Jasmina Velikanje, Gimnazija Jurija Vege, Idrija
Any teacher conducting lessons should help his students realize that learning is a lifelong process. It is intrinsic motivation and taking responsibility for learning achievements and thus knowledge that make lifelong learning possible. Managing ones own learning is the key to success, personal satisfaction and self-confidence. My goals in the lesson plan presented here were to motivate the students for learning, encourage them to take responsibility for their learning success. They planned their learning accordingly to to their prior knowledge, they co-created success criteria, studied the learning materials independendly and did a peer- evaluation of their learning proofs. The topic of the lessons was a description of a house or an appartment. To be able to do all this we chose an e-learning environment, ePortfolio Mahara, whisch enabled the students to improve their digital skills through context. The first task was for the students to describe a house, rooms and furniture. We dicussed how and when this knowledge may be useful in their life. Together we set success criteria for a good description of a house. Students worked in ePortfolio,where they created a new fold Mein Haus – meine Wohnung. Each student answered some questions regarding his pripr knowledge of the topic, set his/her personal learning goals, strategies and decied what would be his/her learning proof. In the following 3 lessons students studied the topic in groups. They used studentss book, e-dictionary, and Internet sources. The latter had been chosen in advance but the students could also choose other, additional sources. While studying the topic they created their own notes and vocabulary of new words. As a learning proof they wrote a description of their own house/home, published it in ePortfolio, shared it with a chosen classmate and the teacher. Before every student had to give feedback on the proof to the chosen classmate, pairs of students had to write in a forum what they believe is good feedback information. After that each student gave his partner feedack information, the teacher gave feedback to all students. In this way they had an opportunity to improve their work, to approach the learning goals. At the end students did selfevaluation in the ePortoglio Mahara. Their answers show that they felt more motivated for learning because they could choose learning materials themselves, they liked the group work and most of the students are satisfied with the learning proof. Most of them believe that the knowledge gained will certainly be useful in their life They also liked computer work and the challenge of using ePorfolio.
