The new challenge consists of analysing an open educational project as it says on the title. The educational project which I have decided to analyse is from EDIA CLIL projects. EDIA CLIL is a project created by CeDec (Centro Nacional de Desarrollo Curricular en Sistemas no Propietarios) to work with Project Based Learning methodology in Secondary Education.
My town is the topic I have chosen to make the analysis since I believe it is something related to our daily lives and the learning is going to be very meaningful. Along the days the students are supposed to learn different things such as:
-Vocabulary of the different places in a city
-Give directions to find a place
-Good sides of living in a city
-Points of interest in a city
So beggining with a thinking routine where the students have to see a video about New York city an answer some questions, continuing with activities that involved the four skills and which are based on key structures and grammar related with the city, the students will have to be prepared to make the final project by their own.
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 projects consist of five missions and a final challenge. In order to make the final product the students have different tasks to complete. While they are doing these tasks they are reviewing and learning words and structures they are going to use for the final task and also for their day to day. For example, students have a speaking activity where they have to talk and present to the rest of their classmates the places that we can find in a city and it says: "it should be original, interesting and creative". So here we can observe that the teacher has include the development of the 4C's of the 21st century: Collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication.
Challenging problem or question
From my point of view, the challenging problem or question is not so clear. The topic starts telling the children that the final outcome will be a video clip to promote their city so they have to work in different missions to complete this final project. For this reason, I consider that there is not really any question to begin with. A challenging problem to begin with this topic could be: "The tourism is decreasing, what can we do to promote our city?" or "You want to invite some friends to your town, what are the good sides of your town that you can highlight?"
Sustained inquiry
Students have to work collaboratively to develop the different missions where they have to find their own answers following the steps given and also they should keep the rubrics in mind to do it the best they could. Moreover, to complete the final outcome they have to find and use the resources and also their creativity.
Authenticity
The project has a real-world context since it is connected with the city and almost all of us live in a city so knowing the key words related to it and how to give directions is something essential. Other interesting thing is that for the children the city and all that happen there is important so it is a interest. They are going to be very motivated with the creation of the video because is something that children do not normally do at school.
Student voice & choice
The students are in every moment the center of their learning. They have to decided how they do the missions for that purpose they have the rubrics where it is very clear the mark they will get depending on their work. In the instructions it says that the topic will be developed through some teacher explanation, self investigation and interaction with partners. While they are doing the missions thay are totally free to choose between the options given or using their creativity. The timing establish that the topic should take ten fifty minute lessons but also they say that this time is approximate given that the students have different paces of learning.
Reflection
The students should reflect in every mission they complete because they have a learning diary where they have to express their feelings about the task they have carried out and also about what they have learn and their weak and strong points while doing it. In addition, in each mission they have to decide what aspects are better and what worse keeping in mind the rubrics.
Critique and revision
As I write in the previous section at the end of each mission they have to reflect about their learning. The teacher gives feedback, in an indirect way with the rubrics and in a direct way when he/she corrects the missions.
Public product
The project proposed is to produce a video about their city or town talking about the good sides of it so they should include all they have previously learned carrying out the missions. The students have to work in teams of four and follow some steps which include problem solving and collaboration among other aspects. Once they have the ideas they are going to record, the teacher will give his/her approval and they can start recording the video and then they have to edit it. Finally, they have to upload it to Youtube and then create a post in their blogs and add the video on it.
To represent other 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: