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Overall Description |
Our aims were to provide infrastructure for collaborative work; to provide answers for guiding research questions: with whom, how and what kinds of knowledge should children learn at a distance and how best can they be supported in this learning; and to develop learning tools that can be transferable into several domains.
The first objective was to develop local language version of Imagine authoring tool (developed by CUB-SK and English version published by LOG-UK) for supporting collaborative active web modelling. Imagine is an open and flexible learning environment and authoring tool with complex tools for painting, animating, web authoring, creating multimedia, using speech input/output as well as Logo programming that is the basic tool used in the project. In Colabs: All partners started to develop localised version of Imagine (English, Slovak, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian) before the start of the project, thus children could use the environment and commands in their mother tongue.
Further objectives:
Specific priorities of the relevant Socrates action that our project has contributed to:
In Colabs: Experiments and developed practices have verified that the developed type of learning model would be very suitable for learning in the 21st century, develop competencies, alter teacher training to accommodate constructivist practices and distant mentoring, thus truly creating a community of practice, by:
Means for monitoring success or failure:
In Colabs: All partners have invited a local external evaluator from local educational authorities to monitor the progress of the whole Colabs project and produce a concluding statement about their view on aims and achievements as well as their possible accommodation into the local countries educational system.
All tasks were appointed a leader who was responsible for quality and timing of subtasks, while all sub-tasks also had leaders who were responsible for their sub-tasks respectively. Project leaders of each participating institute were responsible for the assigned work to be done in time and in good quality.
A detailed contract signed by all fund receiving partners containing terms of rights and obligations declares that first money transfer coming from Brussels shall be transferred to partners immediately only as 50%, whereas other 50% shall be transferred only after internal evaluator has given a written statement, that deliverables are of acceptable quality. After submitting the interim report and receiving the second instalment from Brussels the received money was also divided and was transferred 50%-50% in parts only when internal control has cleared the submission of deliverables in due quality. Internal evaluation was produced by LOG-UK partner, who is a leading publisher in quality educational products.
Project co-ordinator maintained a close e-mail contact with all partners and required a report on progress at end of month from work package task leaders, gathering reports of sub-task leaders. Work package task leaders were members of the board and the project leaders of HU, SK, and PT form the steering committee, the project co-ordinator being the head of the steering committee. Project meetings were scheduled to take place at important milestones of the project, where each participating institute presents financial and progress reports, due deliverables, outputs, developments, and evaluations. Action plans were produced at each meeting to be executed by steering committee.
Workplan table provides a detailed overview of the organisation of the work, distribution of responsibilities, partners involved, outputs to be delivered and deadlines of submission. (See Project_schedule)
The main pedagogical and didactical approaches and concepts promoted by means of the project.
Our basic philosophy for the design of our pedagogical framework is to engage Logo philosophy, embedding “constructivism” and “learning by doing” to be used with the developed tools for multidisciplinary creations and self-expression. Developed tools are open, flexible, extendible, modifiable “by the children themselves”, so that the line of motivation and interest of children convert into a spirally growing creation curve, which involves much more talents and skills than any single educational program.
The Secondary Maths microworlds support this methodology as well as provide discussions online between teachers and learners to exchange ideas and results. All microworlds and learning material on the Colabs Portal (designed for children 10-14 years old) not only support the basic philosophy but network the learners to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously to enhance their learning curve from inputs provided by others remotely.
The form of the community learning within our project based on individual and group-learning can be described as “collaborative learning” as a personal philosophy of intra-group interaction imposed on not too well structured domain, where each member equally contributes whilst problem solving. Fractions toolset builds on collaborative experimentation within real classroom environment allowing teachers to set up configured learning situations to tackle. Creative Writing builds on networking the learners virtually too, so that story building becomes an activity for broader collaboration.
One of the main stimuli of our project is belief that collaboration and communication create new relations between children and teachers, support better understanding between nations and countries. (See OP 01 report and local views: Colabs-ELTE.pps, WP1_HU, WP1_SK, WP1_PT, WP1_PL)
The main products of this project are the tools, technology, and educational approach by which the aimed and envisioned ODL can be accomplished, namely:
So far all reports uploaded to Colabs web page and the Secondary Maths tools have been declared as public products. The consortium executive committee has agreed to meet once a year and discuss any further modifications and decisions that need to be taken for sustainability of project.
Dissemination approach:
The active web materials are being disseminated via the web, to all educational stakeholders across the partner countries and beyond. These include educational institutions, teacher training institutes and software engineers, schools, after-school club houses, tele-houses, and directly to end users at home. Localised versions of the platform (Imagine) are being made available through commercial publishers and advantageous license arrangements are under negotiation. Each of the partners have existing links with schools, teachers, trainers, policy-makers and other educational stakeholders where the developed materials would be included in courses. A web site has been established early in the project to inform those interested about the state of the project. Our promotion strategy involves advertising in the press and electronic media. Scientific papers are published in research journals, professional journals, magazines and proceedings of international conferences.
Two specific conferences put an illuminated emphasis to promote Colabs deliverables: CNO-PT was the organiser of Eurologo’2003, while ELTE-HU organised IFIP WG3.5 “Learning in the 21st Century” in 2004, where papers and workshops attracted attention to the project and gave chance to the local and international community to express their thoughts about deliverables and give feedback to partners.
As a very direct dissemination, the developed products have already assimilated with the teacher training programs in partners instituted in Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia.
Collaborative learning happening either in pairs of children, or in groups of children in one classroom, in one school or even far apart over the Internet provides all participants with the best possible opportunity to respect the intentions, contributions and identities of all participants. Children learn to respect others, to learn with them and about them. In such structure of collaborative work, everybody has equal opportunities to learn and contribute, children with most disabilities can participate in a high quality way and many disadvantages of any special groups of children can be overcome.
How the project has attributed to promote equal opportunities for people with disabilities and disadvantages
All partners had the potential to evaluate their own developed tools on a local scale, and gain experiences on how it can be transferred to other users. Evaluations involved formal and empirical evaluation on local and international scale using pre and post tests, questionnaires and portfolio analysis. ‘Action-research’ methodology was used in developing products, where cyclic phases of research questions were answered for which necessary developments were raised and fulfilled, followed by research of further raised questions. Teachers themselves were involved in activities in natural settings and reported on their experiences while doing so. But it is not just the matter of reporting ‘whether’ something works, but ‘why’ and ‘how’ it works, so the circumstances and individual methods used in each case were also summarised to produce possible implications for other settings. (See Overall evaluation)
Our UK partners (as head of Logotron, leading UK publisher) has been chosen as continuous internal evaluator. Having an interest in only quality goods, he proved to be a very good indicator of product quality.
Each partner country had the responsibility of collecting main educationalists, stakeholders, policy makers in their own country and involve them in the monitoring and evaluation process as external evaluators. This provided quality assurance of the outcomes and of the assimilation of developed material into the educational process of the countries involved. (See OP 11: HU, SK, PT, PL)
As an overall feedback recurring from the several levels of evaluation the following astonishing comment should be pinpointed: Schools at present are not prepared for such cooperation, due to present curricula, teachers attitudes, the practiced teaching process and overall assessment methodology. We believe this is what needs great efforts to change for the benefit of education and we found it important to implement these changes in our own teacher education immediately.