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November 28th and the team was back together once again, but this time we were meeting in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, in Sicily. We were looking forward to learning new, interesting and exciting things, meeting the members of the team and, of course, the amazing kids of the Liceo Medi Barcellona P.G. school. We would not be disappointed.
As soon as we walked into the school, the kids received us with a splendid session of piano and guitar in the school auditorium. Afterwards a very communicative student with remarkable, visible teaching skills taught us some Italian to be able to get around in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto. She also explained where some current words come from. These are top notch. Grazie!
We had some time to introduce the difference delegations to the students in the auditorium and gave the students the opportunity to ask us some questions about our schools and hometowns. Afterwards, Mirella gave us a brief tour of the school and we have had the chance to meet some students in the class and also some of the staff of the school.
After the tour, we headed for our class, where Nunzia Parisi, a teaching of English from a neighbour school with a long experience in teaching, who is also an Erasmus + ambassador, gave us a seminar -The Digital Teacher- on why teachers have to become digital teachers. She started by commenting on the common problem we had faced when we had to face the lockdown and the reason why we must delve into these digital skills. She explained that digital skills are important to meet the needs of our students. However, she pointed out that owning a computer or a phone does not mean our kids have obtained digital literacy, that is why we need to teach them these skills.
Before starting to teach them, though, we need to know why we are doing it and kids have to do it too; we have to make them think critically. She explained a little bit in depth what critical thinking involves, but the most important part of all is to apply this critical thinking to practice. Put something into practice; in other words, contextualise something. Afterwards, she moved on to talk about some key actions in their curriculum and the documents that back up the decision to digitalise the educational community.
She mentioned concepts that every teacher should be familiar with such as cloud computing (to store, recover, and share information), IWB (smart boards), GSuite, social media… She then drew our attention to the fact that some teachers are not very familiar with this last one, social media, and suggested that maybe we should.
She also mentioned a list of really interesting learning apps: Google Classroom, Thinglink, Zoom, Chatterpix (you make a picture speak), VEO, ARTHR (app to create a professionally lookinhg newspaper), Socrative, Ruby Rey, Binumi, Story Bird, Padlet, Lyrics Training, Wordwall, Quizlet, Memrise, …
After that, she focused on one of the apps: Learningapps. She showed us an activity she had created using this app. This is an activity in which a song from YouTube is being played while kids fill in the gaps in the lyrics of the song provided on their computer while listening to the song. She used the “cloze test” template to create this activity. She then explained that any song on YouTube could be used to carry out this activity. She suggested creating an activity using a template from the page and we spent some time doing it.
Here is the activity that our team came up with: Karma
On the next day, we were driven to the second building of the school, where we have visited some of the massive classrooms they teach in.
After the visit, we walked into our classroom to receive a Seminar on "E-safety at school" by the hosting partner Mrs Maria Anversa Grasso. She also explained what an "e-policy document" is and why we should get it for our school.
Mirella made us aware of two different concepts: E-safety and E-security and explained the difference to us. She pointed out that E-safety is a set of rules and procedures to prevent risks in school, whereas E-security is the protection against data theft. She also informed us that it is compulsory to observe these concepts and it has to be in the school curriculum. Consequently, a teacher has to take care of them in school. This person must hold webinars to inform the school community of all the dangers and risks that new technologies may bring about.
She explained that there has been a technology revolution in the last 20 years and that, consequently, kids have grown up in this technology era, where there have also been a social media & communication revolution. All this has resulted in a tremendous impact on education and therefore in our school routines.
She made us aware of the dangers of these new technologies. She told us that it is not the technology that creates the problems is the lack of knowledge on how to use them. She mentioned “Cyberbullying” is one of the most dangerous issues ss have to deal with. She informed us of the measures that have been taken in school to prevent Cyberbullying. For example, they celebrate campaigns and a special day (Safer Internet Day) to prevent this. On this day, conferences are held, and professionals, teachers and students -even police officers- attend these.
She also brought up other dangers on the Web: The Dark Web and all the risks related to this. Apparently only 4% of the web is Surface we, whereas the rest is Deep or Dark Web. Students must be informed about the potential risks this conveys. Also, phishing, grooming and hate speech were spoken about.
She asked us what dangers we have to face in school and talked about incidents some of the project participants have experienced in their schools. She moved on to talk about eTwinning and pointed out that TwinSpace is a safe space and also that both teachers and students.
On a different note, she reminded us that students must respect privacy and copyright too. She told us about the moral code on eTwinning and moved on to talk about the e-policy document.
E-safety is an important cornerstone of any project in eTwinning, mostly if a school becomes an eTwinning school. She asked us whether our school has an e-policy document. This contains rules for a good behaviour on the Net and also rules for the prevention of risks related to the introduction of new technologies in the classroom such as cyberbullying.
We were told that everyone in the school community must be informed of this document, and it must be renewed every three years. To be able to do that, teachers have to attend certain webinars. If a school wants to get its document, first they have to register and then they must attend these webinars. There are common guidelines for all schools, but each school has to state also their own guidelines.
According to Mirella, there should be an organisation in each country each school has to turn to in order to obtain this document.
On the next day, we could attend a couple more seminars on Flipped Classroom by Mrs Annalisa Drago.
Mrs Annalisa Drago explained that Flipped Classroom is really important in Italy. They said that teachers were learning how to teach this way and really intended to teach that way. She stated that is something completely different from what they had been doing so far, since teachers must go from a mostly passive learning scheme to an active learning style.
She went on to say that Flipped Classroom is basically a desire to match the needs of the teachers with those of the students. The main principle is that you have students come to class after they have been assigned the study of the material that they need to cover the lesson and work on it beforehand. The student, thus, becomes responsible for their own learning process too.
She went over the different phases Flipped Classroom is divided into and the advantages of implementing Flipped Classroom in the classroom. One of the main one being the time that the teacher has to spend as a tutor with a student. Furthermore, the teacher can personally and more closely follow the development of each of their students. The teacher becomes first and foremost a facilitator who “enables the harmonious development of the individual and serene learning.” Thus, teachers become educators that aim to enhance and strengthen the potential of each student.
Initially students are assigned tasks and right away they are provided with different sources of information to carry out this task. It is of utmost importance that they are not always provided with information in the same format. If they are always given a video, it is like someone else is teaching your class instead of you, as if you had switched places with that video teacher.
An essential part of this methodology is that students can decide when and how they want to receive the information. They can, thus, go back to the sources of information whenever they want in case they need to. Additionally, students can be provided with supplementary information. A pretty relevant directive in the process is that students are expected to take notes while they are going over the information.
Students must be encouraged to “research, experiment and learn critically” and for that it is important that everyone is allowed to manage their own time.
She moved on to explain the four steps to keep in mind when constructing this inverted lesson: warm up, restitution, activation and evaluation. She also brought up the disadvantages of this methodology. Among others: accessibility at home; Smart gadgets; Addiction and health issues, more complex evaluation, extra effort on the side of the teachers to get familiar with this methodology, ...
For quite a while we discussed the potential situation when students have not done their “inverted homework” and how this can turn into a complete disaster. It was pointed out that students might have the chance to get back to the sources of information wherever and whenever they required to do so, which happens to be one of the main principles of the Universal Design for Learning.
While we were enjoying Mrs Annalisa Drago's talk on Flipped Classroom, a couple of very enthusiastic and really well-prepared students paid us a visit to explain to us what Flipped Classroom consists in. They had been using this methodology for a while now and were willing to share their experience with us.
They admitted being initially hesitant, reluctant the moment they started using this methodology, but that they feel much more confident now. They added that they work more collaboratively now, trying to help each other out.
Some of us misbehaved a little and threw them some wicked questions, which they tried to answer as best as they could. For example, they confessed that when they failed to prepare their work for the lesson, they felt a little bit embarrassed and tried not to do it again. This is one of the dangers of implementing this methodology, something we all fear.
Grazie ragazzi!
After the visit of the students, we were showed the platform used by the teachers, which is based on Moodle. They upload tasks to this platform for their students and also use it to share materials with other students. It resembles something like Google Classroom, but it is run by their school. Mrs Annalisa also talked briefly about a free-for-teachers platform that offers content of different subjects called WeSchool.
On the next day, we met in the morning to have a small workshop on ESEP and to talk about the next steps to be taken in the project and plans for future activities. Among other things, we checked if the project with all the members had been migrated to the new platform of eTwinning. We were told it is migrated automatically, but it might take time. A possible course of action is to upload and organise the content of the project all over again in case the migration takes part after the project is finished. After that, we tried to accept new members in the project, but, unfortunately, the platform was not working properly yet. We also talked about the dates and the programmes for the following mobilities. We had a bit of a debate since one of the programmes in the project was changed, and it was decided that if there was a justification for the change, that it was alright to do so.
On a different note, it was decided that we must prepare a final evaluation for the project.
After that, we received a workshop about ICT in Distance Learning by Concetta Bono. We started off by doing an activity to break the ice. We were asked a few details so that the Concetta Bono could get to know us a bit. In one of the items of the questionnaire we were asked for how long we had had to be teaching online and we talked about it for a while.
Later we were introduced to Mindomo, a very useful app to create mind maps in class. This app turns out to be really practical in distance learning. She said that she introduces the lesson using mind maps and also asks her students to create one at the end of the lesson as a practical revision tool. We can add visual materials (as in Prezi): videos, audio, pictures, ... and eventually present the final product. It is basically an interactive mind map. We signed up for this webpage and used a template we had been given to create a new mind map.
The next web tool was mentimeter. She explained that it can used with a predesigned questionnaire, which students must answer afterwards. We were given an example link where we were asked about our favourite Italian and Sicilian foods and completed it right there. Alternatively, you can also create a quiz and give different options from which to choose. We moved on to create one quiz using this pretty resourceful tool.
The last web tool we worked with was Thinglink. It is basically a photo or a sequence of photos, with which you can create an interactive image. You can add audios, videos, information, links, … This could be really useful to create a virtual tool of your school to introduce the school to other people or post it on the school website. It can also be used to create an escape room, where each interactive image represents a room in the escape room. A Thinglink presentation can also be natively integrated in a PowerPoint presentation without the need to leave the presentation.
That was our last workshop and sadly we had to say goodby to Sicily and to our Italian friends. (And also the food!!!) We got our diplomas and said our goodbyes. It was really an amazing experience, and we cannot wait until we meet again, guys! Arrivederci!
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