik dit experiment goed zou doen, dan zou ik één klas niet met LEGO laten spelen en de andere klas wel, om zo de resultaten tussen de twee groepen te vergelijken en misschien een voorzichtige conclusie kunnen trekken. Voorzichtig omdat de klassen natuurlijk niet helemaal hetzelfde zijn, dus de proefopstelling niet geheel ceteris paribus is. Maar, ik kon het niet over m'n hart verkrijgen om één van de twee klassen de LEGO-les en eventueel beter resultaat van de toetsing de volgende les te ontnemen. Wel heb ik in één van de klassen voor en na de LEGO-les geïnterviewd over de begrippenkennis. Helaas voor het experiment (nog) geen bewijs dat de LEGO-les een positieve bijdrage heeft geleverd aan de begrippenkennis van de geïnterviewden. Ik heb de interviews toch opgenomen in het korte filmpje.


Inmiddels hebben de eerste klassen en de vierde klassen ook in de gaten dat ik soms LEGO gebruik bij de aardrijkskunde-les, dus die willen ook graag. Zeker met 4-vmbo lijkt het mij echt een uitdaging om de uitbeelding van de begrippen mbv LEGO te toetsen. De CE-onderwerpen zijn: 'Weer en klimaat', 'Bevolking en ruimte' en 'Water'. Genoeg begrippen die ruimtelijk uitgebeeld kunnen worden dus. Gaan we doen!
En een andere verdieping wordt dat ik eens ga kijken/toetsen hoe de leerlingen eventueel verbanden tussen begrippen kunnen uitbeelden met LEGO-blokjes. En misschien is het leuk - om de competitie wat te verhogen - dat leerlingen (ook) hun eigen LEGO ook mee mogen nemen: BYOL (Bring Your Own LEGO). Wordt vervolgd!

"Everything is awesome!" - Emmet Brickowski, 2014.

#ak3Md aan de #lego bij #aardrijkskunde in de SMART Collaborative Classroom

A video posted by SMART Collaborative Classroom (@borisberlijn) on Dec 14, 2015 at 2:45am PST

#ak3Mb aan de #Lego #separatisme #rusland #aardrijkskunde

A photo posted by SMART Collaborative Classroom (@borisberlijn) on Dec 11, 2015 at 1:55am PST

SMART amp Champs: Global Collaboration

The promised follow up about my Global Collaboration project that was started in March, when I invited nine schools from different parts from the US. Each school was linked to a group of three students in my class and the topic was the US and together all my students gained loads of information in order to have a good geographical view on the US.

In order to collaborate I needed to create and share accounts within my domain. Within SMART amp the students could chat with each other and share the content in the workspace. Language wasn’t really an obstacle, due the fact that the English language is mandatory in the Netherlands and they could always use Google Translate. ;) The Time difference (from 5 to 9 hours) wasn’t an issue either, due to the fact that this assignment wasn’t real-time-based.

But now … I’ve learned a new cool feature in SMART amp. Workspaces could be shared with others outside the domain, but …. they will need to have a SMART amp license as well in order to open and work in the workspace-file and make it work. How about that! I really like this feature and saves me a lot of work whilst collaborating throughout the world.

SMART amp Champ!

I recently submitted a session about SMART amp to the Netherlands Google Apps for Education Summit, because I really wanted to attend this summit and I even liked the fact more that I could share my experience about this new platform, which engages students to really collaborate with each other. I've been using this for the past half year or so in a few of my classes in a self created domain, to gain access to Google Apps for Education. My students have gained a new e-mail address and access to SMART amp. In- and outside the classroom I can really see the power of SMART amp and I have even shared logins with schools from abroad to give them access to the workspaces my students are working in.

Workspace of my students and students from Orland Park Junior High (IL)

Now I have the privilege to share the how to and my best practices with SMART amp tomorrow at the gafe-summit. I'm really looking forward to it. My presentation is for sharing, the workspace the attendees will be working in tomorrow not.

And it's getting better, because next month I will be joining 12 other SMART Exemplary Educators from Europe to attend an exciting new program for SEEs called Amp Champs! As a member of this elite group, we will receive a two day advanced SMART amp training in Madrid, Spain and support. This is really awesome! I will meet and learn with and from the best SEEs from Europe such as Emil Waldhauser (Czech Republic) , Gonzalo Garcia (Spain), Serigio Cabezas (Spain), Tapani Raitanen (Finland) and our teacher and mentor Heather Lamb (Texas, US). Looking forward and will share my experience in Madrid on this blog ... 

SMART Response

Last week I used SMART Response (the VE-version in Notebook 14) in my SMART Collaborative Classroom during geography class. Students needed to learn how to work with climate charts and had to look them up in the atlas and answer some questions. I used one of the SMART Boards for the instruction and after the instruction I shared a few Response questions: single questions and not a question set. Here's what happened:

After the first question, I could see that hardly anyone had understand anything of it and couldn't tell anything from the climate charts in the atlas being used. And at that point they really wanted to know what they've done wrong. This continued until question nr. 3 which had a percentage of more than 80%. They were really getting it and of course they scored all 100% on the final question.
It was really nice to see that after a little failure, they wanted to learn themselves and were eager to check their answers with me each time in order to have a good score on the next question (and for me to know that they finally understood how to work with climate charts). Mission accomplished.

Global SMARTamp collaboration project

After the spring break my students will start collaborating with classes from the US. The topic of this geography semester is the United States of America and I've asked in the Global Collaboration Google+ group if teachers, classes and students from the US felt like collaborating. SMARTamp will be the platform to be used by the groups of students.

My class of 27 students will be divided in 9 smaller groups of three and each group will have their own workspace within SMARTamp and each school from the US will have access to one of the workspaces in order to collaborate and work with my students in order to gain information about school, climate, landscape, culture (art, sports etc.) and daily life.

I will need to create guest accounts within my Google domain, so classes from abroad can join in on the workspaces and collaborate with my students, regardless of the time differences, and learn from and with each other. I have done it a few times before with students from the Czech Republic and will start a grant project within two weeks, where 9(!) classes from different places in the US can join in on the workspaces from our my students in the Netherlands. They will need to share information, experiences, pictures etc. and in that way learn from each other and the extra for my students is that their English will be improved. ;)

At this moment we are going to collaborate with classes from:

• Escondido, CA
• Hughson, CA
• Orland Park, IL
• Plantation, FL
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Kandiyohi, MN
• San Antonio, TX
• Lexington, KY
• Green Bay, WI

How awesome is that! Will share more of our experience within two weeks.

Amping up at SMART HQ

The first day at SMART Technologies HQ was a great success and still is while I'm writing this. We are with 76(!) SMART Exemplary Educators in one room with great SMARTians to enrich us and make sure than even after day one we will gain a lot which we will takje home and can use directly in our class room. That is my experience after almost one day spending with loads of inspiring people.

At first president of education Greg Estell welcomed us with his keynote about education and how important we as teachers are and can make a difference. He was very kind and made sure that we understood that we are more than welcome and that we matter. Good to know.

"A brand is no longer what a company tells the consumer it is. It's what consumers tell each other it is."

Jenna shared a lot information about the roadmap of the software and hardware of SMART Technologies, but since we signed an NDA we don't have permission to tweet, blog, etc. about it. All I can say is that it keeps on mind-blowing for me ...

Heather Lamb, Erica Arnoldin and others shared (new) features of SMART Notebook 2014 (eXtreme Collaboration, SMART Response VE, Geogebra etc.) and SMART amp during sessions for smaller groups. There's already a list of things that I will take home and will and can use in my SMART Collaborative Classroom.

Stop Motion (200 pics in 20 seconds)

I handed out some souvenirs from The Netherlands and Alphen aan den Rijn - the town I live - to SEEs that I and my students have been working with the past year and to make sure that we will collaborate more next school year. Michelle from Illinois, Mary from Florida, Hamdy from Saudi Arabia and Yulia from Russia are the SEEs present. SEEs that are not present like Emil from the Czech Republic and Kate from Philadelphia.

At the end of the day I was asked to do a TV interview. How awesome is that. I don't have any footage yet, but there's a picture of me at SMART HQ with the TV camera. Lunch was very good, snacks and drinks were provided. After all it was a good day! Looking forward to do more tomorrow!

P.S. check the hashtag #smartee on Twitter to follow in on what's happening at the Global SEE Summit.

With Sergio and Allen

Professional development 2014-2015

During the past school year me and my students did a lot of collaboration with school classes from abroad (United States, Surinam, Curacao, Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia) using tech tools as SMART Bridgit and Skype. I was at BETT 2014 in London, UK and met a few SEEs from Canada, Spain, the UK and Finland and did a few sessions at the SMART Collaborative Classroom and did a session about the use of social media in the classroom at the biggest social media and education summit in Amsterdam. I went on a study trip 'Finland Calling' to Helsinki, Finland from September 22nd till 28th 2013 with the headmaster of my school to have a closer look at the Finnish education system and to gain more about differentiation in the classroom. And from december 2013 my classroom was transformed into a SMART Collaborative Classroom and I have tried a lot new ways to engage students more to cooperate and collaborate with each other whilst using the SMART Boards. I also want to focus on BYOD for students, because since a few months our school has WiFi for all students and will start with BYOD next school year.

Inside my SMART Collaborative Classroom I want more student engagement whilst the use of their own devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets and really want SMARTamp to get going. I'm quite familiar with SMARTamp and will learn a lot more during the Global SEE Summit in Calgary, Canada which should be the best PD thing for teachers ever. Will share more about this one later.

Because SMARTamp is connected to the Google accounts and as inspired by some other SMART Exemplary Educators from the US, I want to do some Google training. At first an online training to become a Google Educator and later in November I want to attent the Google Teacher Academy in Amsterdam to become a Google Certified Teacher as well.

During the next school year I'm looking forward to join a Learning Circle from the Global Teenager Project again with my 'world citizenship'-classes and cooperate and collaborate with other classes from around the globe. Perhaps we could even visit another school as an expedition in another country next school year.

And at last I want to try this Peer Scholar thing, which should be pretty cool to use in my classes. Let the summer begin and I will share more about professional development on this blog ...

SMART Collaborative Classroom from the past school year

SMART Bridgit try-out/SMART Bridgit Vyzkoušejte

AV-Media (distributor of SMART products in Czech Republic) planned a guided tour for headmasters and it-coordinators from the Czech Republic to the Netherlands and Belgium to visit two SMART Showcase schools and the IPON 2014 (Education technology trade show in the Netherlands). This large group of nearly 40 people visited our school. Attendees were interested in the way we teach in the Netherlands in general and specifically at our school as a SMART Showcase School, they were also interested in the SMART Collaborative Classroom and how it's being used and some other topics such as the standardized curriculum and BYOD. Me, the headmaster and some students provided the large group a welcome and a inspiring day as we were told later on. This tour was mainly managed by my friend and colleague SMART Exemplary Educator Emil Waldhauser from the Czech Republic whom also had to translate from English to Czech back and forth. After the welcome and presentation by my headmaster the guests from the Czech Republic were guided by students through the school and attended some lessons, while Emil and I were did a twinning teach-session in my class about culture, identity and nationalism. Emil was very easily accepted by my students and they could easily follow his lesson about the life behind the iron curtain back in the days. During the next lesson all(!) the Czech guests were invited in my SMART Collaborative Classroom to witness the way I teach and use the SMART Boards to do some collaborative learning. Is was chaotic, but good to see that my students were able to do their job while watched by 40 adults who did communicate in a foreign language.

Me presenting about the SMART Showcase School

Emil teaching in the SMART Collaborative Classroom 

During this tour I met some new interesting people and František Rada and me  agreed on doing some more collaborative learning together. One of the attendees was a headmaster from a secondary school - Základní škola - from Prague and he asked me if I would like to help him in the near future with setting up a Bridgit session. The school was about to use SMART Bridgit in the very near future and they had invited the press (both newspaper and television) and he wanted to show what could be done with SMART Bridgit in the classroom and that my classroom in the Netherlands was just two clicks away. 

Starting up the Bridgit session in Prague, Czech Republic.

I totally forgot the time on the day we were supposed to meet, so he called me on my cell phone and I immediately called in on SMART Bridgit and we were online for a few minutes. He prepared an activity for me and my class and it went great! Awesome. The press was present and by clicking the links you can see some of the video content while I did the Bridgit session and you can even see me and a glimpse of my classroom on the Czech (time 21:22) … How cool is that!

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Czech TV the main news: http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/1097181328-udalosti/214411000100411/obsah/319944-vyuka-na-dalku 

TV Barandov: http://www.barrandov.tv/video/21174-nase-zpravy-28-3-2014 (20:20)

A particular success from the school Základní škola with using SMART Bridgit in “Distance teaching“ for longterm ill students:

1. http://praha.idnes.cz/prvni-online-student-05b-/praha-zpravy.aspx?c=A140327_130307_praha-zpravy_jan

2. http://www.prazskypatriot.cz/startuje-vzdelavani-na-dalku-projekt-pro-dlouhodobe-nemocne-deti/

3. http://praha.5plus2.cz/prvni-online-student-05b-/prahar.aspx?c=A140327_104546_ppd-prahar_p2vja

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Ashram College - SMART Collaborative Classroom

Deze is gemaakt voor de april editie van het Ashram Bulletin:

In Noord-Amerika (VS en Canada) draait het programma van de SMART Collaborative Classroom al langer en sinds dit schooljaar is het programma ook in EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Africa) gestart. In Noord-Amerika zijn er zo’n 25 Collaborative Classrooms en in Europa zijn er dit schooljaar 6 gestart, vier in Engeland, één in Duitsland en één op het Ashram College in Alphen aan den Rijn.

Het Ashram College is een SMART Showcase School, wat zoveel betekent dat onze school voorbeeld is in het interactieve en didactische gebruik van de onderwijstechnologie van SMART Technologies. Daarbij zijn er op het Ashram College vier(!) SMART Exemplary Educators: Sander van de Zwaan, Henk-Jan van Mierlo, Boris Berlijn en sinds 1 januari 2014 Wouter Krijt. Eind 2013 is het lokaal van Boris verbouwd in een SMART Collaborative Classroom, wat betekent dat in zijn lokaal nu twee SMART Boards en één SMART touch panel aan de muur hangen. Deze digitale schoolborden zijn multitouch en er kunnen dus meerdere leerlingen tegelijkertijd aan het bord werken. En dat is precies de bedoeling van de collaborative classroom, om leerlingen meer samenwerkend te leren met de nieuwste technologie. En nu er WiFi voor leerlingen op het Ashram College is, kunnen ze met hun eigen smartphone actief meedoen met de les op de verschillende SMART Boards. Dat zijn activiteiten die zich binnen, maar ook buiten het klaslokaal bevinden, daar er regelmatig wordt geskyped met klassen uit andere landen en zelfs werelddelen. Daarbij is Boris Berlijn en het Ashram College de spil tussen de Europese collaborative classrooms en die in Noord-Amerika en komt de gebruikersgroep online bij elkaar om leservaringen en lesideeën uit te wisselen. Dit project duurt minstens twee jaar en gedurende die periode blijft het lokaal op het Ashram College up-to-date met de nieuwste hard- en software van het onderwijstechnologiebedrijf SMART Technologies uit Canada.

Open huis

Één keer per jaar is het open huis bij ons op school en dan presenteren alle secties zich en laten zich van hun mooiste kant zien. Vooraf aan de vrijdagavond en zaterdagochtend open huis is er op donderdagavond een informatieavond voor ouders van groep achtleerlingen, waar in drie rondes in de aula de groepen ouders worden toegesproken door de directrice over het onderwijs op het Ashram College. Dit jaar was ook ik gevraagd om ook iets te vertellen over 'eigentijds onderwijs' in de aula op donderdagavond. De presentatie kun je hieronder bekijken.

De SMART Collaborative Classroom maakte ook deel uit van het open huis en gedurende twee dagen heb ik de ouders en leerlingen kennis laten maken met het door SMART Technologies gesponsorde lokaal en de meerwaarde van het gebruik van onderwijstechnologie. Veel bekijks in het lokaal en leerlingen konden t-shirts en pennen winnen.

Presenting at BETT 2014

A few months ago I did a proposal to the organization of BETT to present at that trade show, just like I did last year. Unfortunately my proposal and proposed presentation about global collaboration at one one the live sessions on the main floor at BETT wasn't accepted.

Fortunately, due to the fact that my classroom has been transformed to a SMART Collaborative Classroom I was asked by SMART Technologies to share and present in the SMART Collaborative Classroom about teaching in a Collaborative Classroom and my experiences about global collaboration. That what I've been doing a lot for the past year with other SEEs from around the world. A little nervous I was to do my presentation in a foreign language in the SMART Collaborative Classroom, but was also very excited to do so and to share my experiences and get feedback from likewise teachers. 

With SEE Emil Waldhauser I was due to do my presentation on Wednesday - first thing thing in the morning - and on Friday in the afternoon. Because there weren't so many people present at the time my presentation was about to start we decided to wait a little while. A little later I did the presentation and fortunately Emil Waldhauser was present and did contribute whilst sharing his side of the story when we were collaborating with our classes using SMART Bridgit. It went well, just as on Friday. The attendants were enthusiastic and we shared even more ideas on how to use the Collaborative Classroom. 

On Saturday I was asked by SMART staff to do a stand-up presentation about the use of mobile devices combined with the SMART Board. I could and did share my experiences about the use of eXtreme Collaboration, SMART Response and the use of certain iPad apps that could share the desktop and even the combination with the Apple TV. SMART Exemplary Educator Gonzalo Garcia contributed to my presentation and shared his experience with the use of SMART amp, where the combination and opportunities with mobile devices is just epic. 

Looking forward to present or be present at BETT in 2015 as well.

With SEE Gonzalo

SMART amp

At the iTEC conference in Brussels - October 2013 - Peter Claxton showed me the SMART amp and explained what it was going to be. At that time I didn't have an opinion about it, because I just didn't know enough about it nor could I imagine what it would be like.

Now after four days at BETT in London I'm able to imagine what it is going to be and how it will change the way I teach in my classroom. Although it's still under construction and will not be released before April 2014.

This new revolutionary software or actually cloud-solution contains the best of many worlds. The workspace looks like a endless Prezi or SMART Ideas desktop with Notebook features, where students can collaborate together with or without teachers in al kinds of groups and share and add content as easy as in - for instance - Corkboardme And since the SMART amp account is linked to your Google account, all that is stored in Google Drive can be shared with multiple students with just two clicks away. Students can work simultaneously in real time in the same document, just as in Google Docs and they can add different types of content such as URLs, pictures, documents, text etc. from any device that has an internet connection and a web browser. And this is what it makes it very powerful. There's no focus on one or a few types of operating systems or devices, so everybody can join regardless the device they're using. I'm enthusiastic and am really looking forward in using this tool, especially in my new SMART Collaborative Classroom.