History with online tools

15 - 16 years old, Collaboration and debate, Digital books, Digital texts, Environment, Multimedia editors, One week, Student homework or project work

Methodological steps

Plan your didactic activity in advance. Every week, put activities in the Moodle (or other virtual learning environment) of the school and ask the students to do it by the next week. Then check it and return feedback to the students; for feedback on their works, it’s better to use the same learning environment as a communication channel.

Use an open collaborative boards such as Padlet, a cloud generator like Wordart and an online photo editor such as Pizap to support the activity. They can be used for free at home, but they might also be difficult to use for special needs students without support, therefore be sure to provide previous training to them. The interaction between student(s) and tools can be helpful to strengthen knowledge about notions studied in the classroom: take appropriate time, one to two hours, to link the interface and the appearance of them to the presence, the position and the hierarchy of key words and images.

Explain the history of the first expedition around the world by Ferdinand Magellan, through the use of the digital version of your textbook and other digital texts prepared by you with broad use of images. Investigate the different aspects of the expedition: the route, the places visited, the events, etc. 

Ask every student to take part in the search by using the repositories and tools listed above, and to explain it to the rest of the class.

Skills assessment

Skills and knowledge of special needs students might require further support and training beforehand, especially because the digital gap affects them harder, with regard to the effective use of both software and hardware. Moreover, it might be more difficult to know if they have learned something while at a distance.

Though, the activity is helpful for developing transversal skills related to the digital, the citizenship and the entrepreneurial competencies.

Communication

For this activity, you can communicate with the students through the school email, by using shared documents or through questionnaires. Students can communicate with each other using the school email, the instant messaging service within video calls and the Social Networks (WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

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