COURSERA MOOC COURSE SPRING 2015

ASSESSMENT AND TEACHING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

The University of Melbourne

Web links from the course

http://www.atc21s.org/

http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/definitionandselectionofcompetenciesdeseco.htm

http://www.p21.org/

http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/15_62.pdf

http://www.k12center.org/rsc/pdf/session5-wilson-paper-tea2012.pdf

http://www.atc21s.org/professional-development-modules.html

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46962005.pdf

http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2015/downloads/T15_FW_Chap1.pdf

MY TASK : CPS ( COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING)

This is my second MOOC about 21st century skills and I must confess that this time I am a bit late with the submission of the final task. Last year I worked in the summer , I left for IRELAND and worked there while I was doing a course for TEACHERS OF ENGLISH. I spent hours on it.

This year I am finishing the school year and I did not have much time to develop many activities: the last two weeks and the next weeks mean hard work for me : testing, evaluation and lots of activities to be carried out before school ends on June 6. But I did not want to miss the SUBMISSION. I am aware that I could do more , however I will continue checking the webpages of this great course on line because CPS is making teaching and learning different. What I like is the idea of having my students more engaged, more interested in using the target language while using new technologies and learning by doing.

THE TASK

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”

I personally feel that education is getting more and more important in highly developed societies and by quoting these sentences from J.DEWEY I want to underline that what students do at school should be meaningful and present problems in their real life. Content is accessible from different sources , most of the time we do not need teachers to learn but it is our mind and the skills we can master that can help us live and work in a complex word. Therefore teachers need to implement their activities to help students by using 21st century skills, since learning is more than studying and knowing school subjects.

BACKGROUND

The activity I am going to present is based on the needs of my students of English in a secondary school who might be required to work in an BUSINESS context after they have left school. The age group is 18-19 and they might be involved in business and working with foreign clients. The foreign languages they can speak are three, but basically English is the most important one, used both in writing and in speaking . This PBL( PROJECT BASED LEARNING) task will be carried out with the help of the teacher of Economics and the language teachers so that they will be using all the languages and practise them too. This implies that we work together and try to build knowledge by doing tasks which are meaningful.

TEACHING STRATEGY

The task will be presented to the class by all the teachers involved who will have to help the students develop the skills required through activities which will be done in group from home, at school and will deal with the solution of a problem. The following steps will be followed : recognition of the problem, collaboration and planning an action while students will manage resources and plan activities after analyzing the situations. Social skills and cognitive processing skills are the key to success and ITC literacy is important because students will collaborate by also using internet and the new technology and share materials and documents. ( google drive will be chosen because we can share documents, files, presentations on line and the teachers can edit them- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Drive- see also http://googledrive.blogspot.it/ )

To see how GOOGLE and GOOGLE DRIVE WORK see the video on line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i125gM-UAoY

DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITIES

BUSINESS CASE: there is a growing interest for beauty products that are green and based on a philosophy of natural beauty in my country . The students are provided with videos from the youtube about the great ideas of ANITA RODDICK. I have created a padlet on line with the videos ( BRAINSTORMING ACTIVITY) devised activities that will lead to the creation of a website promoting a new company that sells beauty products.

Their task is divided into 5 groups with different tasks based on different levels of skills:

- GROUP 1 and GROUP 2 look for information about the products which are sold and how they are presented ( what media? on TV?)

- GROUP 3 has to write a report about companies that sell such products in Europe and see what items are currently looking for new markets

- GROUP 4 has to create a website for the new Italian company that aims at selling beauty products on line

- GROUP 5 has to create an advertising campaign for the company they have set up and to present the website to promote the activity in Europe . The students will need to use four languages

The students will know how to work together ( level C of social CPS ) since they have already done similar activities, as regards cognitive skills they should be able to analyze the problem and plan strategies to see what products might be better on the Italian market or in Europe ( level D of cognitive CPS). Teachers are aware that some students might have a lower level and therefore groups have been formed by taking such differences into consideration. Group 1 and 2 will be involved in looking for information, choosing the information, sharing the information, while they are collaborating from home thanks to the cloud where they store materials and share materials. The teachers will be able to monitor their activities and after some weeks they will discuss their choices in class while they will share the information and give information to the other students. Presentations will be done by using google slides presentations and spreadsheets, Creativity and the use of the new technologies will be an important skill for group 4 and 5 where the teachers expect students to have reached high levels ( above D or in some cases E in social and cognitive dimensions) and students can manage and present the advertising campaign in all the three languages they are studying and will start their website as a school activity to open their business to the world. Negotiating and Agreement will be fundamental in the activities where all the students will have to take part and explain the reasons of their choices.

ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW

Teachers will have to be familiar with the Student’s Profile Report and will monitor the development of the students in class and also while they are working on line thanks to the help of the IT teachers. They will have identified the ZPD of their students so that they will be able to see their development. Those students who will be less able will work with students who can help them but they will have to learn how to use the tools of IT which are so important. Self-evaluation and peer evaluation will help the whole class too: sometimes students do not work well and teachers will have to focus on the activities which did not work well. Learning happens when we make mistakes therefore we can focus on the cognitive or social skills which were not properly developed.

As a follow up activity the teacher might ask the students to modify the final web-page so that the activity will be continued in the next term or month in order to implement it with offers, special discounts or any information that might help the students while they are using the foreign languages that they speak in creating new texts, based on their knowledge of marketing and business strategies.

This is the padlet which I have created for my students: it contains the presentation of an important woman who set up a great business- the BODY SHOP. The students will have to look for information about the Italian market and the products which belong to the same kind which are sold in BODY SHOPS. I have uploaded videos from Italian companies and a French one so that students can have an idea of what they might have to start. The tasks are different depending on the levels and they require different skills.

For creating a website I have collected most of the information which is available on line :

http://www.pearltrees.com/italianteacher/websites-blogs-links/id14218026

This link will be shared with the students and the other teachers.

GRADING

It will be based on the students' activities: each group will be graded and peer evaluation will be part of the final evaluation. Self-evaluation will be part of the process of evaluation so that students will learn more about their approach and what should be improved.

RESOURCES AND RESEARCH FOR THIS ACTIVITY

RUBRICS FOR EVALUATION

http://course1.winona.edu/shatfield/air/grouprubric.pdf

http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/teachers-leaders/practicerubrics/

http://spssalemhs.salemk12.org/Pages/pdfs/mission_rubrics.pdf

http://www.edudemic.com/online-rubric-makers/

http://www.learner.org/workshops/hswriting/interactives/rubric/

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

GRID FOR PEER EVALUATION

http://www-tc.pbs.org/now/classroom/peer2.pdf

OTHER IMPORTANT SOURCES FOR THIS ACTIVITY

http://www.atc21s.org/uploads/3/7/0/0/37007163/collaborative_problem_solving_emprical_progressions_v1.1.pdf

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The following grids have been created by using RUBISTAR, this is an easy tool on line that helps teacher devise rubrics:

Date Created: May 23, 2015 02:34 pm (CDT)

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Group Planning -- Research Project : PROJECT WORK

STUDENTS' SELF ASSESSMENT You will be working together with your group : write a learning diary about the way you worked with them.

For each week write about what went wrong or what went well. Be ready to report about it

TO BE FILLED IN AT THE END OF THE ACTIVITY

Think about the learning experience and give a mark from 1 to 10 . 10 means excellent, 1-2-3 mean the level of engagement was poor.

Created with Padlet