Illustrations:
Ilustrator: Igor Ribič
Category Archives: Programme
What have we learnt from the school research?
Illustrations from keynotes:
Illustrator: Igor Ribič
Spotlight (29 th May)
Synergy of e-Projects or How we Learn from Each Other
Guests:
Amela Sambolić Beganović, ZRSŠ, Simona Granfol, GJP, Maja Vičič, ZAMS, Janko Harej, ŠC Nova Gorica in Dragana Kupres, CARNET, Croatia
Moderators:
Anita Poberžnik in Andreja Bačnik, ZRSŠ
Speakers’ cues
Amela Sambolić Beganović, ZRSŠ
The National Education Institute of The Republic of Slovenia (NEIS) has been engaged in the following five e-projects during the last two years: e- Textbooks – focusing on science subjects, Innovative Pedagogy 1-to-1 in light of the 21st century competences, Eufolio, the Creative Classroom and the e-School Bag project. Almost all the NEIS consultants have been involved in various, mostly paralelly run and complementary project activities. Successful and quality implementation of the designed project goals and expected results was made possible through the synergy and co-operative interaction among the five project groups. I will present the design and implementation of four e-workshops which were created as a result of the synergy among some, out of the numerous, e-project activities.
Simona Granfol, Gimnazija Jožeta Plečnika
Creative Classroom project is coordinated by European Schoolnet and brings together the work of partners from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, slovenia and Great Britain. monitoring and evaluation of the participating schools and evaluation of innovative practices led and implemented by University of Wolverhampton in the UK.
The project encouraged innovation at different levels of the organization, implementation and development of teaching practice. Innovative was the participation of teachers, representatives of industry, who offered the use of a single hardware and software for testing and use, and representatives of national educational institutions planning to introduce ICT into the education system.
In project teams, which consisted of teachers of different countries and schools, we develop educational scenarios and innovative practices in the field of projektnosodelovalnega work, individualization of teaching, flipped teaching and learning by creating learning materials.
Pupils in the implementation of individual learning activities to develop competencies of the 21st century, teachers were involved in the planning process of learning activities and (self-) evaluation of learning outcomes in order to take over (co) responsibility for their learning and achievements.
In this project, we delve into the learning process and learning how to plan and implement the educational process, that it does support the students as much as possible. In developing and researching innovative pedagogical practices are teachers try to move away from entrenched patterns of teaching and using new media to explore new ways and perspectives on learning.
Maja Vićič Karbonja, ZAMS
Cooperation is one of the most important competencies of the 21st century. At school, we sometimes still call it cheating and teachers very much love our copyrighted work and rarely share it with others. Well, it used to be so in the past. Participants in e-projects are aware that more heads are better than one, so we sat with each other and learned from each other. We were discussing what the examples of the best teaching praxis are, in cooperation we prepared some training for teachers, formed criteria by which teachers can design a self-evaluation of their lessons and created a common form, that directs teachers to the thoughtful use of ICT in various stages of teaching and learning and links activities of students with the pursued objectives.
Dragana Kupres, CARNET
CARNet has an extensive experience in implementing projects in technology and education on a national and international level. European structural funds offer new opportunities for investments in large-scale projects. However, these demanding projects are challenging the way how our organizational processes are defined, organizational capacities for implementing project activities, how to evaluate the success of the project results and finally, how to sustain them after investment period.
Scaling-up pilot projects to a national level, except for raising costs, implicates the need for building organizational capacities and also how the organization is structured.
When it comes to evaluation of large-scale projects, the question is what to measure, for how long, and can we use some already existing models for evaluating large-scale e-education projects?
Sustainability of such projects is still an open question, especially in terms of exchanging project results between different projects, funding programmes, even countries. Are we ready for that and what would be the next step?
Spotlight (28th May)
Learners’ Digital Competence
Guests:
Mitja Čepič Vogrinčič, PI, Lidija Kralj, OŠ Veliki Bukovec, Hrvaška, Nives Kreuh, ZRSŠ
Neža Barbara Brečko, FDV, UL in Radovan Krajnc, ZRSŠ
Moderators:
Andreja Bačnik in Anita Poberžnik, ZRSŠ
Speakers’ cues
Mitja Čepič Vogrinčič, researcher at the Educational Research Institute
ICILS 2013 – Computer and Information Literacy is a Result of Teacher’s Work
The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS 2013) is the first international study that measured the computer and information literacy (CIL) of 8th graders in Slovenia and other countries. The study was coordinated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).
Through the study we wanted to measure the CIL of the students, defined as the ability of the individual to use computers to investigate, create and communicate in order to participate effectively at home, at school, in the workplace.
219 Slovenian primary schools (3740 8th grade students and 2787 teachers) were involved in the study. The achievement of Slovenian students was slightly above the international average. Out of 14 countries whose result allowed for comparison Slovenia’s 8th graders came out between ranks 7 and 10 with the average score of 511 (the international average was 500).
Other findings of the study seem to be more important than rankings. The study assessed technical, receptive and productive skills of students, but also the evaluation skills and safe and ethical use of computer-based information. It showed that CIL in students is not acquired via some kind of “osmotic” processes and it also challenged the notion of contemporary youth as being digitally native. CIL as other “literacies” is in many ways dependent on the teacher’s work.
Lidija Kralj, OŠ Veliki Bukovec, Croatia
Generations that are currently receiving their education and those yet to come should get prepared for everyday interaction with information and communication technology. European Parliament and the Council of the European Union included digital competence in key competencies which each person needs to possess in order to adapt to the rapidly changing world. Their definition of digital competence, along with knowledge and skills, include critical attitude toward the responsible use of ICT. At the moment, Croatia does not have a national strategy for the internet safety and not even the minimum of children’s knowledge about appropriate and safe use of internet is obligatory in school curriculum. Currently, students in compulsory schools in Croatia have a chance to obtain digital competencies and knowledge only if they choose an elective subject – Informatics in grades 5 to 8, or if similar extra-curriculum activity is enabled for grades 1 to 4. Curriculum for Informatics is ten years old and not aligned with today’s conditions.
OŠ Veliki Bukovec together with partners OŠ Popovača, OŠ “Mladost”, OŠ “Gripe” and OŠ “Mato Lovrak”, finished a 16-month European Union-funded project ” Children’s safety on the Internet ” developing new school curriculum area for children’s safety on the Internet for students aged 7 -14, their parents, teachers and local community. Curriculum consist of pedagogical-didactical model, acceptable use policies, multimedia resources, textbooks and guides. The project aims to improve students’ digital competences and encourage children to assume responsibility for their own safety with a focus on empowerment, emphasizing responsible behaviour and digital citizenship and to raise student teacher, parents and general public awareness and understanding of issues relating to children’s safety online in synergy with the EU policies. All educational resources are available on project web site http://petzanet.hr
Nives Kreuh, ZRSŠ
To be or not to be
When we ask ourselves what student digital competence stands for, we think of digital natives and March Prensky who defined the term already fourteen years ago. However, at that time there was no Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. While we accepted these views and now everyone is talking about them, another set of changes has been taking place and the concept of digital natives is changing in the direction of a different culture rather than technology.
So what is the future of education? Ideas already exist: we can no longer talk about learning, but rather becoming – becoming a good, capable, world-improving person; technology is an extension of our mind in the physical and metaphorical sense (not only in terms of smart clothes), which is a complete novelty for us, yet it is already changing society. The fact is that we need a completely new curriculum, which will no longer be classics, but will consist of subjects such as effective thinking, behaviour, relationships, achievements … with the strong support of technology.
Such education should also be part of the professional development of each individual and especially educators. The international project MENTEP will produce online self-assessment tool for teacher digital competences with the aim to encouraging professional development for teachers, and the areas of self-assessment are based in the direction of the new curriculum. A little fragment …
Neža Barbara Brečko, FDV, UL
Digital competence is one of the eight key competences which should be acquired during the schooling. Under the auspices of the European Commission, the Digital competence framework was developed. The framework is represented as a matrix composed of five areas of digital competence (information, communication, content creation, security, and problem solving) and competencies belonging to those areas.
The proposed framework can serve as a meta framework within which can other frameworks, initiatives, curricula and certifications can be found. Although the framework is very detailed in the listing and describing the competencies needed today for being able to operate in the digital environment it allows the competencies to be administered in various ways, depending on context and use (also in education, curriculum development etc). The question that we pose is, which digital skills should pupils acquire during schooling, in what way they should be acquired and how should these competencies be mesured.
Radovan Krajnc, ZRSŠ
Are digital natives really digitally competent?
It is believed that today’s generation has mastered computer science. That is not true. Computer science is the science that is not included in the compulsory curriculum of primary and secondary school. In schools, there are clubs, extracurricular activities and elective computing subjects attended by a certain percentage of students. The majority of students are not attending these activities. International survey ICILS 2013 noted that only 16% of 8th graders know how to independently solve a problem with the computer. What can schools and teachers do to improve this situation?
It is important that the belief in the introduction replace with a new belief. Students are not born with the knowledge and if something is not learned, then we can reliably assume that these knowledge is not present. We have in mind all students, especially those who do not live in a favorable social and economic environment, who not have educated parents and do not know how to use digital equipment meaningful and useful. Here the school should carry out its role. The school should reduce the differences among students, so it would make sense that schools make a reflection on how coordinatingly develop the digital competences in all subjects across the vertical. There is no one who could do it instead of us. By coordination and planning the main role should take the principal and the so called ROID (organizer of computing activities).
Teaching informatics in virtual environment OpenSim
Mirko Đukić , Zavod Antona Martina Slomška, Škofijska gimnazija
The essence of the article is to present a »slightly different« project-based and student centred way of teaching informatics. It leans on the concepts of gamification of the learning process, such as the game based approach of learning, learning by doing approach, student centred learning, encouraging the creativity and spreading knowledge among students. In the virtual environment (OpenSim), students consider the topics from the curriculum, namely programming, presentation of vector graphic and bitmap images. First, we discuss the common theme in class (this year: “medieval castles”). Then, students form small groups and, partly guided and partly independently, create contents in the common virtual environment (OpenSim). This is how they learn the characteristics of a vector graphic. By clothing the created objects with textures made by them, students adopt the processing of a bitmap images. Students learn to code in the programming language Scratch. They export the written programs in scripts (Linden Script) and then import them to OpenSim and paste them as the behaviour of a certain object. Students learn in the common environment where they have the opportunity to communicate, observe the work of their neighbours, help each other and learn from each other. The final part of the teaching theme is dedicated to assessment, but not of the final product. The student creates an object and decorates it with the logical behaviour (for example: a draw bridge). When assessing programming, the product is assessed at the level of concepts, e.g. the program contains appropriate branching, a loop, a variable, a function, etc.
Teamwork in the Cloud
Vesna Kolenc Potočnik, Bogdan Škof, DOBA Fakulteta za uporabne poslovne in družbene študije Maribor
The masters study programme at DOBA Faculty, which runs fully online, is faced with numerous challenges on how to enable distance teamwork and ensure a high quality of such teamwork. Students work using synchronous and asynchronous communication. In this respect, we focus on the challenges that accompany the implementation of team tasks at a virtual meeting with the teacher, which were solved by including additional tools to the ones offered by the Blackboard learning environment (Forum, Blog, Wiki, Tasks, File Exchange), i.e. tools offered by Blackboard Collaborate and Microsoft Office 365. Blackboard Collaborate is a virtual classroom that allows for video, audio and chat communication between the teacher and students in the team. The teacher can assign students (or they can assign themselves) to individual virtual rooms where they communicate in teams, while the teacher can move through the teams and monitor their work, provide advice and answers their questions. The students prepare their assignments in documents that are saved in their cloud (OneDrive) and that can be simultaneously edited by using Office Online tools (Word, Excel, OneNote). When the assignment has been completed, the teacher can return all students to the main virtual classroom, where they can present their products to all teams. The introduction and integration of new tools, which enable greater efficiency (time), better communication and better text formatting and editing options, has thus ensured higher quality of virtual teamwork.
Implementation of Formative Assessment with Digital Tools
Marjeta Borstner, ZRSŠ, Nataša Kralj, Prva gimnazija Maribor, ZRSŠ
In the article, the implementation of formative assessment into the instruction of foreign languages in the grammar schools and the elementary schools will be presented. In the processes of formative assessment different tools are used and so teachers can gather evidences for learning processes, students understanding and progress. Formative assessment also stimulates interactions between teachers and students and among students themselves. What is more, formative assessment enables teachers to adapt and develop teaching strategies according to the students needs. The examples of good practices will be presented with the implementation of digital tools for different phases in the instruction processes: testing pre-knowledge (Clickers, Poll Anywhere), common planning of goals and objectives (virtual classrooms, Wiki), fostering peer co-operation (Google Docs, Poll, Padlet) and giving feedback and evaluation of learning processes by teachers and students. For guiding and self-regulation of students learning processes, the use of ePortfolio created in the web application Mahara will be shown, whereby we will focus on the content tab My learning which enables students to plan their learning, improve it with regular teachers and peers feedbacks, reflect on it and evaluate it. The use of digital tools in instruction prooved to be benificial, because students motivation and responsibility for learning and knowledge have grown. At the same time gathing of evidences, checking understading and evaluation of learning processes were carried out in a more transparent and accessible way.
ICT help at assessment and monitoring of students’ progress
Simon Dražič, OŠ Šmarje pri Kopru
ICT can speed up our work and make it easier when gathering information about knowledge and understanding of our students. That is why we need a tool that is free, efficient, with many additional options and easy to use. The presented tool is designed by a teacher and meets the above criteria. With it, we can speedily evaluate tasks, quizzes, tests … A lot of teachers and students are already using Google drive. With a Flubaroo add on, and a questionnaire in Google Forms teacher can • quickly review the results of every student and • figure out which one of them needs extra help. • Get an average score on each question and • histogram of the distribution of results. • Discover a question or task in which students had the most problems (or it was too easy), and • sent students an e-mail with their achievement and optionally an additional message for the wohle gropup or individual student. In addition to this learning analytics, which can be used to improve our work as teachers and students achievements, it is important that (unlike in the most other LMS) students can make quizzes on their own: individually or in a team and so become an active partner in learning process, learn form each other … Tool is also appropriate for younger students, since the application is not required for solving quizzes.
Learning computer programming in the virtual world supported by formative assessment
Boštjan Ravnjak, OŠ Janka Glazerja Ruše; Franc Jakoš, OŠ Janka Glazerja Ruše in OŠ Selnica ob Dravi
This paper describes an introduction to learning computer programming in a multi-user virtual world through educational game “Aladin and his flying carpet”. The novelty regarding learning environment is formative assessment, implemented in the educational game. For this purpose we used functionality of “Webintercom”, which is part of the plugin SloodleSet 1.2 for learning environment Moodle and virtual environment Opensimulator. Connection between the virtual and the educational environment was enabled by plugin. All text written in the virtual world by pupils is stored in the MySQL database of the Moodle environment. We had to write a program to print the written text on objects in the virtual world in form of textures. We chose to work with gifted children from 6th grade, which have not met with computer programming in the learning process yet. We integrated elements of formative assessment in the process, in order to assist us in monitoring pupils’ progress and in understanding of programming concepts. We monitored three key phases: previous knowledge, strategies and self-evaluation of pupils. Phases were placed in areas of the game where we wanted pupils to spend more time thinking about the rules of the game and solving programming problems. In these phases pupils were able to see what other pupils are thinking about and see other solutions of the same problem. By doing so, pupils gained deeper insight into the educational game. Pupils’ self-evaluations show that by using this method doing tasks and solving problems was easier for them.
Using a humanoid robot to teach English irregular verbs
Boštjan Resinovič, Šolski center Celje
ICT is used in education for different purposes: to make concepts more graphical and interesting, simplify procedures, increase productivity and/or motivation, decrease necessary strain … This presentation shows how to use Nao, a humanoid robot, to increase students’ motivation and focus and consequently achieve better effects in learning new material and in knowledge consolidation. To demonstrate the possibilities offered by the usage of a humanoid robot a classical theme in learning foreign languages was chosen, namely English irregular verbs. In order to achieve this a program that enables a robot to recognize any form of an irregular verb and lets it say or spell all three forms, play a prerecorded irregular verbs rap, recite it or stop it after an infinitive to let students give the remaining two forms was written. The program running on the robot helps the teacher to introduce and consolidate new material as well as to grade students and at the same time demonstrates how teachers of different professions can learn from each other and create new educational products, in this case a robot students can learn from.