Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Week 4 Challenge: A collaborative activity
Project title: Be The Change 
Subtitle: Students school problems (Learning difficulties , bullying , school life with its ups and downs)

         Needless to mention that the project will start with ice -breaking activities via video conferences and padlet/ videos of  the students and partners to get to know each other. 
     
       As for Week 4 challenge, I've chosen the first part of my project which is Brainstorming. 

    Stages and Tools
 Stage 1: Tool 1: Padlet  
    Teachers will start this huge project with a very simple question: Do you like school? Why?  why not? 
Students will post their answers on a Padlet created for this purpose. At that level all the participants will have their own say about their schools. 
Teachers  should be here to read and check the students' answers and comment also. 
   On  twinspace and on the project journal:  teachers should highlight the fact that to be able to find out the students problems, they should focus on the students whose answers were about the reasons why they hate schools.
Teachers then check the language the students use to express their ideas. These ideas, indeed, will be the starting point of the second stage.

 Stage2/ Tool 2: Video conference / Any presentation tool (Genially/ emaze)
    Teachers sort out the students' answers with negative attitudes towards school .
Teachers  will use twinpace ,the chat box, the project journal to decide how to divide the collected answers among the students:  each partner will give his/her students the other partner's students answers for more interaction.
     To discuss what they found out: A video conference would be the best option to discuss the final findings.
Here  teachers will focus again on the receptive/ productive skills while listening to them interacting with the partners.
   
  Stage 3/ Tool 3: Coggle.it
  That is the final stage of part 1 of the project: Problems to be solved
Teachers start the Coggle.it doc for them . Students then will visit the doc and add the different problems they were able to find out from their project mates answers.

 The positive answers will be left at the end of the project to give an optimistic ending to the whole work. 


Friday, 5 May 2017

Week 2 for me 
       Week 2 was dynamic and  rich with insight and knowledge sharing. I enjoyed analysing my teaching needs and discovering that I’m sharing some with other fellow teachers in other parts of the words. That’s a strong proof of our connection.

  Sharing and posting the different tools and projects was very interesting . Most importantly the content (tools and projects) is very useful to build confidence for a novice etwinner like me.
   And the journey didn’t stop there. Showing learning evidence was a kind of a follow up activity to make sure that we’ve learnt something.

   Again another week that is taking the experience to another level of enjoyment and excitement.

        Thank you Open Etwinning Community.

Sharing experiences
How important is planning !
         The idea of becoming a member of this global community is very tempting and exciting. Getting my students connected beyond boundaries has always been one of my teaching objectives.
       For that reason when I recently joined the etwinning community I was overwhelmed by the idea that I’ve finally done it. I kept saying to  myself that was  the time to get started”.
        So, without giving myself the appropriate time to  familiarize with the different aspects of etwinning and  be equipped, I threw myself into an Etwinning_ Plus project that I’ve suggested. What has encouraged me is that I’ve  quickly found a partner (1 partner because I didn’t know how to deal with more than that)  and got the approval of the community. I was sure that I was doing the things the way they should be done which was wrong.
        Indeed, I was missing a lot and I found myself unable to find the time to get trained  and then  practice what I learned  to make the project a  success . For a project to be a success one has to plan, organize, set objectives for every single step of it and work in collaboration with partners to fulfil them.
        Sad to say that because of that luck of organization, training, patience from my side, the project had to stop halfway.
      Now, I feel sorry for my students  who devoted their time and energy to do interesting activities. I’m trying my best to  share them  with other etwinners. Maybe this way  my studnets would  feel and know how proud of them I am.  Add the that, my partner and I were  unable to come up with collaborative activities though we exchanged interesting ones but we never put them into practice.
           I’m sharing my experience to highlight the importance of collaborating with partner(s) and planning before, while and after projects.


Monday, 1 May 2017

Learning Evidence

    Learning Evidence 
     
         The interaction that took place on Listly and Open Etwinning between all the etwinners, sharing and exchanging ideas about the different tools to be used  and projects to get invoved in,  has been of great help and has brought high level of inspiration to improve our teaching practices.
   After  analyzing the different areas that I need to consider to make my teaching  better I started scrolling up and down trying to pick the ones that might be more suitable and more effective for my own needs.

 Ways to deal with large and mixed abilities classes


      This would be really effective to help me track the students progress ,deal with their weaknesses  as  the class time doesn’t allow me to do so.

   Ways to make my lesson more dynamic 
To help  the students become creative and get more engaged and  responsible for their learning, the list was really amazing:



apart from all the other tools to create animated videos  like


and magazines

Ways to make  "the learders of tomorrow"

would be a great way to do so. 

     Exchanging , Collaborating, Sharing and Inspiring that’s the core of Etwinning.