Miha Miklavc, OŠ Vransko Tabor

We live in the world of high technology in which robots are the integral part of our lives. Not only do they make our work easier, but they are also becoming autonomous systems, which can replace humans in certain ways. At our school we wanted to get to know more about the functioning and operating of robots. In the previous school year, within the project Popestrimo šolo, we started the activity lego systems, which involves pupils of different age. Within the activity pupils are discovering lego mechanics and lego robotics. They are learning about the robots functioning with the use of MINDSTORMS NXT and EV3 Education programs. The applications are loaded on their smart phones in order to operate the robots. The main motto of this activity is pupils cooperation and cooperative learning. Older pupils have the role of a teacher and help younger with more complex tasks, such as robots construction, programming and their operating. Pupils are not limited in their activities, because we want them to develop their creativity and imagination. Their ideas are fresh and very interesting; they always strive for further improvements. The greatest challenge for them is to combine different technologies. Lego systems activity offers a new form of Science based learning and acquiring new technical skills. The knowledge of Math and Physics is presented in a funny and playful way. The activity itself shows that only cooperative experiential learning can lead to better results.

Marija Blažič, OŠ Dobje

Tablets have impacted teaching essentially. Students have become teachers and teachers have become students. Roles are changing constantly during classes. The communication is also running after classes. E-textbook has replaced regular textbook, made of paper, at Mathematics. We use GeoGebra, which contributes at understanding of geometry. Students help each other while learning the rules of planning. Online classroom also enables testing the knowledge by quizes. Wolfram and the programme of spatial awareness on torina, atlas okolja and others, help with developing spatial awareness at students and learning by game. Students have a huge draft of studying possibilities. They help each other, research, and share conclusions with school mates and teachers. They evaluate the worth of program and expose its pros and cons. They quickly find the connection between everyday life and subject matter. Students find tablets an additional motivation at classes. It contributes to improving knowledge and distinction. They discover their powerful fields and improve at self-evaluation, but also learn to accept critical thinking of schoolmates. Teachers can also learn a lot from them. They often find interesting and useful programs during surfing. Cooperation between co-workers, the exchange of experience and learning about programs is also significant. Technology is becoming the way of life and there is no way back. We will just have to incorporate it in our way of life. We raise students to be equipped with knowledge needed for their life success.

Goran Bezjak, Zavod Antona Martina Slomška, Škofijska gimnazija

The essence of the workshop is to demonstrate the passage of teaching physics from the system 1:30 to the system 1:1. With this workshop, I will show how we can achieve this passage by using the application NearPod on the mobile devices (and the suitable network infrastructure). Explaining physics often includes drawing (graphs, sketches, sketching experiments …). We usually do this by drawing, for example, a graph on the blackboard, where we use the frontal shape, according to the system 1:30. In a case like this, not all students are always active. However, we can provide the explanation with a graph by introducing the subject matter gradually. In order to do this, we use the pre-prepared materials (for example, a graph’s base) in the application NearPod, where each student (partially guided) draws their own prospective solution. This is the way to activate every student. At the same time, the application enables us to forward in consideration the (chosen) solutions to all students or to project them on the blackboard, which provides the further discussion about the subject matter. With this practice I encourage the critical thinking and evaluation among the peers, since students have the opportunity to evaluate (or comment) the (half) products of their peers (in our case the graph) while being the co-creators of presenting a subject matter. The advantage of this method of teaching is activeness of every student in developing and explaining the matter. My role becomes decentralized and becomes the role of a moderator, who  only guides the learning process. This way students can learn from each other, which leads to increased motivation: If my classmate can do it, I can do it too.

Urška Godler, Katja Gajšek,  OŠ Hruševec, Šentjur

In optional unrequited classes german and film for forth grade students we made a project in witch children had learned from one and other. During german class children learned a song What does the fox say? in german language. The children of film class then filmed their performance and made a video. That is how the children learned the process of filmmaking, handling the camera, film designee, cosmography and german words in a fun way. The technology we used were iPads, Go pro camera, iMove program for making of the film and Sam animation program for making animation. The porpoise of the project was for children to learn different roles and jobs recurred for making of the film and exchange of knowledge between two subjects.

Renata Kern, OŠ Šmartno pod Šmarno Goro

Teaching is a challenge and a challenge is great motivation for changes and diversity. Teaching fine arts is a pleasure to me as we always test theoretical contents, we explore through creating, designing different materials. Information and statements are often not enough for a student to understand the art theory, so it was a challenge to me to invite pupils to explain the given theoretical novelty through experience. In the 4th grade I found a way in the sculptural content for students to research and find differences between two types of sculpture by using tablets. I upgraded the task and told the pupils to research in pairs. They could decide by themselves which role to take or even to change the roles. One of them took over the role of the cameraman, the other one prepared the sculpture for recording on a rotating surface. The task requested mutual cooperation, making agreements, discovering the facts, validating and proving the claim. Through this experience they understood the differences between a relief and a rounded plastic as they came across a minor obstacle during the recording. They could record a small statue of a human being from all sides, but they were not able to record a relief in the same way. In just a few minutes students became acquainted with the theoretical claim, they were able to understand and prove it by using the tablet recorder.

Andrej Šuštaršič, Gimnazija Bežigrad

Students like something new, better and therefore more interesting, which inspires and enriches them in general. This notion presents a challenge for school as well as for the teachers to listen to the students and provide a suitable studying environment. The teacher can provide the students with more adequate materials, perform better activities and ways of teaching and use equivalent methods. Web classrooms differ in terms of different school subjects. Teachers put various sources and activities in a web classroom and upgrade or change the web classroom in terms of quality. This article presents mostly the qualitative aspect of upgrading the web classroom in Information science lessons, bearing in mind the opinions of the students about the drawbacks, adequacy and quality of each source and activity in the web classroom. There are different possibilities to be used to find out about the students’ opinions regarding the use and quality of the web classrooms. Sometimes even a short conversation or a critical evaluation during the classes is enough. A forum in the web classroom can also be used or a survey can be carried out. It is best to use all three options since students’ critical comments at their first web-classroom entry are very welcome for corrections and changes. The forum enables us to follow the students’ opinions all the time and the survey makes it possible to get more complex opinions. A critical student’s response can serve as new knowledge for the teacher.

Mateja Drnovšek,  OŠ Polje

We introduced the skill of critical thinking in classroom with EUfolio project. With the help of formative assessment, we tried to promote a sense of responsibility for students own work and progress. At history lessons we achieved that with asking questions. Questions were designed by students between learning old lessons and confrontation with new educational material. In the beginning we introduced them with tips of questions, differences between questions and what we expect for answer. In groups they formed question which were used in written test as well as oral questioning. Students upgraded asking questions by making their own worksheets. They set the criteria of good worksheet and made it. Together we reviewed all the worksheets and based on their criteria evaluated them. With the help of electronic tool Mahara and tab my learning in e-Portfolio student determinate their knowledge, set goals and strategies to achieve this goal. Because they worked in groups they learned from each other, discovered that they think differently, that for some of them closed questions are easier then open types of questions that some of them are more visual types and they need visual material and others are better critical thinkers. They also gained a sense of responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Ljiljana Mićović Struger,  OŠ J. Glazerja, Ruše

Formative knowledge assessment in EUfolio Formative assessment helps teachers to monitor thier students progress. It is based on diagnosting the prior knowledge, planning based on prior knowledge and building up the individual students knowledge according to his abilities. Teachers role is to encourage and create adequate learning environment which allows students to perform at their best. The most important task of the student is to take on responsibility for his own learning and progress, to set his objectives in accordance with his abilities as well as common and personal objectives. I use Eufolio which enables the student to become aware of that through exactly defined steps, that make him use different thinking processes while studying. Firstly, the student is familiarized with the theme, which will be discussed, the description of the theme is usually prepared by teacher (but it can be also prepared by a student), the keywords are extracted after the theme description, assessment of prior knowledge and setting objectives. Duringin that the student is also thinking about the learning strategies, proofs of his learning, which is shown with the use of knowledge and self evaluation of his own work. EUfolio enables the student to do things, when he decides so. It also enables him to do things at his own pace and share his findings with other students and teacher. This way he is constantly getting feedback, which allows him to make the best possible progress.

Brigita Praprotnik, Prva gimnazija Maribor

Using Facebook group as means of occasional communication and learning through homework has been in use with my students for a few years. They took this way of work as a normal part of the learning process and so I could introduce a novelty: each week a student was appointed as a keeper of the group with the task to teach his classmates something new. Being put in the position to carry out this demanding task they had to use previously acquired knowledge of critical evaluation of the suitable material and sources, which they searched on the internet. Moreover they had to show their knowledge of asking essential questions, which would stimulate their classmates’ contemplation and show their ability of judgement with well developed arguments. Student keepers took over the evaluation of the task, mostly by using the »sandwich« technique of communicational skills for feedback. Introducing the new way of work did not run smoothly, the students needed some time to accept their classmate as a »teacher«. The increasing sense of responsibility has been noted on each side from one task to another.

Špela Pirih, Kranjski vrtci, Čebelica

Modern technology became very important part of our lives. Despite that I noticed that working with children doesn’t include ICT, even more, kindergarten teachers are avoiding of its use. Meanwhile primary schools are successfully using information and communications technology for learning and working with children in classes. This is also shown through various examples of good practices, which are represented through various educational trainings. Kindergarten teachers are still actively using older methods that don’t include ICT. The reason for that is probably in lack of experiences and available resources. During the years I spent working in kindergarten, and in interaction with children, I noticed that their knowledge and skills of using ICT is increasing. And because I wanted to include this knowledge in to the process of working with children, I asked myself how could I carry out this on a level of pre-school children. I slowly started to include ICT resources in working with children and positive reactions were showing in the analysis of work and planning. Another advantage, that I noticed, is that various technological devices can also be an extremely powerful motivational tool. In my contribution I would like to present an example of kindergarten project My body. It was a project where I used different information and communications technology resources. Activities were planned together with children and they were conducted through different internet connections, computer games on the tablet, recording with camera and taking pictures with digital camera. I also introduced the topic in to the early hours of teaching English, where the use of ICT resources represents an additional help and better and more interesting understanding.