Analyze, evaluate and present
a reference open educational project
Hello everyone! Here I am again!
Last week in ICT class we were
working in a challenge about analyzing and evaluating an open educational
project. Today, I bring you an analysis of an educational Project, which was
designed to work on the English contents for the third grade of Primary school
education. This project is called "Transport and pollution" and it
was created by Teresa Guzmán Carmona. It is a complete didactic unit about means
of transport and the best way of using transports. All the resources are
available in GoogleDrive.
I decided to choose this project
due to my concern about taking care of the planet. Apart from the English
content related to Transport vocabulary, I should specify that the main purpose
is educating our students of the importance to implement behavior beneficial to
the care of the environment.
I implemented a didactic unit in
my internship related to the planet Earth and its protection and I guess that’s
why I am into this matter of concern.
The content objectives will be:
- Identify different types of
transport and their characteristics.
- Classify the transports and their incidences on the
environment.
- Decide the most suitable mean of transport for each
situation.
- Evaluate their own learning process through different
tools.
Now, it's time to analyze this educational project deeper. For
this purpose, I will use a rubric which has been made for evaluating if
a project is a Gold Standard PBL or not.
Key
knowledge, understanding and success skills
The didactic unit consist of three parts. The first one is focused on
vocabulary about transport. The second one is focused on interactive activities
with the new vocabulary learnt. While they are doing these interactive activities they are reviewing and
learning words and language structures (comparative and superlative structures
and structures of action) they are going to use for the final project and also
for their daily life. Finally, the third
one is focused on the project, which is a debate and the making of a poster
with the means of transport and its environmental impact.
As we know “Means of transport” is included in the
Spanish curriculum and “How can we protect the environment” too. Personally, I
think is a good idea to connect this two topics considering that this gives a
cause for talking about the expelling of CO2 and the global warming. Related to
the cognitive skills I can see a lot of thinking skills developed by the
different activities proposed (match game, mind map or debate and poster) such
as remembering, identifying, ordering, defining, comparing, reasoning and evaluating.
The students will accomplish some activities individually and some others in
pairs or groups.
Challenging
problems or questions
I consider that there is not really any question to begin with. A
challenging problem to begin with this topic could be: Do you think is
important to take into account the mean of transport we use every day? How can
we protect our planet related to the means of transport?
Furthermore, the activities are decontextualized and the
level of difficulty is not clear. Once are too easy for third graders while
others are too difficult. Apart from this, the didactic unit is focused on
developing lower order thinking skills than high order thinking skills.
Sustained
inquiry
The activities are
gradually planned from the less challenging ones which demand lower order
thinking skills to the more challenging ones. However, the students don’t have
to generate questions, use different resources, ask further questions, or
develop their own answers. They work in the final project putting into practice
what has been learned before and the text they have already read without any self-question
to begin with. All of the questions and task are generated by the teacher. An
alternative would be to prompt our students in pairs to write about “green
alternatives” or “how can we pollute the air less?”.
Authenticity
As far as I concerned,
I think this project is based on their real context and it is meaningful for
students. Through this project, student have the opportunity to learn about the
relationship between means of transport and the environment. I think that through
this topic we could educate them about environmentally harmful methods of
travel and an offer them a viable, 'green' alternative. Children love to talk
about the planet Earth and its protection and means of transport can be the
closest way to them.
Student voice and choice
I consider totally
optimal this point. The students will have to work dynamically and cooperatively
guided by the teacher. This are examples of the activities they will implement:
- Brainstorming
- Word play and matching
games
- Make their own phrases
using comparative structures
- Make a mindmap
- Create a display
- Debate
Reflection
There is no reflection about what
and how they are learning, and on the project’s design and implementation. A
possible alternative to improve this point could be to create a learning diary
or to provide them with a rubric with some evaluating aspect to reflect on.
Critique
and revision
As I said before, the
students will have to work dynamically and cooperatively guided by the teacher.
So, the process includes the student’s opportunity to receive feedback from the
teacher but not to give it. To be more completed I recommend to have a learning
diary in order to reflect on what they do and how and a presentations of the
poster in groups., in order to receive and give feedback.
The public
product
The public product is
not done properly. There is a final project about what they have learnt, which
is a display, but it is not publish beyond the students. In my opinion, the teacher
should design a session in which the displays were presented to the class. In
this case the critique and revision will be completed by the both sides
(students and teacher) and the public product will be properly done.
In conclusion, the initial idea
of the educational project was really good. The fact that it presents the
relationship between means of transport and how can we protect the environment.
However, in my opinion, the didactic unit has not been well design.
Now, to represent the key points
of this analysis I have used the online tool Genial.ly here you can see the
final result, I hope you enjoyed it:
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