Teacher Challenge: Step 10

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   Imagem: Oficina de Escrita

     What is at stake in this 10th challenge – allowing our students to connect with other students –  it’s the heart of an attitude, let us say, the heart of a way of life,  that finds a deep resonance in the inner horizon of our youth.

    In our country, the school year is about to start, so each one and all of us, teachers and educational workers in our school, are gathering and buzzing  to ultimate the last details for the great reception: kids are coming, youth is back again!

    The multiple meetings we went through in July have all been pierced by the watch word: “How to surprise our students?” In fact, the sense of urgency to keep our pace with the global movement of innovation that is transforming life in schools all over the world is deep rooted in our hearts and minds.

   In order to take some baby steps along this demanding path, small teams of teachers are organising different project works trying to cross multiple contents of the curriculum in a unified vision concerning some feature of the real world. At some moment along this process, the question to connect with other students will arise.

    For the moment, some of us have engaged in educational platforms, like Edmodo, its new partner Spiral or Socrative. Students will be invited to use their apps and easily connect to  create and share  learning experiences.  In some classes, the BYOD approach will be tried with students more than 13 years old.

    I love the suggestions Edublogs  gives us as the Twitter classroom account, the Student Blogging Challenge, the list of Class Blogs and the art of connecting classes through Skype.

    We could even stay in the comfort zone of our maternal language, as Portuguese is spoken in Brazil and Africa; we could make a step towards the Spanish speaking countries whose vocabulary and grammar are so similar to ours and where there are several private schools belonging to the same congregation.

    We could even dare a step more and merge into the international web language that English came to be, as our students are constantly in touch with it through their own digital devices, favourite video games  and daily reading routines.

    I wonder until where will we be able to go for the sake of actually “surprising our students?”

Ines P

Flor

Lily in the Grid

 Lainmoon via Compfight

Quando olho para aquela fotografia,

Sinto o ódio a aproximar-se,

Mas a Felicidade a tentar sair da sua pequena janela,

Como uma  criança a correr o mais rápido possível.

Mas parece que não chega a lado nenhum…

A única felicidade que vejo na fotografia

É mesmo a pequena flor com olhos arrebitados.

Matilda M, 7A