Abstract:

In 2015-16 IES Hernani BHI Secondary School set off for an Innovative Global Project supported by the Education Department of the Basque Country, and strongly upheld by the local Berritzegunea (local support service for innovation and education improvement). It is a three year project and its main goal is to transform our school into an innovative organization with a student-centered learning approach by means of active methodologies, especially Project Based Learning (PBL) and an effective use of the Information Technology and Communication (ICT) tools.

In order to achieve these goals, teacher training on active methodologies has been essential, as well as the acquisition of ICT skills to facilitate this new approach in the learning/teaching process. In addition to the school in situ training, the coauthors of this abstract, as a part of a team of qualified teachers, coordinators and management staff, critical in the innovation process of the school, have attended courses and Job Shadowing visits in schools where best-practices in these fields are highly recognized, either in the State, Collegi Montserrat in Barcelona (Culture of Thinking, Learning Process Evaluation, Active Methodologies), as well as abroad, in the framework of a Erasmus K1A project (Best practices Benchmarking Course in Finland and Job Shadowing in Riihimaen Lukio School).

Although all the teachers of the school are nowadays involved in the experimentation of this methodological approach by the use of PBL and ICT as part of their year programme, one of the goals of the project for the current school year is to fully apply this new approach on all of the 6 groups of year 9 in the subject of Biology.

The main points of this implementation are PBL methodology for competences development, co-teaching, one to one computing (sometimes abbreviated “1:1”), gsuite for education (classroom based management, drive, google forms…) and process evaluation (autoevaluation, coevaluation and teacher’s evaluation) by means of rubrics and portfolio tools. Although some of the results of this full implementation experience will be evaluated at the end of the school year, we have partial results that indicate benefits on the students’ academic results with this learning approach , as well as on the progress perception and welfare of pupils and involved teachers.

Keywords:

ICT, PBL, biology, secondary, learning process.