Innovative Methodologies in the Digital Classroom
Innovative Methodologies in the Digital Classroom refers to a broad range of teaching strategies which engage students as active participants in their learning process during class time with their instructor. Typically, these strategies involve some amount of students working together during class, but may also involve individual work and/or reflection. Active methodologies place the students at the center of this process and make them the protagonists of discovery, rather than just passive information receivers. There are different teaching strategies to create an active learning environment and to engage the students in it.
Cooperative Learning, Project Based Learning, Flipped Classroom and Blended learning are excellent examples of these active methodologies. These inclusive approaches provide teachers more opportunities to personalize the learning process of their students and can thereby increase their autonomy, motivation and self-direction.
Currently, Blended learning, the meaningful combination of learning at a distance and in school, through a careful choice of different tools and strategies, is becoming increasingly common in schools. Blended learning can therefore be an important step towards a competence-based education where the learner stands at the center of an active learning process.
Moreover, the course provided innovative and engaging tools to integrate active methodology based on digital skills taking into account the content of the lessons and the curriculum. We, my students and I, will be able to use new technologies in the classroom, with special focus on the use of tablets as iPads or similar ones and discovering new apps but the achievement of all new knowledge as well. Teaching my students to use technology at the service of their own learning and to make responsible and critical use of ICT’s, I will be able to contribute to them so they would be real digital citizens of the 21st century.
The course covers all the needs to know the basic ideas of active methodologies and an effective digital classroom. In detail, the concrete goals of the course are:
- To understand the advantages of ACTIVE METHODOLOGIES to get a more engaged teaching.
- To learn to use a great range of new tools and resources for transforming the classroom into a ICT ENVIRONMENT LEARNING where students practice their digital skills.
- To introduce into the principles of COOPERATIVE LEARNING for designing cooperative learning structures in our classrooms.
- To add PROJECT BASED LEARNING in the daily practice of our classrooms offering to students activities more related with the real world and increasing their motivation.
- To know FLIPPED CLASSROOM methodology and learn how to introduce it in curriculums of different subjects.
- To design a BLENDED LEARNING SCENARIO to be implemented in our school.
- To provide teachers with resources which allow them to train their students to use technology in a more CRITICAL AND RESPONSIBLE way.
- To help teachers to design and implement MOTIVATING ACTIVITIES for their students in different scenarios: online, at school and even, outdoors.
- To SHARE EXPERIENCES of international collaboration and projects from different organizations in order to improve the European awareness.
