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Colabs portal |
By Márta Turcsányi-Szabó leader of ELTE-HU
"Telling you in pictures" (activity portal)Further Hungarian projects (restricted)
| The original portal
developed for the project contained an enourmous amout of active web
microworlds. Here we present short description of those that have been
developed for project experiments. Some of the games are included here in full version to let you experiment online yourself! |
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Brainstorming: (demo) |
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Creative tools: (demo) |
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Exchange games: (interactive games!!!) |
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Imagine course with simple games: (demo) |
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Complex games: (interactive games!!!) |
A major challenge of ICT and ODL in the 21st century is to find ways to support children in building and testing models collaboratively across European cultures and beyond, where they will not just talk to each other across the net, or simply share information but be engaged in long term planning, construction and debugging. Communication plays an important role in collaboration, thus the elements, ways, methods, and forms have to be mastered in order to facilitate self expression. The need for new multicultural, multilingual and multimodal approaches to computing, learning and communication is crucial. We researched a model of e-learning platform and produced active web materials that provoke children, teachers, tutors and parents to act collaboratively on a networked learning environment.
The site is configured to hold activities and functionalities in several languages, thus the user can choose to use the language well understood. There are of course different levels for exchanging ideas.
Basic communication level (based on a common written language): The Brainstorming area provides some microworlds that raise topics to exchange ideas on, write composition about, give ideas and comments for improvements of projects. Children use Internet translators to figure out messages in different languages.
Picture communication level (through iconic language): Word wide encyclopaedia area provides a starter set of words in different languages explained using pictures or animations. There is a predefined standard in the definitions since nouns are explained by using coloured pictures, adjectives by black and white abstract pictorial symbols, verbs by animations and prepositions by using black and white symbolic expressions. The collection of words is chosen in order to give a starting set to express an introductory on oneself using international understandable symbolism. The symbols can be further extended by children within the same predefined standard and also used within Telling you in pictures authoring microworld, which allows the production of international “text” that can be published as Internet pages.
Expression level (based on products created using given tools): The Creative tools area, where users can express themselves using the tools in various modalities and exchange their works with others to comment. All tools are designed in a standard way, to allow transfer of creations through the Clipboard and ease users by providing nearly the same functionality.
Add-on level (based on extension or modification of special features): New tool elements can be downloaded from the server, or a bit more advanced users can create such element and send them to the forum to share with others. These allow change of special functions in which case the tools region changes to contain different elements to experiment with.
Authoring level (based on communication through Imagine scrip): The Exchange games area, which provides educational games, that can be easily modified to change content, topic or subject and thus provide a frame for developing further games on different domains.
Networking level (connecting users synchronously): Most of the Creative tools could also be used in a collaborative way on-line functioning as a white-board, allowing children to exchange functional elements and express themselves collaboratively.