Cooperative Learning and project-based learning

The digital Era has come so fast that the educational system is facing a big challenges on how to cope with this new generation of ULTRA-STIMULATED kids.

The big picture is : how can teachers design a class of 45 min to be super fun, stimulating, challenging, rewarding and with constant personal feedback? These are all the characteristics of digital games, who attract kids so easily, and for looooong hours, non-stop.

In underprivileged communities of Brazil, the hardest thing is to convince a student that studies are important. Most kids have tough lives and they have to work to provide food for their families, or girls are getting pregnant at the age of 13, and other kids, teenagers are already involved in drugs. No matter how poor these kids are, a lot of them will have a cheap smartphone. And that is where our strategies come to play:

1 - Outdoor classroom, where they capture everything on their smartphones and transform the information into their assignments

We call this EDUCOMMUNICATION, a methods designed by the French teacher Freinet , and now we are adapting the method to the reality of Brazil.

a) Partial results: We are experiencing something never seen in the history of the community, where students are feeling happy and stimulated to continue their studies, to participate on the activities, and to help their own community with the social issues faced by all of them.
b) Students are being rewarded with small prizes when they complete the activities, and when they win some competitions, such as photograph competition, best video, best assignment. We have seen a positive attitude among the students.
c) Our students are dreaming bigger. They now can look at their future and see themselves reaching out goals.

While this project is educational, it becomes environmental in evert aspect of the activities .

Here I present some photos of their activities :

Cleaning up the Mangroves

For more of these activities please visit our facebook page :
Rizoma do Trairi
https://www.facebook.com/RizomadeCanaan