STEP 1.

I am now about to work at the second pilot: a new challenge coming!

All the pilots are challenging because you must adapt your Learning Story to the subject you teach and to your curriculum and it is not easy to find a way to have young children involved as I teach EFL and children’s knowledge of the language is not high.

Project work seems to be the best way to match Itec requests to the children’s needs, so we will work at a project about  culture: children will do a virtual tour of London and they will know about the most important monuments and places of the town.

This time I am working with another class, a fifth grade: with  23 lively children,  very interested into technologies and English culture as well.  In our curriculum, English culture facts can be studied in Italian, so the objectives of this project will be:

-          To know about relevant places and monuments in London

-          To improve reading comprehension in English

-          To use technologies to create a presentation

-          To work in groups in a cooperative way.

First of all, I think it’s important to get children’s attention and participation to the work we are going to do, so I decide to explain its aims and I share my idea of the task we are asked to do. During these years of school we have talked a lot about English culture so why not leaving for a virtual trip to the capital city of Britain?

As a matter of fact, children would prefer a real trip to London, but we do what we can! J

Just to start, I invite children to a brainstorming: they must write on the IWB all the places they already know in London because they have already seen  them or just  because they have heard on TV or on books.

They write them randomly on the IWB, so in the end I ask them to organize the names of places forming groups and then label them. After a discussion among children, they decide to make three big topics:

1.       Monuments and famous places

2.       Attractions

3.       Free time

As we have to plan a trip to London,  some children point out the need to think of means of transport, food, money and the luggage needed as well, so we decide to add “Organization” as a fourth topic.

4.       Organization

STEP 2

The four groups of items are now displayed on the IWB, so I ask children to think if they are all the most important things to see on a trip to London.

Children say that the brainstorming is not complete, so we decide to surf the Internet to get other useful information about places which are worth to be seen.

I tell them that we will work cooperatively at a web quest and I explain them what it is: it will be a sort of Scavenger hunt on the Internet with the aim to get information sparing time and avoiding free searches which sometimes can be dangerous.

Children are very curious as they have never done a web quest, as normally their teachers ask them to do researches at home with the help of their parents.

I am a bit worried about the stuff I need: in my school all the computers are inside the computer lab and classes go there on the basis of a timetable prepared at the beginning of the year. Computer are therefore used  during specific hours and they are not a normal tool for teaching and learning in the normal classroom L.

Of course the lab. is busy during my lessons, so I must think to another way to get children work in groups using computers. What can I do? I am really bored of all the problems which come along every time I decide to do something different from the normal lesson in front of children!!!!

Step 3.

Hooray!!!  I was given the possibility to use two laptops from the school! Added to the class computer, a laptop and a netbook from my home, they permit children to work in a cooperative way. Fortunately we have the WI-FI at school now!

First of all, we use TeamUp software to create random groups of children with the task  to find other places in London which are worth to be seen. Each group will be given a laptop and they will be looking at some English websites I will recommend, then they will read and understand what is written and finally the speaker of each group will tell and explain to the class the reasons of their choice.

After the plenary session, all the new items are added to the places grouped before.

Step 4

I decide to split children in four groups according to the topics previously individuated, so we use TeamUp software to form the groups according to the children’s choices.

After that, all the groups start to work with a laptop each. As they did before, they can find the link to the web sites to be visited just looking at the documents I have inserted in Google Docs: each group has a document with its name so they can easily start to work. As our time is very limited, they will use Google Docs to write down the information they get, so they will be able to finish their work at home and I will be able to check their work at home as well.

Google Docs is really a very nice tool: easy and friendly for children, it permits to be free from USB keys and all the viruses we can often get from school computers ;-)

Children are well organized and work very well. They know they can use Word Reference is they need to translate some unknown word. I prefer them not to use Google translator, but I know that somebody does it while I am not passing by J.

Something strange is happening: when I pass nearby, some groups change their page very quickly as they would not want me to see what they are doing… In the end I understand the reasons: they are helping each other to translate from English writing directly on their mates’ document as they have discovered that they can write on Google Docs at the same time.

That’s a great discovery, but they think it’s not fair to do it at school, so they are very surprised when I ask them to go on and tell the other groups as well, as it is a good way to help each other during a difficult task. That’s real cooperative learning!

The “organization” group works with me to prepare a web quest which will be completed by the Itec partner class who have answered our request of help as our timing is very limited. Google sites is easy enough to be used by children: I help them to organize it, but tafter a while they can do everything by themselves.

In the end, we send the link to our partners by e-mail ( I have opened a Gmail address for the class).

Step 5

Once children have collected all the information regarding the places to visit, we can start our trip using Google Earth on the IWB. Children are enthusiastic, many of them have never seen it. Using it on the IWB, it looks as if we are really flying to UK. As soon as we have found the place we need, we use the “Street view” to see it  and we take a photo using the Smartboard Notebook camera tool.

After having stored all the pics in the computer, we use our digital camera to take pictures of each child.

At home, I use Photoshop to have a white background in all the pics, then all those pictures are stored as well.

Step 6

Our Smartboard now helps us to make photo composites , just to give the impression to be  right in the place we are going to present. At first we insert pics from Google Earth Street view, then the pics of the children who will present that place; the backgrounds can be made transparent and the result is really funny because it looks as each child was really in London.

Doing that takes quite a long time as it is not easy to do it on the IWB, so I’ll do some work after school because the end of school is arriving soon and we want to finish our project in time.

Step 7

This is a special day because two people from our National Agency ANSAS are coming to see how we work and what we are doing. It is nice to show them how Google Earth can be used for educational purposes in a playful way.

Our final job is using Voicethread to create a presentation of our virtual trip. Voicethread is very easy and friendly for children, so it does not take a long time to do what we want.

That piece of software permits to record the children’s voices, to take pictures of the children speaking and to insert  all the photos previously taken.

In the end we have a nice presentation: you can see all the images of London with children presenting each place as they were there. As a start we put the drawing of a plane with all the children inside the windows saying “Off we go!”; the same picture will close the presentation when children are supposed to go back to Italy.

Unfortunately it is impossible to have the Skype meeting we wanted to do with our partners because there has been a problem and they are not at school on the chosen day L Too bad! This is the only thing that did not work in our project.

Some last thoughts…

We had to run a lot to finish the project within the last day of school, but it was really a nice work. Children appreciated it a lot and now they are asking me if there will be the possibility to do such projects in the Secondary School as well.

Nice to hear them speaking during the interview with Mr Benassi and Mr Moscato from the National Agency as I understand how technologies can improve not only children’s learning, but also their motivation and  attention .

Technologies permit to enrich the learning environment in a fun way and learning MUST be a nice adventure not only for learners, but also for teachers!!!

Here are the links to all the stuff we produced:

Website of the project made by children (in Italian): https://sites.google.com/site/itecprojectquintaci/

Web Quest for our partners in the South of Italy: https://sites.google.com/site/avirtualtriptolondonwebquest/

Our virtual trip to London on Voicethread: https://voicethread.com/share/3167800/