Blog post 5

Hello all,

Here are 5 active learning activities that you can use in your Computer Science class.

	Name of the activity	Suitable to teach which CS topic?
1	PIM(Plus-Minus-Interesting)	Importance of information technology
2	POST-IT COLLECTION	secrecy and security
3	REVOLVING CIRCLE	Use of social media
4	SIMULATION	Information crimes
5	STICK DEBATE	Digital citizenship

	Name of the activity	Detailed Summary of its steps
1	PIM(Plus-Minus-Interesting) Subject: Importance of information technology	Facilitator discusses with pupils the meaning of PMI and explains what each term means: Plus = a benefit t, Minus = a downside, Interesting = an interesting. In this activity, the students are shown a template including areas to write positive, negative and interesting dimensions of information technologies. Students came to the board and they write positive dimension under plus area, negative dimensions under minus area and interesting dimensions under interesting area and they discuss why they put those dimensions under those areas. Thanks to this activity, students who don’t interest any side of information technologies can interest.
2	POST-IT COLLECTION Subject:  Secrecy and Security	Pupils in groups of four to six receive a Post-It sheet per pupil. In this activity, Each pupil writes his own idea about secrecy and security in online environment on his own post-it and writes some examples belonging to dangers of doing mistake behaviors in online areas which harms our security and secrecy on it. Then, each group’s members come together and they discuss what they wrote as individually. After completing ideas, a general post-it, that including summary of ideas of all members of group and examples with it, is prepared as group post-it.  At the end, Ideas from each group are placed on a flip chart and discussed with all classes.
3	REVOLVING CIRCLE Subject: Use of social media	Pupils divide into two groups. One group forms an inner circle and the other group forms an outer circle Pupils face each other. The inner circle then rotates clockwise and the outer circle rotates anti-clockwise. In this activity, each student will discuss about use of social media with many other students. While circles rotating, students will first ask to each students while they are standing face to face about  which social media tool they use. After, a full return completed, question will change and students will ask to each other for which aim they prefer using social media. The activity can be continued by adding new questions.  The general aim is to let each students discuss with many students about a specific idea of social media.
4	SIMULATION Subject: Information crimes	This activity is a role play activity. In this activity, students will learn information crimes and their penalty. Firstly, a court environment will be designed in the class. A student will be judge. Three students will be co-judge.  A few students will be public prosecutor and some students will be criminal. In this activity, some students is guessed that they have done some information crimes and their situation will be discusses by other in the court. After, discussing, firstly, it will be decided whether it is really an information crime or not. Secondly, it will be decided what penalty should be given if it is an information crime.
5	STICK DEBATE Subject: Digital citizenship	Each pupil receives three (lollipop) sticks. Every time that someone cannot speak, they must hand in a stick. In this activity, each student will have to talk about what to do to be a conscious digital citizenship and what the digital citizenship means. If students cannot give any answer they will lose a stick. The person who lost his all stick will be eliminated and the students who have most sticks in his hand will win.

Notice : I would like to mention that activities here are inspired or adapted from http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/key_stage_3/ALTM-KS3.pdf

Blog post 3

Active Learning

Active learning is to prepare yourself for learning with the way you describe. You decide how you learn, which way is suitable for you to learn and you decide how to test yourself to be sure about your own understanding. Active learning is supported with an important theory which is constructivism. Constructivism is the king of unrestricted education. Constructivism depends on manipulation and recreation of your own knowledge.  In this way, learner can learn from environment and he can identify some concepts, he can create new concepts in his mind by using those created concepts and differentiate those concepts from each other. During active learning one of the important methods is “wearing different hats”. Wearing different hats method teaches people to be able to have different shapes for different roles. For example, a teacher should be able to both evaluator and lieder, when one of them is required. Also, he should be able to think as a student when preparing an activity or learning materials to be able to look events from students’ dimension. The other important thing is “bridging gaps”. When you teach a class, you shouldn’t expect all students to have same knowledge background. There will definitely be students who have lack of knowledge background. Also, you may not have time to interest all students individually to bring them same stage so you should make students active to complete their own background.  In this way, students can have their own responsibility to catch their friends in terms of knowledge background with teacher leadership. In addition, active learning has some stages to support its education model. These stages are formed as four parts. The first part is called as Trigger. It belongs to introducing a topic with helpful assignment. The trigger should be broad to let students look from different dimensions and it should be relevant for students. Trigger is not limited in term of subject. Second part is called as Activity. In this stage, students work on trigger to make analysis and researches. The third part is Discussion. In this stage, what is done so far is presented to entire class by students who work on projects and they are discussed by other students. During discussion instructor describe key points but don’t judge any idea or opinion. The forth part is Summarizing. In this stage teacher make a general summarization about work done so far. Instructor defines important point, highlights main concepts.