Toolset 4 – Designing Innovative Learning Activities

This toolset guides you through the process of using Future Classroom Scenarios as inspiration for creating innovative Learning Activities with the intention of bringing advanced approaches in learning and teaching, supported by technology, to the classroom.

Future classroom scenarios are intended to act as a vision of what may be possible and desirable for the future of learning and teaching in your school. To make these visions a reality, a group of teachers should work together to create a set of Learning Activities which will include innovative ideas in a realistic and practical context.

A Learning Activity describes what teachers and learners do in the teaching and learning process. It shows how digital technology can be used to provide a valuable and engaging learning experience to support the development of 21st century skills.

The starting point for designing a Learning Activity, is to select or create a suitable Future Classroom Scenario (see Toolset 3). You then need to gather a group of teachers who will share ideas and inspiration and collaboratively design Learning Activities.

This toolset also provides useful tools and resources that will help you identify and select learning technologies and other resources and include them in your Learning Activity.

Inspiring user stories

An Italian primary school teacher describes how the use of Future Classroom Learning Activities has benefited her students' learning.
 

 

An Italian teacher describes how her students used Future Classroom Learning Activities to create video presentations, or 'book trailers', for the books that they were studying in their English class.

The tools in this toolset

  • Tool 4.1 – Learning Activity Design: This document provides guidance on running a workshop to design innovative Learning Activities, based on Future Classroom Scenarios. It also includes a template for creating and sharing Learning Activities.
  • Tool 4.2 – Learning Designer: This online tool can be used as an alternative approach to designing Learning Activities. It is a user-friendly interactive tool for organising learning, and also a handy repository of teacher-created open educational resources in different languages.
  • Tool 4.3 – Technologies for Learning Activities: This tool provides links to Web 2.0 tools and resources that can be used to design Learning Activities.