Unit 5 - My Final Project

Name of the project:       My Holidays - My Culture 

Language:                       English

Age range:                      10-12 

Students number:          40-70 

Subjects integration:     Art, History, Media Communication, Computer Sciences, Music 

Tools to be used: Twinspace will the main working and communication area for the students. For introduction of the students PowToon is defined after Skype group presentation held once.  Emails, videoconferencing via Blackboard Collaborate, StoryBird personal presentation, creating the project special blog and e-book are planned  during the whole project. Students' creativity will be reflected in their visual performances and poster presentations during the video conferences. Each participating country team will design their Project Corner in the classroom. 

Description: One of the most crucial properties of a nation's existence and that makes it differ from others, is its custom and traditions, holidays and rituals that the nation follow throughout the history. Mental values of the nation are reflected in its traditions, national and religious holidays, state celebrities  which form the nation as a unique in this globalized and hectic world. These holidays are a crucial and essential part of our culture that make us familiar to the world. Every nation has specific holidays with specific traditions that can be extremely interesting to others. We're on eTwinning - an international space where every participating country will share their holiday traditions, rituals, its celebration descriptions and some stories about their history if accessible. There will be 5 groups and each group will represent one country. 

Aims

Main goals of the project are to introduce the different cultures and respect them, develop awareness to our ancestors in children, create consciousness of culture and aesthetic and set a nice example to our surroundings. The project aims to involve schools from 5 different countries. Since each of them represents different cultures, 5 nations will have a great chance to get to know one another's holidays and customs, be aware of some holiday rituals by the help of this project and if will lead students to mingle as one single family. Our children are pure, peaceful, their souls are so far from evil. They should get used to live in a peaceful place where there're no wars. We have to teach our children friendship, collaboration and must have them love to live in a world apart from terror, evil and wars. This project dealing with culture will be a good tool to gain this purpose. 

Expected results

5 country teams will get to know one another's holiday traditions, customs and their meaning why this tradition is followed throughout  the long history of the country. Visual presentations as well as media files posted on Twinspace will be the main assistant in carrying this purpose out. 

Work Process 

The project is planned to begin in October 2017 and will go up to May 15, 2018. 5 paces will be followed by the participants. 

Pace 1. Introduction. This step will cover October 1- November 15

Each participating teacher will add his/her students aged 10-12. Students added by their teachers will introduce themselves using the highly suggested tool- PowToon. Students may need a little instruction and encouragement from their teachers for creating their PowToons. This will let them convert their slides to MP4 files after creating. For those who find it very difficult are allowed to use Padlet or PPT presentation.  A Skype Group meeting or Video conference via Blackboard Collaborate is planned on October 14, Sunday. 

 Pace 2. November 15- December 30. 

Students will present the holidays appropriate to the nation taking place in this period. Video presentations, PowToons,  PPT, blogs, photos taken during the celebrities have to be shared in the Twinspace. 

Pace 3. January 5 - February 28. 

Students will be enrolled in writing activities throughout this pace. Threads headed with the name of the holidays will be created in the forum. The threads will contain a story about the holiday and its history. Students will be encouraged to comment to one another's stories and learn more about the holidays described.

Pace 4. March 1 - April 30. 

Two main types of activities have to be fulfilled during this pace. 

1.Special blog and E-book are planned to be created in this pace. Each team's separate contribution will be strongly needed. 

2. Students will make a colourful poster for their eTwinning corner.Unless the school has any corner just a little board titled "My Holidays - My Culture on eTwinning" is OK.  

Pace 5. May 1 - 15. Assessment. 

This is the time students sum up all they have learned and gained during the project. It's highly recommended  to organize a terse and modest event for reporting to the school staff, parents and society. Students will be awarded with certificates of achievement for their activity during the project. 

Unit 4 - Collaboration in eTwinning

To achieve the most successful implementation in project maintaining it's extremely important to have the participating students get to know one another better, mingle in the forum and arose special interest to the topic. Projecting teaches students acquire IT and language skills as well as some social skills in fact. Moreover it's worth to confess that we, teachers also discover and start the tools that we have never used and that are more useful than any of those we have used. Thanks to MOOC I've discovered PowToon which I'm going to use for students' introduction. It's like Power Point but much more interesting and makes your presentation more amazing. I've made a sample Powtoon to let students create a their own PowToons to introduce themselves. It's as simple as accessing powtoon.com or entering https://www.powtoon.com/my-powtoons/#/ and creating their any problem in utilization is caused the YouTube tutorial about it is also available. 

           Here's the link to PowToon Video to our PowToon

Apart from PowToons 1 Skype group call is also planned for tradition sharing. 

   

   

Reflection on Unit 3

In spite I'm not new on eTwinning and this is not my first project that I'm founding,  unit 3 once more gave me a chance to express my ideas for further realization. During P2P pace I felt like a real students looking forward to getting her mark from her teacher :) Fortunately I had a very positive evaluation. My project description, idea apart from the students number were highly approved by my peers, BTW I'm grateful to them even if I don't know their names. I've set the number of students 30-60 cause my partner who he is going to enroll his students has 30 students in the class .  I'll realize my project and with my very enthusiastic partner from Mallorca, Spain. Happy to be a part of  #twinmmoc!!

Unit 3. Project Designing

Name of the project                My Holidays - My Culture

Language:                               English

Age range:                              10-12

How many students are going to participate  30-65

Subjects involved:                  Art, History of Culture, Music, English, Media communicating

Tools to be used:                   Twinspace will be the main working and communicating are of the students. For specific purposes we're planning to use tools like Power Point,, emails, virtual classes via Blackboard Collaborate, Videoconferencing, Visual performances, Poster presentations, blogs, and e-books. 

Description:

One of the most crucial properties of a nation's existence and that makes it differ from others, is its custom and traditions, holidays and rituals that the nation follow throughout the history. Mental values of the nation are reflected in its traditions, national and religious holidays, state celebrities  which form the nation as a unique in this globalized and hectic world. These holidays are a crucial and essential part of our culture that make us familiar to the world. 
Every nation has specific holidays with specific traditions that can be extremely interesting to others. We're on eTwinning - an international space where every participant will share their holiday traditions, rituals, its celebration descriptions and some stories about their history if accessible. 

Aims

Main goals of the project are to introduce the different cultures and respect them, develop awareness to our ancestors in children, create consciousness of culture and aesthetic and set a nice example to our surroundings. 
The project aims to involve schools from 5 different countries. Since each of them represents different cultures, 5 nations will have a great chance to get to know one another's holidays and customs, be aware of some holiday rituals by the help of this project and if will lead students to mingle as one single family. 
Our children are pure, peaceful, their souls are so far from evil. They should get used to live in a peaceful place where there're no wars. We have to teach our children friendship, collaboration and must have them love to live in a world apart from terror, evil and wars. This project dealing with culture will be a good tool to gain this purpose. 

Work Process 

The project is planned to begin in mid October 2017 and will go up to May 15, 2018. 5 paces will be followed by the participants. 

Pace 1. Introduction. This step will cover October 15- November 15

Each participating teacher will add 6-12 students aged 10-12. Students added by their teachers will introduce themselves in the way they prefer. Padlet, PPT, MP4 files uploaded on YouTube or any other preferred tools are applicable for this pace. A Skype Group meeting or Video conference via Blackboard Collaborate is approved for this pace. (date will be discussed) 

 Pace 2. November 15- December 30. 

Students will present the holidays appropriate to the nation taking place in this period. Video presentations, PPT, blogs, photos taken during the celebrities are to be shared in the Twinspace. 

Pace 3. January 5 - February 28. 

Students will be enrolled in writing activities throughout this pace. Threads with the name of the holidays will be created in the forum. The threads will contain a story about the holiday and its history. Students will be encouraged to comment to one another's stories and learn more about the holidays described.

Pace 4. March 1 - April 30. 

Two main types of activities have to be fulfilled during this pace. 

1. E-book is planned to be compiled in this pace. Each team's separate contribution will be strongly needed. 

2. Students will make a colourful poster for their eTwinning corner.Unless the school has any corner just a little board titled "My Holidays - My Culture on eTwinning" is OK.  

Pace 5. May 1 - 15. Assessment. 

This is the time students sum up all they have learned and gained during the project. We're offering to organize a terse and modest event for reporting to the school staff and society. Students will be supplied with certificates of achievement for their activity during the project. Choice is up to the participants. 

Special NOTE:

Teams have to choose one national or state holiday for Skype presentation. The date of the meeting will be fixed according to the teams' decision. For special performances ONLINE EVENTs are also possible and suitable. 

Unit 2 - Innovation in the Classroom

In the 2nd unit of TwinMOOC we've focused on analyzing of our teaching practices, challenges and solutions. I'm going to express my ideas about the questions of What can I improve? What would I like to try? What am I not happy with? Is there anything which is not working?

Any good teacher knows how important it is to connect with students and find a way to their soul. If the student loves the teacher he will certainly love the subject as well. In EFL classes there're some important points to be taken into account. One of them is to create free atmosphere for students to let the students be effective communicators. Sometimes especially in senior learners my efforts are free-running; I won't overcome some students' shyness. I want to give them more but their timidness is a real obstacle for it. What can I improve? - I enroll them to group activities where we do active projects, games or cross-curricular activities. I apply and lean on experiences from which I've taken and take benefits. 

Strategies how to help shy students.

10 strategies

What Am I not Happy With?  I'm not happy with the verbal assessment in the curriculum in my country. I'd like to put marks instead. Moreover , I'm really depressed when I see a cleft between the real level of the student and the requirement of the curriculum or textbook. I'd like to try alternative textbooks if it's allowed by the school administration. 

Formative and Summative Assessment

I'm not happy with the fact that some students are not keen on using technologies, even they can do anything What'sApp or Facebook will be the only one they can do. However some enthusiastic and capable ones we have got also. If a student is absent from the classes here're some useful tools I use for educating them 

Edmodo.com
Schoology.com

Is there anything which is not working? Yes, there is! Contacting with parents of some specific students for their misbehavior sometimes doesn't work indeed. School has more effort than the parent who the teen doesn't obey himself.  

Unit 1- What's eTwinning?

eTwinning is a platform suggested by one of my project partners with whom I had been collaborating for 5 years by that time. However my country didn't appear on eTwinning platform at that time in spite our works were launched on the portal. Fortunately not much time passed that my country Azerbaijan was also included to the list of eTwinning Plus countries in 2013. In the same year I attended the contact seminar in Krakow, Poland. What I gained there was a real inspiration for me. After coming back to my hometown I made a great promotional presentation to challenge inspired and enthusiastic teachers to get enrolled in the eTwinning Plus projects. Here's the presentation made on Prezi which I got familiar with in the seminar as well.
Promotion Presentation for the School and Local Community
Nowadays eTwinning Plus is an inspiring platform for me and my students where they get a real chance to make foreign friends, have a pretty opportunity to communicate with native speakers, friends through whom they learn something useful. We took part in "My eTwinning Movie" contest and students made an amazing film expressing their affection.

Going forward my country Azerbaijan hosted the eTwinning Contact Seminar in its capital city of Baku. Numerous of eTwinniners both new ones and coordinators from different countries were welcomed to the city for their participation. 

 

Personal Introduction

All about me - padlet.com