Saving Planet Earth! 🌍

Today post is related to one of my favourite things at doing in class... Think a bit... 

Clue: it is an active methodology (or you can take a look at the picture located on the right part).  👉 👉

I know, my avatar was spoiling us too much... Sorry for that! 

What is a project about?

Getting to the point, some teachers find projects very stressful or demanding. However, good planning and greater motivation can break down those obstacles. 

Project-based learning takes part in actives methodologies. Therefore, it implies students are involved in their work field. These methodologies respect children individuality, as well as cooperation, is needed. Besides, all the academic work is based on pupils' interests. Consequently, a child-centred approach is established. To sum up, they are learning methods that engage students, develop meaningful activities, and reflect on what and why children are doing those tasks. 

Regarding project-based learning, it implies teamwork, assigning roles, following a process and getting a final product. Furthermore, there exist seven steps to make a proper project. I strongly recommend you 8 Essentials for Project-Based Learning by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller. I am summarising these steps within my own Science project. I consider it a good way to understand the whole picture in a practical way. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section! 😉

There is no Planet B!

The last term has already arrived, so I am designing several projects to foster meaningful learning in my class. Science is a great subject to promote project-based learning since all the curricular contents can be gathered in an experiment, campaign, museum, and so on. In my particular case, unit 5 is related to water and energy. Beyond those contents, April is the perfect month to promote environmental awareness - Earth day is celebrated on April 11! 

Thus, the first step which consists of establishing relevant content is already done. The next stage is based on the premise of reflecting on a question through an entry event - in this case, this video will be shown. 

Subsequently, a driving question will be said "Can you help save the planet?". The fourth level is related to making students active participants to decide how are we solving that problem. That solution needs to be projected in a final product. My students love Arts&Crafts and we made different classroom displays, and they considered it a great idea because pictures are shared. Additionally, when the project has finished, they take their work home and hang it on their walls. Consequently, a poster has been chosen. Those posters will be shared in a virtual wall -through Padlet-, so we can spread our message with all the community. 

Beyond creating the poster, students need to gather all the data and information. Therefore, Science classes are a great source of information and different activities will be developed with them. 

21st-century skills

As it can be easily reachable, several skills are already goaled such as literacy, multilingualism, scientific, interpersonal, cultural awareness, and so on. However, according to the European Commission, there are other skills that need to be developed too as technology-based competence, active citizenship, and entrepreneurship.

Thus, this project is gathered in a mind map. Nevertheless, not a traditional mindmap that is written down on a piece of paper. There are several tools to create online mind maps!

Mind maps

There are several tools to create mind maps and other kinds of diagrams. These tools can be organised into collaborative tools -such as Coggle and Mindmeister- or single resources like Mind42, SpiderScribe, Bubbl.us or Creately.

Collaborative mindmaps are great devices to brainstorm a new concept, making a summary among different colleagues or unifying contents from different sources/groups.  

On the other hand, individual tools enable each student to foster their autonomy and also allow teachers to collect a project in an organized way. 

I consider this topic essential not only for developing in class, but also to raise awareness in the students. They can make changes outside the classroom! We, as teachers, should be conscious of our awesome power to transmit this kind of knowledge. However, these advantages can be easily noticeable without testing the previous tool described above. Thus, I tried out Creately in order to give you a practical perspective of it.

Analysing Creately 🔎

I tried out an individual tool since I want to show my students the project's structure. I really liked all the available features Creatly has. Firstly, it provides several templates. Thus, it is quite easy to start creating your own diagram. 

Furthermore, there exist multiple tools such as adding simple shapes, flowcharts, block shapes, images, links, etc. And their colour and shape can be easily changed! Just click on them and a pop-up window will instantly emerge. Additionally, you can alter letters' colours and sizes. 

As it can be easily recognisable, there are several advantages.

✔️First of all, the fact that you can edit a mind map whenever you want, without erasing and making a lot of crosses out it is amazing.

✔️It is a very intuitive source because, since the very beginning, an online guide was provided (beyond the templates).

✔️The multiple features provided help users to create original and visual mindmaps, rather than the traditional ones (with the same structure and no option to alter sizes, shapes, and so on).

Unfortunately, there exit cons as well - as every tool. 

❌ You cannot share your mind map infinitely - only you can share 5 of them for free. 

❌I really missed that the video can be watched in the mind map, such as a pop-up window. It is linked so you can watch it, but online this diagram.

❌To add more than one picture, you also need to pay. 

Research time!

Once the project has been shown, students need to get down to work. Consequently, they would research water and energy, and multiples ways to avoid Earth pollution. Once, students are aware of every content required, they are ready to design their poster! 

Consequently, you can check my mind map! Do you like it? 😃

As you can see, I have added a "post-it" note to brainstorm students' ideas. It is clock-wised, so it is the usual manner to observe a mind map. Furthermore, the poster section is bigger because it helps you to understand the main goal of the proposal.

I hope this post helps you to understand online mind mapping a bit better 😉.

Happy Earth Day in advance, and take care!