6.18.2014

Experience with SMART amp

Story One

 What is team spirit? Shared work consisting of planned and divided meaningful tasks, sharing information, supporting each other and team determination.

My first lesson with SMART amp was about to begin. Quite frankly, I was more nervous than my students. To support collaboration and prevent possible struggling with the system, I´d decided to divide students into four teams, which turned out to be a really good move.

Our topic was Fame” so the lesson objective was “Find something about these celebrities”. I chose to include a literary person, a sportsperson, an actor, and a singer. The students were to come up with their names, nationalities, and the reason why they’d become famous. Each part was provided with some sort of a hint. The best bit about the hints was that they could be found anywhere: their books, maps on the walls, websites, videos, or articles. All possible resources make a big mingle.

As there were four people in a team, I’d decided to give them a two-minute penalty for speaking any other language than English. The trick was that if, for example, they started speaking Czech all at once, the team wouldn´t have been able to work and lose their precious time to work. The students were perfect and only one of them was sent to the penalty bench. Honestly, I was very strict as he’d only said a Czech word for a “dot” while dictating his friend a web link (his disappointment is clearly visible in the video).

Take a look at our workspace


Working on a few different tasks in a digital workspace forced my students to decide on the steps to take and a way of dividing their work. Additionally, they were checking each other´s work and giving support in case of need. It was bliss. The final applause to the winning team was in reality aimed at all my students. They made me a really proud teacher who had been thoroughly enjoying his work.

See a few photos and video of the lesson.





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