Mateja Drnovšek,  OŠ Polje

We introduced the skill of critical thinking in classroom with EUfolio project. With the help of formative assessment, we tried to promote a sense of responsibility for students own work and progress. At history lessons we achieved that with asking questions. Questions were designed by students between learning old lessons and confrontation with new educational material. In the beginning we introduced them with tips of questions, differences between questions and what we expect for answer. In groups they formed question which were used in written test as well as oral questioning. Students upgraded asking questions by making their own worksheets. They set the criteria of good worksheet and made it. Together we reviewed all the worksheets and based on their criteria evaluated them. With the help of electronic tool Mahara and tab my learning in e-Portfolio student determinate their knowledge, set goals and strategies to achieve this goal. Because they worked in groups they learned from each other, discovered that they think differently, that for some of them closed questions are easier then open types of questions that some of them are more visual types and they need visual material and others are better critical thinkers. They also gained a sense of responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Ljiljana Mićović Struger,  OŠ J. Glazerja, Ruše

Formative knowledge assessment in EUfolio Formative assessment helps teachers to monitor thier students progress. It is based on diagnosting the prior knowledge, planning based on prior knowledge and building up the individual students knowledge according to his abilities. Teachers role is to encourage and create adequate learning environment which allows students to perform at their best. The most important task of the student is to take on responsibility for his own learning and progress, to set his objectives in accordance with his abilities as well as common and personal objectives. I use Eufolio which enables the student to become aware of that through exactly defined steps, that make him use different thinking processes while studying. Firstly, the student is familiarized with the theme, which will be discussed, the description of the theme is usually prepared by teacher (but it can be also prepared by a student), the keywords are extracted after the theme description, assessment of prior knowledge and setting objectives. Duringin that the student is also thinking about the learning strategies, proofs of his learning, which is shown with the use of knowledge and self evaluation of his own work. EUfolio enables the student to do things, when he decides so. It also enables him to do things at his own pace and share his findings with other students and teacher. This way he is constantly getting feedback, which allows him to make the best possible progress.

Brigita Praprotnik, Prva gimnazija Maribor

Using Facebook group as means of occasional communication and learning through homework has been in use with my students for a few years. They took this way of work as a normal part of the learning process and so I could introduce a novelty: each week a student was appointed as a keeper of the group with the task to teach his classmates something new. Being put in the position to carry out this demanding task they had to use previously acquired knowledge of critical evaluation of the suitable material and sources, which they searched on the internet. Moreover they had to show their knowledge of asking essential questions, which would stimulate their classmates’ contemplation and show their ability of judgement with well developed arguments. Student keepers took over the evaluation of the task, mostly by using the »sandwich« technique of communicational skills for feedback. Introducing the new way of work did not run smoothly, the students needed some time to accept their classmate as a »teacher«. The increasing sense of responsibility has been noted on each side from one task to another.

Špela Pirih, Kranjski vrtci, Čebelica

Modern technology became very important part of our lives. Despite that I noticed that working with children doesn’t include ICT, even more, kindergarten teachers are avoiding of its use. Meanwhile primary schools are successfully using information and communications technology for learning and working with children in classes. This is also shown through various examples of good practices, which are represented through various educational trainings. Kindergarten teachers are still actively using older methods that don’t include ICT. The reason for that is probably in lack of experiences and available resources. During the years I spent working in kindergarten, and in interaction with children, I noticed that their knowledge and skills of using ICT is increasing. And because I wanted to include this knowledge in to the process of working with children, I asked myself how could I carry out this on a level of pre-school children. I slowly started to include ICT resources in working with children and positive reactions were showing in the analysis of work and planning. Another advantage, that I noticed, is that various technological devices can also be an extremely powerful motivational tool. In my contribution I would like to present an example of kindergarten project My body. It was a project where I used different information and communications technology resources. Activities were planned together with children and they were conducted through different internet connections, computer games on the tablet, recording with camera and taking pictures with digital camera. I also introduced the topic in to the early hours of teaching English, where the use of ICT resources represents an additional help and better and more interesting understanding.

Polona Miklavc, OŠ Vransko Tabor

Modern times and technology allow us to make our educational work at school more interesting with the use of smart devices and therefore motivate pupils to learn and work. Together with pupils we decided to use ICT in the optional/elective subject Drama Club during this school year. The celebration of The Slovene Cultural Day – Prešeren’s Day was organized slightly differently, because our script included interactive elements. An interactive DVD-projection of images that illustrated France Prešeren’s life was used instead of a usual scene. At the event the acting of pupils was intertwined with interactive inserts; a reportage and two film scenes from Prešerens life filmed by the pupils attending Drama Club were added to the script. In the reportage pupils were asked questions about the poet. All the videos were filmed with smart phones, edited in iMovie program and inserted in the DVD-projection, which was created in iDVD program. Pupils who took part in the organization of this event had the roles of reporters, actors and editors. At the event itself they also played the role of a teacher, because they presented Prešerens life and work to other pupils in a very interesting way. The use of ICT elements has definitely achieved its aim, the event was enlivened and the pupils were motivated to work. ICT made it possible for pupils to share their knowledge both in the process of organization as well as at the event itself.

Nela Bejat Krajnc, OŠ Pod Goro, Sl. Konjice

The paper presents the Workshop module in Moodle as a tool for peer assessment of English writing skills in primary school. The primary objective of peer assessment was to develop the skills of evaluation of written compositions and to provide a feedback for the classmates. Along with that, the students have become aware of the importance of knowing the criteria for evaluating and were learning at higher taxonomic levels. Each student first submitted his/her composition and then assessed 2 compositions of their classmates. The assessment has been simplified with previously prepared criteria and descriptors. The students were actively involved in making assessment criteria for written compositions, which resulted in both better understanding and achievement of objectives for writing skills. Before the assessment, we made the pilot one in order to harmonize the criteria and to objectively and reliably assess the compositions. After the assessment was made, the comparison with the pilot assessment showed greater consistency of students assessment with teacher assessment. Due to the strict adherence to the criteria, the students own compositions have significantly improved considering original content, versatile vocabulary and grammatical correctness.

Boža Jazbinšek, OŠ Dobje

E-portfolio as the means of work-study student orientation in primary school Preparing students for further education and entry into the world of work is also one of the tasks of primary school teachers. All professionals at school, especially counseling service within the career guidance help them on their way. Here students learn to identify their personality traits, characteristics and values, to present and justify their points of view, and to give and receive criticism and most importantly – to take responsibility for their decisions. Given the fact that our school follows the trend of e-competent school, we started to use the web application Mahara in career guidance. Once a paper folder of the Employment Service has been replaced by e-Portfolio (e-environment) that enables students the way of communication they like. Mahara is a collection of achievements, products, reflections, their thinking and self-awareness accumulated during the time. Forums and views allow the individual to obtain information about how others (classmates, teachers, parents, who are involved in the process) see him. The student gets feedback from critical friends in different situations, which enables him to create a realistic picture of himself, find his strengths, improve them and make the decision about the job easier.

Petra Arnejčič Munda, Mojca Gornik Brodnjak, Srednja šola za oblikovanje Maribor

Within the project the students together with their teachers created educational video content on the topic of hair colouring. A second year hairdressing student prepared a model of colour emergence during the hair coloration process, thereby enabling other students to utilize Youtube for learning from their pears. The fact that the coloration process includes some rather complicated chemical and physical processes, the students are encouraged to create a model themselves, while utilizing a concrete example to explain it. Since there is currently very little existing material on the theme available on the web, the aforementioned student connected with her peers form the media technician programme to create an educational video and distribute it via Youtube. This is a nice practical demonstration of informal collaborative learning and inter-disciplinary teamwork for students, as well as for teachers, who now have the ability to see how students think and learn. We have concluded that the aforementioned video greatly enhanced the learning experience, while at the same time improving the knowledge of her second year peers.

Nataša Robič, Petra Lajlar, OŠ Dobje

The modern way of teaching tends to make diverse range of teaching methods and forms which are used for developing creative thinking by students and teachers, while gaining knowledge and skills at different levels of human thinking and action (emotional, intellectual, cultural, social level). Implementation of a vertically integrated cross-curricular lesson is certainly a great example of an integrated concept in modern teaching. When we combined innovativeness of 7th and 8th grade students in two Slovene and history lessons together and added the ICT – tablets, laptops and smart phones, our students planned their goals and actually planned the lesson in Mahara’s My learning tab (what do I already know, what do I want to know, what have I learnt). In Google Drive shared folder they summarized their thinking, based on the data from the table by using the KWL method. Individual parts of the subject matter were assembled into a unified whole. Students used the jigsaw method and the mind mapping tool XMind for creating one common mind map. Students presented the synthesis of the gained knowledge in the final part through debate with pro and con arguments. The described method of teaching is certainly a trend that due to all its dimensions should become the norm in the future.

Tatjana Lubej, OŠ Janka Glazerja, Ruše

Lesson My Idol in Mahara demanded from the pupils to achieve higher goals – in language and technology knowledge. The pupils achieved learning goals and they improved their knowledge in AFL and in communication and cooperation. EU-folio with Mahara was used for the introduction of the assignment that the pupils should make during the lesson. The learning goal was for the pupils to learn how to introduce an idol in an interesting way using communication technology. In the same time was the teacher’s source material a help for the work of pupils. Communication and cooperation between teacher and pupil was turn from the art were the teacher is the “maker” of the lesson to the art were the pupils create their own work and take responsibility for their progress. The teacher made the task bevor. So during the lesson he had time so watch the progress of each pupil and his or hers responsibility for making the task. Learning pupil from teacher and teacher from pupil was upgraded to cooperation with other teachers from the school and members of Education authority. The pupils and the teacher showed them their work with EU-folio and Mahara, which most of them met for the first time, and how good this is implemented in the work at German as the second foreign language.