}

How is it possible to evaluate success and efficiency in the educational process?

It is a very interesting question every teacher should ask. I think that evaluation requires reference points. Skills development can be observed in the process of working on projects – “before” and “after”. Therefore, in such a system it is ideal to have an individual learning plan or at least a plan that each child is familiar with and agrees to follow. An excellent measure of success and effectiveness is a Student’s own assessment. I truly think that a feedback, that comes not only from the teacher, the mentor, but also from an Actor of a learning process, is a brilliant solution in the Finnish system. This was a kind of discovery for me, although this type of assessment is actually laying on the surface! It would be an interesting learning practice to let students go through their own work, correct, refine and evaluate the work as they go along, using any sources that seem important to them- the Internet, dictionaries, books, advice from a more experienced friend or teacher. This is how we learn at the end!. It can easily happen that a student who gets a bad grade at best will put off catching up with material indefinitely, and at the worst, he or she will be completely unmotivated to correct something and study the missing or misunderstood material, and will give up and take the subjective grade for an absolute truth. Such a passive reaction is completely pernicious for the learning process and should be detected early and approached. The existence of feedback from peers in the Finnish system is also a wonderful practice, that I would advise to try for all school teachers.

The journey from grade to mark can be compared to the startling transformation of the silkworm into a butterfly. We cannot say that a butterfly emerging from a silk cocoon is the same as a silkworm walled up in the same cocoon, can we? And, once born, the mark is destined to play an important role not only in the child's learning activities, but also in his life. (...) In his social environment few will remember that the mark is a kind, innocent reflector of the child's knowledge, helping him to navigate the coming learning process. Now it will already enter the learning activity through the social life of the child, endowed with the imprints of that life and turned into an idol.

When an assessment, which is essentially feedback, comes from different sources, it is no longer perceived as something negative and absolute, coming down from above. Plus, when you evaluate your work or others in your class, you become aware that there are certain criteria for assessment. Then even if the work is rated low, there will be no frustration and loss of motivation as the person is already well aware of how the work can be improved and that everybody is making mistakes and it’s fine. It’s actually much more intellectual fun to look for a mistake and find an answer, than to please a teacher with something you know!

In this case, the measure of success may be the ability to critically assess the work and independently conduct a research. Another skill that is going to develop is to give and receive feedback in a non-offensive and constructive way. These are very important and useful skills. Moreover, as a bonus a student learns even more as a teacher had in the plan, because the process may carry you away to discover more!

Smithsonian Institution

Link of the week

The first post of 2021 under the hashtag – #linkoftheweek. Every week we’ll share one link with the content that attracts and inspires us.

https://www.si.edu/openaccess

This week it’s a gift from the Smithsonian Institution, also known as the Smithsonian. The Institution combines museums, research centres and the National Zoo mostly located in Washington, D.C. The Institution opened its digital collection – millions of the Smithsonian’s images – under creative common Zero (licence-free usage for all usage types, even commercial).

Moreover, homeschooling children, who speak English can benefit from Education resources https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education and play fun free STEM games https://ssec.si.edu/game-center . Educators can also find useful teaching resources to spice up their lessons https://www.si.edu/educators.

Enjoy!

A microscope that is always ready for discoveries.

A paper microscope in your pocket that you made? Sounds fantastic, but it exists! A week ago I was going through my materials in order to prepare a half day trip to the local Gruenewald forest for a group of children and found a colorful bag with a tag Foldscope. The 2 samples were presented to me ages ago by a friend, and now, !suprise-suprise!, the school opening partner 😀 It’s a very special DIY tool that I would recommend to every science teacher, the paper microscope. This microscope reminded me of the very first simple microscope used by a Dutch scientist Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century, since it was also very simple, had one lens and was handheld. The foldscope magnification is smaller though, 140x compared to 270x of Leeuwenohek’s tool, but should be enough to view cells, protozoa and bacteria. On top of this, it’s a self-made tool, the quality that without any doubt adds a value to the microscope. Obviously, it’s a great fun to assemble the microscope and then to fulfil a real experiment. Moreover, you can do it whenever and wherever you want. It can be always in your pocket for new discoveries! I was happy to find a local German distributor (www.jot-entdecken.de) and ordered several Foldscopes to assemble and test with the group of 8, 9, 10 YOs during my workshop about human cells and going to try it on our samples from the pond we are going to visit tomorrow. Hope to receive it on time though, still no sign of a parcel. Stay tuned! I’ll tell you about the experiment.
You can read a bit more about Foldscope on the website www.foldscope.com.

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