effective learning environments
Task Furniture in Education - The research, design and development of innovative school furniture for classroom tasks, accommodating the latest technology and responding to new teaching methods.
Most task furniture in schools today is inadequate to meet the postural needs of students. With 88 million in full-time education in Europe alone and in the context of the proliferation of IT in the classroom and advances in teaching methods, posture, health and well-being of students is imperative.
The project emerges from ongoing and previous research undertaken in the Industrial Design Department at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin through its graduate school GradCAM and its international collaborators in the area of school furniture design and analysis. While there is a wide range of student task furniture available on the market today, most of it is inadequate to meet the postural needs of pupils and particularly in the context of the accelerating introduction of advanced classroom information technology.
European studies have found that 60% of school pupils experience back problems by the age of 16. The use of computers at home and in schools has changed the way that children and young adults learn, work and play. Yet, little emphasis has been placed on the health risks that arise from these changes in educational activity. The demand for appropriate school furniture is now urgent and in order to promote the health and well-being of future generations, the best possible school furniture is required. The introduction of European Standards EN1729 in 2006 has led to limited advances in pupil–centred furniture.
The aim of the project is to exploit the opportunity for knowledge transfer and new product development within a consortium of complementary researchers working in the field of Task Furniture in Education. ‘Task Furniture’ here refers to seating, desks and related items used by pupils in schools. The project is conceived and structured to research and develop new and innovative task furniture solutions addressing modern advances in teaching and learning, the integration of technology in the classroom and the postural implications for children and young adults in schools.
The initiative builds upon a strong foundation of the complementary experience and expertise in fields of research of the partners in TFE. In fulfilling the aim, it is intended to significantly narrow the gap between the known postural problems and the responses to them by the designers of the furniture currently available. Existing ergonomic research indicates serious long-term health problems being inflicted on children in our schools. This evidence only serves to highlight the corresponding deficit in design research that would examine creatively the potential for innovative, tested and proven, user-oriented furniture suitable for economic manufacture.
TFE commenced in January 2011 and run for four years. The total value of EU Commission funding is €1.33 million which will be matched by contributions from the partners. The project will be coordinated and led by researchers in NCAD in collaboration with academic and industry partners in Ireland, Germany, Portugal and the USA.
Reflectief leren op het werk – MIRROR-model, applicaties en serious games
In dit verslag worden de eerste resultaten van een 4-jarig onderzoeksproject van het 7KP besproken waarin een theoretische model werd ontwikkeld en gewerkt werd aan het opzetten en evalueren van een reeks “mirror”-applicaties gebaseerd op ons reflectieve Mirror-model. De resultaten tonen hoe applicaties en serious games de reflectie op het werk kunnen bevorderen door werknemers in staat te stellen te leren door over hun werkpraktijk en over hun persoonlijke leerervaringen na te denken.
An Interactive Learning Environment Fostering Creativity
Innovation and creativity are predictors of success in a knowledge-based. Yet the "fuzziness" and unpredictability of the creative workflow remains an obstacle for effective ICT support. Tools that require users to formalize and structure their ideas and working processes to a degree at odds with creative practice are frequently rejected. The IdeaGarden project therefore starts from an understanding of creative problem solving as a complex and situated knowledge practice rather than as a set of well-defined methods and techniques.
The project will develop a creative learning environment, capitalizing on the notion of visual information mash-ups as catalysts for creative working and learning. Adopting a practice-oriented approach will further the understanding of creativity in different settings and open up new perspectives for ICT support. This perspective will also give rise to new methods for seeding and cultivating creative knowledge practices in workplace and educational settings. To leverage the capabilities of current ICT systems, new interactions techniques will be devised that enable users to stay in control and collaboratively navigate the creative process, handling multiple types of resources. In addition, taking benefit of the "Linked Data" paradigm will provide new possibilities for creative search, the construction of knowledge as well as the reflection of the collaborative process.
The R&D work starts with research into creative knowledge work in industry (at LEGO and EOOS) and education (at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design). Based on the careful analysis of creative practices, we will envision and implement working demonstrators. Formative evaluation combined with a two-round development process will ensure that the IdeaGarden system fits its users' needs while summative evaluation will validate the overall utility of the approach to promote nonlinear, non-standard thinking and problem solving among experts and novices.
Rencontres de l’Observatoire des Ressources Multimédias en Education
Le numérique a investi toutes les formes de créations et d’échanges, bousculant jusqu’aux fondements du lien social. Il est devenu aujourd’hui un mode d’expression à part entière, et fait évoluer les modes de diffusion des œuvres et des objets culturels dans tous les domaines (patrimoine public et privé, production multimédia, innovation et recherche...).
Qu’il s’agisse de culture artistique, scientifique, technologique, médiatique, informationnelle, quelles médiations l’École doit-elle mettre en œuvre pour tirer parti de ce formidable gisement ? Comment permettre aux élèves de développer leur créativité et leur intelligence "sensible", en utilisant les nouvelles ressources éducatives, parcours, visites 3D, modélisations, jeux, vidéos… ?
Plus largement, comment former des jeunes à cette nouvelle culture et leur donner les moyens d’être acteurs de la société numérique ?
RACEV - Red temática sobre Aprendizaje Colaborativo en Entornos Virtuales
El objetivo de la Red de Aprendizaje Colaborativo en Entornos Virtuales es facilitar el aprendizaje colaborativo en línea entre estudiantes a través del análisis de los fenómenos de interacción social (colaborativa o cooperativa) a fin de proporcionar estrategias pedagógicas a los docentes. RACEV focaliza, por tanto, en los procesos de aprendizaje más allá del contexto en el cual se desarrolla o las herramientas tecnológicas empleadas.
CPDLab
The two-year CPDLab project, started in October 2011, aims to improve the quality of ICT-related Continuing Professional Development available to teachers, school leaders and other school staff and help schools become effective learning environments by offering a portfolio of training courses directly related to the needs of teachers in the future classroom.
The CPDLab project is a small, two year project, supported by the Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme as a Comenius Multilateral Project. It will deliver three training courses for teachers in the areas of:
- Interactive Whiteboards: innovative pedagogical use of Interactive Whiteboard technologies in secondary schools.
- E-Safety: improved eSafety policies in secondary schools, addressing issues such as cyber bullying, use of social networks, responsible use of mobile and Internet technologies, etc.
- Future Classroom Scenarios: implementation and dissemination of teaching and learning activities for the future classroom.
The first course modules will be piloted in summer 2012. The fully validated courses will be available from summer 2013.
Rationale for the development of CPDLab Courses
The development of the three courses has been prioritised, to address gaps in the current provision.
A wide range of Interactive Whiteboard courses exist today. Many of these are linked to vendors and are delivered as part of the initial purchase. IWB teacher communities have built up around this training, which encourage the sharing of ideas and these are particularly active within subject disciplines. However, recent research supported by Ministries of Education in European Schoolnet’s Interactive Whiteboard Working Group shows that there is a lack of a generic pedagogically-based IWB course.
In e-Safety, there is a wealth of information on the different issues and within each member state there are websites to download relevant information. There are training courses addressing specific issues e.g.: cyber-bullying. Recent research has confirmed there is still limited training for schools on this issue which has contributed to the launching a pilot for a schools’ eSafety Label.
The third course is linked to the iTEC project. This four-year, pan-European project is focused on the design of the future classroom. Divided into phases, the project will deliver a range of innovative learning activities and validate these via pilots in over 1,000 classrooms across Europe. The CPDLab project will develop training around these validated learning activities in order to spread and disseminate best practice.
Target groups for CPDLab training
The CPDLab courses are aimed at secondary schools. The main audience for the training will be teachers and trainers involved in continuous professional development within their school, region or country. Some modules will be of more interest to senior management and policy makers and the courses will be designed in a modular style to enable different learning pathways according to the needs of different groups.
Validation and Quality Assurance
Two teacher focus groups, consisting of teachers from each partner country, will contribute to the course development and validation process. The quality assurance process, will receive input and steering from a project Pedagogical Board comprising of experts in each of the areas, with review and critical friend input from an appointed independent evaluation expert.
Delivery of CPDLab training courses
The CPDLab Courses will be delivered as five day training courses, taking advantage of the in-service Comenius funding available for teachers. These courses will be delivered in the Future Classroom Lab, a fully equipped, reconfigurable, teaching and learning space that is part of the European Schoolnet office in Brussels.
The modular design of the courses, will offer the flexibility for various member states to take up all or some of the modules depending on their existing national and regional models. A course catalogue will be translated into the four languages of the project partners – Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Italian.
CPDLab Courses availability
To accelerate the dissemination and exploitation of the courses being developed, it is hoped that the first modules can be offered in the summer of 2012, following trialling with teacher focus groups and some early pilot training.
Timeframe
- Survey: Oct-Dec 2011
- Course development - phase 1: Jan-Mar 2012
- Course development Focus Group: Apr 2012 - Mar 2013
- Course development - phase 2: Jul 2012 - Jun 2013
- Course validation Focus Group: Jul 2012 - Jun 2013
- Final courses: Jul - Sep 2013
Sign Media
Sign Media is a website for Deaf Media Professionals who want to improve their written English skills.
Sign Media delivers an interactive learning experience that teaches elements of written English through sign language. Users will encounter a flexible and engaging learning environment, combining elements of video, animation and game-play. All learning activities are designed around authentic media documentation taken from the production process, such as Location Risk Assessments, Crew and Actors Call Sheets and Scripts, enabling deaf users to develop language skills that are directly transferrable to their work environment.The online learning tool is accessible for users of British, Austrian and Italian sign languages.
An Open Source Environment to Construct Information Services for Children
Puppy-IR is a consortium of 8 organizations from 4 European Countries. The consortium includes 5 universities, a children hospital, a multi-disciplinary museum and an international information services company; and is coordinated by the University of Twente (The Netherlands).
The consortium represents a unique combination of outstanding researchers who can carry out the work in the project at the required level of excellence, a user group that is competent and eager to absorb the envisaged results, and a partner with an interest in the post-project exploitation of the results. Through the strong commitment to open source development, the project is likely to have a strong impact in the research communities focusing on search technology, as well as on the market in which developers of dedicated services and products operate.
In a world where Internet and technology play such an important role as it does today, it is absolutely necessary that children can assess the meaning of gathered information and can in child-friendly ways get engaged in interaction with content. PuppyIR aims to facilitate the creation of child-centric information access, based on the understanding of the behaviour and needs of children.
To achieve this goal, an open source framework will be created in which advanced functionalities can be developed, and then deployed to create information services that are tailored towards the unique information needs of children and their intuitive style of interaction.
Inspired by article 17 of the convention on the Rights of the Child that grants the child has an explicit right of access to information, this research project aims to create an open source platform that can be used to build child-friendly information services that assist children in the interaction with information, whether it is for fun and entertainment, or for learning and education.
Conférence EIAH 2013- Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain
Le champ scientifique des EIAH concerne les environnements informatiques dont la finalité explicite est de susciter et d'accompagner l'apprentissage humain. Ces travaux convoquent des spécialistes de disciplines aussi diverses que la psychologie, les sciences de l'éducation, la didactique, l'informatique, les sciences sociales, l'ergonomie.
La conférence EIAH 2013 se donne pour ambition de réunir ces spécialistes et de dégager entre eux des voies de convergence susceptibles de faire progresser une réflexion intégrée sur l'avenir de la recherche dans le domaine, mais aussi de dégager des pistes et des modèles pour la conception et la mise à disposition d'outils et de méthodologies susceptibles de faire progresser l'apprentissage sous toutes ses formes.
La conférence EIAH est organisée tous les deux ans, elle rassemble régulièrement autour de 200 participants, principalement des chercheurs, enseignants chercheurs & doctorants mais est également ouverte à tous les publics (concepteurs, enseignants, formateurs, responsables de formation...) intéressés par les travaux de recherche en EIAH et leur mise en pratique en contexte d'apprentissage.
Innovatieve onderwijs- en leerpraktijken: sleutelelementen voor de ontwikkeling van creatieve klaslokalen in Europa
In dit artikel wordt bekeken hoe onderwijs- en leerpraktijken op systeemniveau kunnen worden vernieuwd, en wordt een duidelijk omschreven visie en geconsolideerd voorstel gegeven voor creatieve klaslokalen waarin hun holistische en systemische aard, de verwachte leerresultaten en hun pedagogische, technologische en organisatorische dimensies voor innovatie worden verduidelijkt. Creatieve klaslokalen worden beschouwd als innovatieve leeromgevingen waarin het potentieel van ICT om leer- en onderwijspraktijken in formele, niet-formele en informele omgevingen te verbeteren volledig is opgenomen.
Het voorgestelde multi-dimensionele concept voor creatieve klaslokalen bestaat uit acht elkaar aanvullende en onderling verbonden hoofddimensies en een reeks van 28 referentieparameters (“basiscomponenten”). Centraal in creatieve klaslokalen staat het concept dat innovatieve onderwijspraktijken alleen ontstaan wanneer leraren ICT gebruiken om nieuwe en verbeterde vormen van open, collaboratieve en zinvolle leeractiviteiten te creëren in plaats van de traditionele onderwijsvormen, zoals theoretische lessen en taakgebaseerd leren, aan te houden.
Er wordt een voorafgaande analyse gepresenteerd van twee bestaande gevallen van innovatie in het leren die door ICT mogelijk gemaakt wordt om te laten zien (i) hoe de voorgestelde hoofddimensies en referentieparameters in werkelijke omgevingen worden ingevoerd, waarbij verschillende typen creatieve leslokalen in detail worden vorm gegeven, en (ii) de systemische benadering te beschrijven die nodig is voor de duurzame implementatie en de geleidelijke integratie van creatieve klaslokalen in Europa.