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These are some of the lessons that I flipped during this scholastic year. They are in Maltese but with English Subtitles

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Teach Toddlers Colors Numbers Preschool Race Cars & Magnet Truck

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504A Management of Resources 02 Natural Cycles

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Teach Toddlers Colors Numbers Preschool Race Cars & Magnet Truck

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503B Genetics 16 Genetics of Blood Types

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How blood types are determined genetically.

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Details about some different types of genetic diseases.

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Teach Toddlers Colors Numbers Preschool Race Cars & Magnet Truck

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504A Management of Resources 01 Introduction

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Introduction to Management of Resources. The effect of Human Population growth.

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https://quizlet.com

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http://flippedclassroom.org

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https://minecraftedu.com

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https://flippedlearning.eduvision.tv

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http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu/

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free online professional development courses to enhance your teaching practice

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https://tellagami.com/

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http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/learning-styles-debunked-there-is-no-evidence-supporting-auditory-and-visual-learning-psychologists-say.html

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Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you've pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. And you're not alone- for more than 30 years, the notion that teaching methods should match a student's particular learning style has exerted a powerful influence on education. The long-standing popularity of the learning styles movement has in turn created a thriving commercial market amongst researchers, educators, and the general public.

The wide appeal of the idea that some students will learn better when material is presented visually and that others will learn better when the material is presented verbally, or even in some other way, is evident in the vast number of learning-style tests and teaching guides available for purchase and used in schools. But does scientific research really support the existence of different learning styles, or the hypothesis that people learn better when taught in a way that matches their own unique style?

Unfortunately, the answer is no, according to a major new report published this month in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The report, authored by a team of eminent researchers in the psychology of learning-Hal Pashler (University of San Diego), Mark McDaniel (Washington University in St. Louis), Doug Rohrer (University of South Florida), and Robert Bjork (University of California, Los Angeles)-reviews the existing literature on learning styles and finds that although numerous studies have purported to show the existence of different kinds of learners (such as "auditory learners" and "visual learners"), those studies have not used the type of randomized research designs that would make their findings credible.

Nearly all of the studies that purport to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity. Any experiment designed to test the learning-styles hypothesis would need to classify learners into categories and then randomly assign the learners to use one of several different learning methods, and the participants would need to take the same test at the end of the experiment. If there is truth to the idea that learning styles and teaching styles should mesh, then learners with a given style, say visual-spatial, should learn better with instruction that meshes with that style. The authors found that of the very large number of studies claiming to support the learning-styles hypothesis, very few used this type of research design. Of those that did, some provided evidence flatly contradictory to this meshing hypothesis, and the few findings in line with the meshing idea did not assess popular learning-style schemes.

No less than 71 different models of learning styles have been proposed over the years. Most have no doubt been created with students' best interests in mind, and to create more suitable environments for learning. But psychological research has not found that people learn differently, at least not in the ways learning-styles proponents claim. Given the lack of scientific evidence, the authors argue that the currently widespread use of learning-style tests and teaching tools is a wasteful use of limited educational resources.

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Learning Styles Debunked: There is No Evidence Supporting Auditory and Visual Learning, Psychologists Say

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Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you've pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. And you're not alone- for more than 30 years, the notion that teaching methods should match a student's particular learning style has exerted a powerful influence on education.

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https://www.google.com/docs/about/

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Create and collaborate on online documents in real-time and from any device.

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Google Docs: Online Document Editor | Google Workspace

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Use Google Docs to create, and collaborate on online documents. Edit together with secure sharing in real-time and from any device.

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https://en.actionbound.com/

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App for multimedia guides, interactive scavenger hunts and treasure hunts for smartphones and tablets.

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http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/

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Book Creator is a simple tool for creating awesome digital books. Create your own teaching resources or have your students take the reins.

Interactive stories

Digital portfolios

Research journals

Poetry books

Science reports

Instruction manuals

'About me' books

Comic adventures

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Book Creator - bring creativity to your classroom - Book Creator app

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Book Creator is a simple tool for creating awesome digital books. Create your own teaching resources or have your students take the reins. Interactive stories Digital portfolios Research journals Poetry books Science reports Instruction manuals 'About me' books Comic adventures

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https://www.edmodo.com

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https://getkahoot.com/

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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https://www.plickers.com

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http://flippedlearning.org/FLN

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You are using a browser that is not supported or you have disabled JavaScript. Please upgrade your browser and/or enable JavaScript. Supported browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer (version 10 or later).

Name

The Dangers of Exposure to UV Rays

Topic

Problem Solving Investigation (Biology)

Learning time

5 hours and 35 minutes

Designed time

5 hours and 35 minutes

Size of class

11

Description

We have all heard about the dangers of UV exposure and ways to reduce this. But how effective are these suggestions at reducing skin exposure to UV? Which is the best way to avoid damage to the skin?

Aims

To investigate the efficacy of commonly used UV protection methods To develop experimental design techniques

Outcomes

Knowledge, Synthesis, Analysis, Evaluation

Editor

Learning Experience

One or more graphs might not display correctly, because one or more learning types do not have duration set.

Social learning graph will not display correctly, because no class size is set.

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The Dangers of Exposure to UV Rays · Learning Designer

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Module 4: Apps and Tools for Personalisation and Flipping

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Module 4: Apps and Tools for Personalisation and Flipping

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I use Camtasia (not an App really, it's on PC) to record my lessons. Since I don't have tablets I cannot use apps in class expect on my own tablet or mobile. I found plickers to be a good tool to get feedback on the video lessons watched at home. Plickers only requires printed bar code answer cards and a single device with a mobile connection... instant voting system :)

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Module 4: Flipping the Classroom: My Experience and Challenges Encountered

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Module 4: Flipping the Classroom: My Experience and Challenges Encountered

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I experimented with the flipped classroom approach during the previous scholastic year, doing so only with a few lessons when I was pressed for time.  During this scholastic year, however, I decided to use this method more frequently and have been doing so since then.  I have prepared short video lessons on different topics in our syllabus, which I assign to students to watch at home, and then during the following lesson student can ask questions about any difficult sections and also have to do work linked to the content they saw.  The work varied from worksheets, crossword puzzles, quiz question using web tools like plickers, quizlets, and practical lab work.

This is an example of one of my video lessons: https://youtu.be/clrcwUgj5Ow. It's in Maltese but has English subtitles for the benefit of a foreign student that was not very fluent in Maltese

My students all have access to the VLE and youtube at home so there were only occasional problems with lack of access (mostly due to faults with their home connection or devices, or so they said at least).  However, some students did not always watch the assigned work.  This caused some problems since I only have one PC in my classroom, and no devices or tablets, which means that students would have to move at an agreed pace to view it on this sole PC.  Since I do not have headphones for each student, this can be a distraction to other students that are engaged in the classroom activity.

In some cases, I still asked the students who had not watched the work to participate in the activity with their peers.  I found this technique to be particularly effective when using voting quizzes like plickers, since the students who has not watched the content would have trouble and score low on the quiz.  While I did not publicise this (I did not show the individual answers and marks), they knew that they had done badly and in general would try to avoid missing video lessons in the future. Plickers also allowed me to see which parts of the topic most students were having difficulty with and address it directly during the follow up lesson.

The aspect of flipped learning that I still need to improve on is getting them to ask questions about the videos they watch at home.  I noticed a tendency for some of them to depend on the ones who normally ask a lot of questions.  I need to figure out a way to get them to question what they are watching and come back with queries during the following lessons.

Overall, I would say that this has been a positive experience for me and for most of the students.  I think I still need to work on a more varied set of lesson activities as follow-ups to the video lessons.  I am also interested to see what they will write on their end-of-year feedback report which I will be asking them to fill at the end of the scholastic year.

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We do not have tablets at our school yet, and students are not allowed to bring their own device (easily at least).  So my comments here are not based on practical experience but on what I think has potential.

The validity of tablets in personalisation of the learning experience can be considered from two aspects.  From the point of view of preparation by the teacher, it is probably possible to prepare differentiated learning paths for students to follow.  I am not sure whether this can be done via tablet apps, but our VLE supports learning paths and if these are followed by students via their tablets in class, then one can understand the possible benefits.

From the point of view of the student, assuming that the teacher is flexible in terms of what the end products should be, then there are wide possibilities.  Students can be given leeway to present or build their product (talking about a digital product here) with different apps, as long as a number of core criteria are reached.  This would allow students to choose apps according to their strengths (or learning styles if you so wish).

This is just one aspect of using tablets in a personalised approach.  I hope to be able to try and experiment once Malta’s 1-to-1 tablet initiative rolls out to secondary schools.

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The concept of Learning Styles has been increasingly challenged over the past years.  This is not to say that Learning Style proponents have gotten it all wrong, but some more recent studies seem to show that some of their conclusions may be wrong.

Even though students state that they prefer to study in a specific way (e.g. visual or auditory), these tendencies make no difference when they are put to the test under controlled conditions.  A favoured approach to studying is more likely to be linked to preferred tasks in which the student has a higher ability.  It is also highly related to the content being studied.  For example, would a learner who self-identifies as “auditory” learn to do a dance just by listening to a description of it or by actually doing it?

I think we should be careful in applying labels to learners (or getting them to apply them to themselves) as this can restrict the variety of approaches available to educators AND learners.

A few interesting articles for anyone who wants to read more:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/learning-styles-debunked-there-is-no-evidence-supporting-auditory-and-visual-learning-psychologists-say.html

http://www.changemag.org/archives/back%20issues/september-october%202010/the-myth-of-learning-full.html

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Are_Learning_Styles_Myth/

Having said that, I try to pay attention to which students are reacting differently to different techniques or activities that I may try out in class.  I try to change groups around so that at any one time students that find specific tasks difficult or challenging are grouped with students that can help them move forward in their activity or task.  Admittedly this is not as formalised as the introductory video about personalised learning suggests.  Possibly something I could work on.

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Module 3: Success factors of school-to-school
collaboration projects

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Module 3: Success factors of school-to-school
collaboration projects

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I am not involved in eTwinning, but I would imagine that for a project to work a number of factors are needed:

1. Good partner schools: It would be important to have hard-working partner teachers that have similar interests and similar expectations and attitudes towards the work to be done. For example, I would look for teacher-partners that expect high standards of work from their students and push them to achieve their maximum potential.

2. Good project ideas: This is essential if students are to come to own the project. It is important that they find the project engaging and that they come to consider it as their own.

3. Good infrastructure: This is necessary if any live collaboration work is to be done during school hours. A good internet connection and devices for students (preferably tablets, but not necessarily) are the basic minimum requirement.

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Module 3: Challenges of Collaborative Work

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Module 3: Challenges of Collaborative Work

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I normally approach this kind of work in this way:

1. Discuss and build a plan of work together with the students.

2. Identify the outcomes of the work.

3. Identify the parts that need to be worked on together and the parts that need to be done individually

4. Provide an assessment rubric based on what the students suggested.  This will include marks for their participation in the practical parts of the work.

5. Supervise and offer guidance along the way.

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I use one of two methods of setting up groups. Sometimes I allow students to form their own groups so that they can work with their closest friends. In this case the only restriction I impose is on the maximum number of students in each group. if the number is 5 or more, that group has to split up.

The other way is to use a random group generator to create different groups each time. Since the class I teach is a small group (only 11 students), I use this to encourage them to work with all the members of the group. I set a limit 3 student per group. I also try to make sure that the generated groups are in fact not repetitive, so that each student will have at least worked with someone else during the term. I also make sure that none of the groups includes only weaker students.

Both systems have benefits and disadvantages. Working with friends tends to create a situation where each group member does only a specific task, and some groups members depending on others to do the work. With random mixtures, this is reduced as all members try to be involved. However, students tend to prefer it when they are in groups that include at least one friend.

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I installed a free QR Code generator onto my Android Phone. The App is called QR Droid but there are many others to choose from. I then used this to create 2 QR codes (below) that link to a URL that provides content about two local trees found in our school garden. This is just a proof of concept exercise to check out how easy (or difficult) it is to set up QR codes.

I recommend looking up the URLs first, and then set up the QR codes one by one, pasting the URLs into the content of each code.

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Module 2: What kind of content can you produce with your class?

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Module 2: What kind of content can you produce with your class?

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In our school we have a large garden with many trees and different kinds of plants, all tended too by our very hard-working gardener.  Some of the trees have name labels displaying their common and scientific names.  These were set up by a previous biology teacher as part of a completion some years ago.  A possible activity would be to get students to create short snippets of information about the different plants and trees and then use QR code labels (which would attached to each plant) that would bring up the related content.  This content could possible include picture of the specific plant at different times of the year, showing flowers for example, taken by the students themselves, as well as researched information about each plant.

Apart from being linked to their syllabus (Diversity of Life), this would allow students to learn about different local trees as well as produce content for an audience.

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Module 2: What do you make of the Learning Scenarios concept?

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Module 2: What do you make of the Learning Scenarios concept?

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I had heard about Learning Scenarios in a previous European Schoolnet Course (Future Classroom Scenarios).  During that course I had realised that I was already using some aspects of this approach in my teaching, particularly with investigative projects that are part of our national biology syllabus.  My biggest obstacles in actually using ALL of the steps in my approach are lack of time (due to massive syllabus that allows very little flexibility) and lack of actual devices in school (no tablets and no recognised BYOD policies).

However, during this year I have been experimenting with a flipped approach, and while I am still learning and trying to develop this beyond the basic “watch the video at home and do the HW at school”, I can understand that Learning Stories can be a solution to expanding the range of activities done by students.  Let’s say it’s a work in progress for me :)

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Module 1: What classroom challenges do
I anticipate facing when using tablets?

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Module 1: What classroom challenges do
I anticipate facing when using tablets?

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Since I teach at Secondary level, students will probably already have had practice in using tablets during their earlier years (implementation is being done bottom up in Malta, starting from Year 4’s in Primary Schools, and eventually moving upwards).  This might put the teachers at a disadvantage since they will be the ones using the tablets for the first time.  Eventually this will get better as the teachers learn, but it will take time and good training is essential, with specific PRACTICAL examples of HOW tablets can be used in class.

Schools will need to enforce rules, particularly in relation to the "tablets used only for learning” motto.  This will not be easy, and a lot will depend on whether teachers enforce the rules and the level of support they get from the SMT.

In my school, students have home classes and teachers move from one room to the other.  This makes it very difficult to change classroom layout since the classrooms will need to be reset at the end of every lesson.  Also our classroom are rather small and so it can be somewhat difficult to find new layouts, but not impossible.

The new pedagogical approach will also be met with resistance, since many teachers still feel that they should be the “sage on the stage”, more often than not because of a feeling that other approaches will waste more time, reduce control over the classroom, and lead to the dreaded “not finishing the syllabus”.  Only good training will eventually change this mentality.  Unfortunately, this rarely happens.

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Module 1: What whole-school challenges do I
anticipate facing when using tablets?

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Module 1: What whole-school challenges do I
anticipate facing when using tablets?

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Teachers in Malta tend to have little faith in pilot studies due to the fact that previous studies on other issues in education have been done simply as a prequel to implantation of the issue irrespective of the outcome of the pilot study.  There seems to be a much better co-ordinated effort this time around, and hopefully teachers will realise this, but there will be doubters for sure.

At the moment, our schools do not allow ANY devices to be brought to school as there is a fear of how mobile device could be abused.  BYOD is thus difficult to implement.  This mentality will be a tough obstacle in the eventual implementation of a 1:1 system, in the sense that the fear of abuse will remain there.  A possible solution is to invite reluctant teachers to observe peers who are using tablets in their classroom, although this not common practice in Malta (unfortunately).

Another issue is one of training.  Our system allows for very limited official training time, (a 3-day inset training session and 3 2hours PD sessions.  In practice it is unlikely that any amount of pedagogical training will actually be managed in the limited time.  This has already happened with the introduction of IWBs and VLE. The training was limited and not well-timed.  If this happens with tablets, the implementation will fail.  A solution to this would be to offer focused training for tablet use (possible limited to a few apps and techniques) and then work throughout the year with willing teachers through eLearning Support.  This, however, is not as easy as it sounds since most teachers tend to be taken up with syllabus concerns and that leaves little time for personal PD.

A number of teachers also tend to resist change, either because they do not want to change their methods or because they feel they are not technologically competent.  This will surely be one of the big obstacles that will need to be tackled.  Gradual change is better than fast, imposed change.

Technical support is also an issue.  For example, in our school, we have only one ICT technician who is present for only 3 days per week.  It is difficult for him to keep up, and I cannot imagine how he will manage to support problems that will inevitably come with 1:1.  Unfortunately, this is not something that can be tackled by the school since technician recruitment is done by the Education Division, and so this is where the solution needs to be found.

Wi-fi access will also be an issue.  At the moment in our school (and most other state schools), wifi access is restricted to the staffrooms and is for teachers only.  Obviously this will need to be tackled if 1:1 is to work.  Again, an issue for the Service Providers engaged by the Education Division.

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I teach in a Secondary State School in Zejtun, a town in the Southern part of Malta. We cater for students from 11 years (Form 1) to 16 years (Form 5). We where a Girls' School but this year, the new intake is Co-Ed (like all other state schools taking Form 1's).

Although our catchment area includes students with very challenging backgrounds, our school has maintained it's established discipline and we hope to maintain this as we change to a fully Co-Ed school over the coming years.

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Module 1: Why do you want to use tablets in your teaching?

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Module 1: Why do you want to use tablets in your teaching?

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There are several factors that I feel are important:

1. Many students already have their own tablets or use a mobile device at home.  It is a tool that they find attractive and hence it makes sense to try and use it also for teaching.

2. This year I have flipped my classroom and I think that having tablets in class would open up a host of new possibilities in terms of activities related to the video lessons that I send to my students.  I am trying to develop different activities for students that engage them but at the same time allow me to assess whether they are progressing in their learning.

3. Tablets have great potential for gamification, an approach that I would also like to start using (but still need to get training in).

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My name is Stefan Scerri and I am from Malta. I have been teaching in a local state school for 25 years. I teach Biology but I am also very involved in theatre productions in our school. I also work as a part-time Stage Manager with a local theatre company. Additionally, for the past 5 years I am also one of four Head of Departments of eLearning for a number of Colleges in Malta. I am also very much an Android guy!

During the last 2 scholastic years, I have gradually started to flip my classroom. I know that this is very much a gradual process and I am constantly looking out for ways how to develop this approach beyond what I am currently doing.