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4.3 task: "Share my experiences with peer assessment"

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4.3 task: "Share my experiences with peer assessment"

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Well, I was waiting for the course to end so I can give some feedback, but I believe this module is an excellent opportunity. During all the PBL course the peer feedback lacks the most important feature: moderators had to monitor the process and assure that the feedback was properly provided, and that each course participant was receiving a useful feedback (from the second video you provided us to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqWCJZH8ziQ ).

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“identify how we as teachers can weaken our student's confidence and independence”

I teach Music. When we talk about learning Music, our western society is all about reverse brainstorm: “I’m not gifted”, “I’m completely deaf”, “I can’t read a note”, and so on. Unfortunately many specialists music teachers support/promote these prejudices. Yes, these are all myth, as research evidence clearly have demonstrated that there are not unmusical or “amusical” human beings. If we start a class by selecting the best, separating the good from the bad, making pupils sing or play alone in front their peers, these is the best we can do to weaken our student's confidence and independence.

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1)   The Portuguese Education System awarded its first licence degree in Music – Instruments around 1985. I finished my Cello studies before so, like many others Portuguese musicians, I do not have a licence degree.

2)   Until 1995, to be admitted in a Master Degree one had to have a licence degree, so it was impossible for me to progress in Portugal.

3)   Therefore, I went looking abroad. I apply and was accepted in a Master Degree in Sciences of Education at the University of Caen, France. My French was good, but the courses were very demanding and I was still working in Portugal. I tried for three years, paid the fees, but I failed.

4)   Because I really wanted to progress professionally, I tried another Master, this time about Music Education, in London. My English was better than my French was, and the courses were about Music. In addition, I was granted a scholarship for 2 years so I had all the time to study. This time I succeeded: in 2001, 6 years after my first attempt, I was awarded Master of Arts in Music Education by the University of Surrey Roehampton.

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Dear Reviewers,

Because in the course I choose to implement PBL, Didactics of Music, will be the third year students have been together in the same class, groups are already very well defined and most students are happy with them. So, my first TLAs are not strictly collaboration ones, despite they can be seen as icebreackers.

Hope you enjoy the music appreciation activities at https://v.gd/6I0FMu

Best regards,

Mário

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2.5 task: Share with your peers other collaboration tools

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2.5 task: Share with your peers other collaboration tools

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“Share with your peers other collaboration tools out there by posting their name, a brief description and a link in the Padlet below the video. Before posting any suggestions however, make sure you take a browse through the Padlet to check the tool you would like to suggest isn't already there”

I approached this task with high confidence because I know a set of really good collaboration tools. Then I used some caution and follow the advice to check if the tool wasn’t already suggested. And one by one they were. Nevertheless I still have my “aces”:

Kaizena (free, online, asynchronous collaboration) - “The easiest way to provide constructive feedback to your students. Speak instead of type. Use one of our curated Lessons to explain concepts, or create your own. Track and rate skills. Seamlessly add files from Google Drive. https://kaizena.com/

Big Blue Button (free, online and a module for Moodle, synchronous collaboration) - a Virtual Learning Environment with interactive whiteboard, screen sharing, video and audio conference, chat, record sessions. http://bigbluebutton.org/

Hope they will be useful.

Best regards,

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2.4 task: “Reflection on which people from your community you or your students could engage with.”

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2.4 task: “Reflection on which people from your community you or your students could engage with.”

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"A key part of PBL is establishing a link to the "real-world". This can be done by involving audiences or partners from outside of the classroom or even better outside of the school. As a concrete action here we would encourage all of you, new or old eTwinners, to use this course community of learners to find like-minded colleagues who you could run a project with. The second area to consider here is about involving people from the community in students' work. In this case students should be involved in the process of engaging such people from the start."

REFLECTION
As I explained in previous posts (task 2.2), I believe the best course for me to experiment with PBL would be Didactics of Music, a 9-hours module part of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) for Primary School Teachers.

The learning goals of the module include (1) master the principles guiding teaching music in Primary School; (2) conceive and assess lesson plans for Music; (3) understand the musical development of pupils; and (4) integrate Music with other subjects from Primary School curriculum. Students work in groups most lessons and each group will have to come up with a scheme of work of a Unit of 6 lessons that abide to the learning goals.

This assignment has been reviewed and graded according to the learning goals and the theoretical framework with no application outside the classroom. So, the obvious link to the real-world would be to involve practitioners, that is, primary school teachers. In fact the ITT programme of study includes school experience (Supervised Teaching Practice) during ⅓ of the semester. So the contacts have already been established and protocols have been signed between my School of Education and many Primary Schools. From my own experience as a teaching practice supervisor I know many primary school teachers are eager to get some help to write a scheme of work for Music. I would say that will be really easy to engage some primary school teachers in the PBL project, so they become clients: “Recruit community members as project clients. Build relationships with who can benefit from your students’ 21st century expertise.” (Boss, 2013).

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2.3 task: activities I use to develop collaborative skills

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2.3 task: activities I use to develop collaborative skills

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share some great activities that you can do with students to develop collaborative skills amongst them. activities that you use to build team spirit, better communication amongst groups, etc 17:48

This task caught me completely by surprise, I confess. I am a little ashamed but in 36 years of teaching I never thought in team building activities I always cut to the chase and went straight forward to the learning activities (so I thought).

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2.2 task Reflect about the nature of collaboration in my classroom

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2.2 task Reflect about the nature of collaboration in my classroom

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"Use your answers to the questionnaire to draft a Learning Diary entry reflecting about the nature of collaboration happening in your classroom."

Questionnaire

I did answered YES to all. I hope I am right :)

Are your students required to work in pairs or groups most lessons?

Do your students have shared responsibility for tasks?

Do your students have to make substantive decisions when working together (decisions that will impact the result of their joint work)?

Is the students' work interdependent of each other (in other words can they only succeed together)?

Classroom

I teach Didactics of Music, a 9-hours module part of Primary School Initial Teacher Training, usually attended by 25-30 students. The learning goals are:

master the principles guiding teaching music in Primary School

conceive and assess lesson plans for Music

understand the musical development of pupils

integrate Music with other subjects from Primary School curriculum

Students work in groups most lessons and each group will have to come up with a scheme of work of a Unit of 6 lessons that abide to the learning goals. The process involves several steps:

1. choose a specific interpretation of a musical work;

2. identify the most prominent musical elements, that is, the ones that make that interpretation stand out;

3. confirm that the identified musical elements match the musical development of the targeted audience (primary school pupils). If not, go back to step 1;

4. identify the cultural meaning of the music, style, social function, and son on;

5. confirm that the elements identified in step 4 match the intellectual development of the targeted audience (primary school pupils). If not, go back to step 1;

6. write a scheme of work.

Reflection about collaboration

The most difficult part for me when teaching this course is to guarantee that students are in fact collaborating, and not cooperate or dividing the work among the elements of the group.

With so many students and so few hours I have not came up with instruments and strategies that overcome this problem, other than observing the students while they work in groups. But because most of the work is done outside classroom this is not a reliable source, even if I use the rubrics from the ITL 21st Century Learning Design Learning Activities Rubrics.

I am really looking forward to get some guidance from this PBL course.

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“share a picture that shows or represents collaboration for you, together with a brief explanation of why you have chosen this picture.”

As a cello player I've participated in different musical groups. Usually I  cooperate with the conductor (symphonic orchestra), the lead singer (pop music) or the actors (music for theatre). But when I do chamber music, string quartets, for example, only then I COLLABORATE. (picture from a Portuguese chamber music group, the Opus Ensemble from http://www.meloteca.com/ )

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1.6 P2P Your PBL Design: formulating your driving question

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1.6 P2P Your PBL Design: formulating your driving question

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“When you have come up with a good driving question post it in the peer review activity text box below, together with a bit of context about where you plan to implement it, such as the student age-range, subject, etc. and the learning goals you would like to achieve with the class (what skills, knowledge, etc. students should acquire). In order to provide some context you could also post your Learning Diary entry reflection from section 1.3 together with your driving question.”

Driving Question

What elements of music theory and what cultural features can be taught to Primary pupils using as a resource a chosen interpretation of a musical work.

Student age

21 and up - enrolled in the 3rd year out of 5 from Initial Teacher Training in Primary School Teacher

Course

Didactics of Music in Primary School

Learning goals

master the principles guiding teaching music in Primary School

conceive and assess lesson plans for Music

understand the musical development of pupils

integrate Music with other subjects from Primary School curriculum

Type of challenging question

Creating a product.

Type of products your students will come up

A plan of a Unit about Music to Primary School that abide to the learning goals.

Learning Diary entry reflection from section 1.3

Hello, my name is Mário and I teach in a higher education institution, the Lisbon School of Education, that offers graduate and undergraduate programme of study in Initial Teacher Training (ITT). I teach courses on Music, and Didactics of Music in Primary Teachers ITT. I also Coordinate the Master of Arts in Music Teaching in Basic Education (music specialist) where I  teach several courses: Music and Technologies, Supervising Teaching Practice, Music Education Methodologies, and Philosophy of Music Education.

I believe that we learn Music by making Music (hands on approach). Music is something people do and it is determined by the Culture of the ”doers” so I am against classroom music (music that only exists inside classrooms) and I only use real world music (from a simple song to a super symphony). By “making music” I mean Appraising, Performing, and Composing. Sometimes students have to make music alone, sometimes they have to make it in groups, specially when Composing (collaboration). I use many “Musics”, different styles, genres, eras, nationalities, so students have to have some social and cross-cultural skills. In order to better understand the music they are listening and will perform, and compose, they use the web and a wiki (ICT literacy) to find, collect and organise other musical work that have something in common: the same idiom, the same composer, style, genre and so on. This will give the students some sort of cultural immersion. Finally they all have to perform in front of an audience (one cannot say that the audience is an expert, but parents, teachers and school staff are adults outside of the classroom and when performing students are communicating). Because students learn to work independently and take responsibility, engagement increases and by composing they get a sense of ownership. All this helps to fight the myth that there are unmusical human beings which is a common misbelief among students entering Primary School ITT (students’ needs).

Because my approach share so many characteristics with PBL, I think it could be easily complemented with PBL. From all the different courses that I teach (mentioned above), the one that I can use to experiment with PBL is Didactics of Music in Primary Teachers ITT and the topic would be choosing and justifying the musical work that will be at the core of their unit of work.

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1.5 task Turn Questions 1 and 2 in non-Googleable question

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1.5 task Turn Questions 1 and 2 in non-Googleable question

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Q1 - "What does it mean to be a healthy eater?"

Non-Googleable Q1- Does being a healthy eater means the same to everybody, everywhere?

Q2 - "How are airplane wings constructed?
Non-Googleable Q2 - What kind of wing I will need to construct if I want to fly.

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"Which of the 5 components you feel will be the most challenging for you to realize and why."

The key component that I feel will be the most challenging for me to realise is No. 2 “PBL is core to learning” because when we have a prescriptive national curriculum there is no way in a school year one can teach all the subject content using only PBL methodology. As a higher education teacher who is responsible for writing down the syllabus of its own courses, I am looking forward to start next school year and implement PBL methodology in Didactics of Music (3rd year of Initial Teacher Training for Primary School).

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1.3 P2P - Reflections on my current teaching practice

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1.3 P2P - Reflections on my current teaching practice

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I teach in a higher education institution, the Lisbon School of Education, that offers graduate and undergraduate programme of study in Initial Teacher Training (ITT). I teach courses on Music, and Didactics of Music in Primary Teachers ITT. I also Coordinate the Master of Arts in Music Teaching in Basic Education (music specialist) where I  teach several courses: Music and Technologies, Supervising Teaching Practice, Music Education Methodologies, and Philosophy of Music Education.

I believe that we learn Music by making Music (hands on approach). Music is something people do and it is determined by the Culture of the ”doers” so I am against classroom music (music that only exists inside classrooms) and I only use real world music (from a simple song to a super symphony). By “making music” I mean Appraising, Performing, and Composing. Sometimes students have to make music alone, sometimes they have to make it in groups, specially when Composing (collaboration). I use many “Musics”, different styles, genres, eras, nationalities, so students have to have some social and cross-cultural skills. In order to better understand the music they are listening and will perform, and compose, they use the web and a wiki (ICT literacy) to find, collect and organise other musical work that have something in common: the same idiom, the same composer, style, genre and so on. This will give the students some sort of cultural immersion. Finally they all have to perform in front of an audience (one cannot say that the audience is an expert, but parents, teachers and school staff are adults outside of the classroom and when performing students are communicating). Because students learn to work independently and take responsibility, engagement increases and by composing they get a sense of ownership. All this helps to fight the myth that there are unmusical human beings which is a common misbelief among students entering Primary School ITT (students’ needs).

Because my approach share so many characteristics with PBL, I think it could be easily complemented with PBL. From all the different courses that I teach (mentioned above), the one that I can use to experiment with PBL is Didactics of Music in Primary Teachers ITT and the topic would be choosing and justifying the musical work that will be at the core of their unit of work.

Please feel free to contact me at mariorelvas@gmail.com

I would like to thank in advance booth reviewers,

All the best

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"Why you think PBL is not used more widely in our education systems? What is stopping us from achieving what is outlined in the video? What are the biggest challenges we as educators face and who is stopping us from adopting the PBL approach in our classrooms?

Many countries have prescriptive national curricula, and

Prescriptive curricula are easier for teachers to teach, so we don’t want to hand in the control of the lessons’ pace, and contents, and everything else, that happens when you put students in the driver's seat as in PBL.

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"identify questions you have about PBL, what you hope to learn on this course and what challenges you anticipate in adopting PBL in your school."

My questions about PBL

how different is PBL from the 5 steps Scientific Method?

how PBL relates to the Situaded Learning concept?

What I hope to learn on this course

25 years ago I was part of CPD (Continuing Professional Development)  project that used PBL. I am looking for an update.

What challenges I anticipate in adopting PBL in my school

I am a higher education teaching professional that co-ordinates several courses. On those ones I can freely choose the teaching methodology. Some challenges can be anticipated, as part-time students will find it difficult to schedule teamwork. But beside that, I think I have the resources and time to try it.

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dinner parties with my long time friends from primary school;

taking sun and swim;

travel and visit cities (mostly).

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"Your first entry should briefly introduce yourself"