In charge of creating learning missions. Part 1.

Hi there !

This time I am going to show you how I turned a flat activity into a flabbergasting learning mission.

First and foremost, to get started with this new challenge, I selected one of the tasks I developed for my Open Educational Project "The Weather Forecasters" that you can take a look at, by clicking here. 

How to turn a flat activity into a super learning mission ?

• Choose a humdrum, boring activity from the textbook or from your own material.
• Select the goals you want your students to accomplish.
• Select the competences you like them to practise.
• Think of an ICT tool you want to incorporate.
• Choose the final artefact to be created.
• Give your activity an appealing title.
• Present it as a mission with all the instructions to follow.

Which flat activity did I choose ?

Before explaining the activity, I have to say that the day before doing this activity, students will be asked to bring a picture of the Earth’s globe to class, as homework.

Activity 1.

Open your books on page 30, and look at the Earth's globe with the different climate zones, which appear on it. You have to listen to the teacher, who is going to say one climate zone each time. Then, you have to point to each climate zone, and tell the teacher the name of one country that is included in it. After that, you are going to pick your picture of the Earth’s globe, and paste it on your notebook. Apart from glueing it, you are going to copy the characteristics of each climate zone under the picture.

Collaboration time

Let me tell you that I joined two of my colleagues to work collaboratively: Ana Márquez and Carmen Olmedo.

I collaborated with Ana Márquez @ana94mqz, since her project is about India and she is working with Infoedugrafías, and the artefact of this first learning mission is to create a storyboard, which is an infographic. Because of her project being focused on India, I have included this country in this mission. You can take a look at her project here.

 

Retrieved from: http://infoedugrafias.blogspot.com.es/

Moreover, I collaborated with Carmen Olmedo @CarmenOlPas, as she is also working with Infoedugrafías, and “The 30 goals challenge”, particularly with “Revamping a lesson goal”. Due to the fact that this goal includes aspects like: creating learning missions, making the lesson more hands-on, and including technology; I decided to apply this characteristics to my activities, and also her topic: plants. You can take a look at her project here.

Retrieved from: http://teacherrebootcamp.com/2016/08/07/goallessonupdate/

How is the learning mission aligned with my collaborative project-to-be?

This learning mission is aligned with the collaborative movement I am looking forward to participating, which is called “Design a Badge Goal”, from “The 30 Goals Challenge”, since I have created digital badges for the role each pupil is going to play, so as to reward them.

Retrieved from: http://teacherrebootcamp.com/2016/07/21/goaldesignabadge/

How did I create those badges?

I went to “Design a Badge Goal" page and I browsed a slideshow provided by Shelly Terrell @ShellTerrell. I decided to use one of the recommended tools called Open Badges Me, I registered myself in a couple of seconds and we started working on the graphics. Firstly, you have to give the graphic a title and a description. Then, you have to design it by choosing and editing: shapes, inner shapes, banners, texts, and adding icons. Finally you complete it and keep it.

Since this the learning mission is based on cooperative learning, these are the badges I created for each role students will play.

By Lucía Carrasco.

 

By Lucía Carrasco. 

 

By Lucía Carrasco.

By Lucía Carrasco.

Learning mission: Creating a comic about the weather.

Here you can take a look at the Canva I have prepared, so as to explain the objectives, competences, grouping and time.
.

mission1 de Lucía Carrasco

Getting a deeply understanding of the learning mission

We decided to create a draft  in Google Drive and then, a presentation for students that I shared in Slide Share, so that we explained the development of the mission. Since this course I  worked on the analysis of a Open Educational Project - you can see the post clicking here - I have been utterly inspired by the one I analysed. As a result, we elaborated this presentation with the instructions to follow in this learning mission. Below, you are going to visualise the mission in the same way students will visualise it.

Learningmission1 from Carrasco510

How did we create the artefact?

Carmen, Ana and I created a sample of the final outcome of this Learning Mission: creating a comic about the weather, we did it concerning India.

First and foemost, we put ourselves into our pupils’ shoes; therefore, we distributed the work as follows:

• Characteristics of India (Ana)
• Features of the climate of India (Lucía)
• Plants of India (Carmen)
• Weather forecast of India (Ana, Lucía, Carmen)

We created it with the same tool we recommended students in the instructions, which is StoryboardThat. What we had to do is open this tool and add more cells, since there are 3 cells that appear by default. Then, we chose the backgrounds for each cell. After that, we introduced some pictures in each cell. The next thing we did was adding the characters; we created one to represent each one of us. Finally, we jot down in the speech bubbles, according to the information we searched.

Sample of the artefact

Made with Storyboard That

Reflection time

I am over the moon with this challenge, since I have enjoyed it a lot, and I think I have learnt a lot, too.

First and foremost, when we were told we could collaborate with colleagues, so as to enrich our learning missions, I did not think it twice, since I am keen to collaborate with others and learn from others. However, it was a tad difficult, as for decision-making, since we had to mull the potential activities over. Firstly, Carmen explained me her project and the partners she was looking forward to collaborate with. Then, I did the same, and after being proposing options, we reached a common ground to start designing the activity in our minds. Immediately, we talked to Ana, and we decided to collaborate with her, too. Consequently, we started coming up with ideas to incorporate Ana's project. After being debating about them, we came up with the activity proposed.

Collaboration wise, I noticed the importance of collaborating, since by brainstorming, people come up with different ideas and you widen your perspectives, as you listen to others' suggestions and assess them, in some way. In addition, when we created the sample, we decided to do it in the same way pupils would do it, and we were utterly motivated, distributing the tasks and designing the comic. Due to the fact that for us, it was definitely meaningful, we believe that for students, it will be the same; therefore, I am of the opinion that by creating learning missions students are bound to be further motivated.

Comic wise, I utterly recommend this tool, since students are going to work on higher-order thinking skills, like creativity and application, as well as, lower-order thinking skills, the likes of: summarizing, selecting the information and understanding. Moreover, they are going to develop their writing skills, while having fun.

As a teacher, I thoroughly recommend the turning of flat activities into learning missions, since students are going to work on contents, in a cross-curricular way, and they are going to create catching artefacts, with which they are going to work on the language, too. Moreover, they are going to learn to use ICT tools that are likely to be useful for their adult life.

See you later, collaborator !