Organising institution: National Association of Educational Innovation and Inclusion in Schools (AENIE)

Country: Portugal

Age: 10-15 years old

Key question: Empowering the students ‘wellbeing by using technology in the classroom

Objectives:

The main goal of the general program for Digital Atelier is: students and teachers learning how to work in a more technological environment. In this environment they work not only digital skills but also wellbeing based on open curricula.

Other goals:

helping students to help themselves,
select/learn knowledge through digital technology,
promote young people in the social debate and contribute to the formation of the critical thinking,
change the paradigm of the acquisition of knowledge of the conservative school,
contribute to the democratization of access to knowledge, to design a plan of education appropriate to each student.

Time: 6 hours

Software and apps to be used:

Samsung tablets/Samsung Smart School Platform
Socrative
Kahoot
Edmodo
Aurasma
Raspberry PI
App Go/Path/Blockly

Brief presentation: The main goal of this program is to promote the improvement of learning through the acquisition of the basic knowledge included in the formal curriculum. To do this, it seeks to stimulate the development of capacities of analytical and practical reasoning, of resilience and responsibility, of technological, emotional, social and creative competences. In addition, achieving the objectives proposed in the different missions will promote student autonomy and stimulate their creativity in day to day tasks.

Topics covered:

knowledge digital technology
autonomy of the student in learning
wellbeing
critical thinking and self-analysis

Civic engagement: Against all literature regarding 1:1 distribution models we chose not to offer technology directly to the students and teachers. Instead we made the decision to offer all the equipments to the school and then they distributed the equipments to every student and teacher. In sum, all the equipments belong to the schools although everybody has one equipment for himself to work with. Those equipments also stay at school almost always. Students take their tablets home when their teachers allow them in order to develop certain learning activities. Then those equipments come back to school to guarantee they are always available and be taken to work. Basically we’ve been helping them develop their computational thinking skills always trying to use the official and formal curricula as the basis for each activity developed. The Tablets for School research in Alentejo Region_Portugal discovered that 87% of students found learning easier due to their tablet, 72% believed their standard of work had improved and 69% expressed significant increase in motivation.

Materials needed:

Tablets
digital books/manuals
all necessary Apps/digital platforms to promote autonomous knowledge

Main inspirations taken from personal research:

Digital technology engages more interest and engages students' attention;
Digital technology engages young people in social debate and contributes to the formation of a critical sense promoting Wellbeing;
The digital technology allows to draw a plan of education appropriate to each student.

Mass media and social media connections: Learning for wellbeing Learning for wellbeing is one of the main areas of interest in education nowadays. It is now known that a happy and fullfilled student is capable of overrun much easily their obstacles. Socrative platform helps teachers know where to go next in a lesson or course, and it also encourages learners to better understand where they are in their learning, where they need to go and how to get there – something which educational research suggests is important for more effective learning.

How do you plan to give voice to students to present or show their personal skills and knowledge?

Tablets enrich classroom learning, so tablets will be used effectively in the classroom to engage students and further learning:

Virtual Field Trips;

Research;

Reading and Listening to Books;

Presentations and Projects;

Photography;

Using Educational Apps;

Taking Quizzes;

Watch Videos;

Adapt to Student Needs;

Add augmented reality to the real world;

Starting up a class blog.

Working in groups will also allow: enrichment of all members of the group; job enrichment; socialization; disinhibition of the more shy students; respect for the opinion of others; time savings compared to the effort to be applied; learning of the democratic experience; stimulating research; increase in individual income; self-discipline; rapid circulation of ideas; greater enthusiasm for the tasks; stimulating the spirit of constructive competition and stopping isolation and marginalization.

How do you collect information as the starting point of a Digital Atelier? Students will record all the evidences of the works accomplished, having the Professor access them through different digital platforms

Edmondo platform allows educators and students to be connected in a safe social environment where they can collaborate; share digital content and educational applications; and access homework, grades, class discussions, and notifications from any computer or mobile device.

Kahoot is very easy to use to create quizzes and surveys. The website takes you step by step through the creation process. Both quizzes and surveys are created in the same way.

Introducing students to the key question - the research begings:

To different activity a different procedeure. Are those going to contribute for improving wellbeing in the students?

Virtual Field Trips: It is unlikely you will be able to take your students on field trips to every destination you cover in class; however, with a tablet, your students can go on virtual field trips anywhere;

Research: Students can research topics without having to leave their desks;

Reading and Listening to Books: tablets have speakers, which allow for easy listening to audiobooks or text-to-speech e-books;

Presentations and Projects: Poster board projects are a thing of the past. Now, students can have tons of options for creating multimedia projects, comics, books, music, and more on a tablet. These projects can be shared and shown on your Smartboard;

Photography: Tablets have cameras, and with the right photography editing app, your students can work on creative projects or simply document class activities;

Watch Videos: Tablets also make it easy to watch videos that are relevant to what students are learning in the classroom. …

Experimental phase

Action that unfolds the practical activity to clarify the question (experimental phase):
Active work of the students: Students with access to an internet-enabled tablet device have access to an ever-expanding source of information. Primary research, secondary research and fact checking can all be easily completed with the help of a tablet, a more flexible object to integrate into the design of a classroom compared to PCs, which naturally take up far more space.
Presentation of findings and results (visualisation of information): The outcomes can be presented in several digital platforms such as Prezi, PPT, Videos, comic books and so on.presentations, Videos, Pictures
Analysis of results: is done jointly by the teacher and student.

Approach to a new software or a new app: The students will be directed by the Professor, being able to observe tutorials if necessary of the different digital software / platforms. The teacher will only be a guide/mediator in the whole teaching-learning process The teacher, by itself, does not need to be an expert in technology. However, it is essential that he shows enthusiasm for her, after all, as educators, they want to get students' attention to their classes, and there is nothing currently that draws more attention to children and young people than technology. As educators, teachers exert great persuasiveness on their students and by demonstrating enthusiasm for technology, they can inspire their students to become the modifying agents of tomorrow's technology.

Links between the Digital Atelier and real life of the students: All activities have a certain connection with students' real life. Any of the aforementioned activities will require students to carry excerpts from their lives in different jobs, thus bringing them closer to the real context, thus enhancing students' well-being.

How do you plan to evaluate knowledge and skills?By means of well-defined criteria, valuing non-curricular aspects such as creativity, the critical thinking, taking into account criteria of game analysis: digital resource assessment and learning principles_ these are intended to help the teacher to understand the linguistic, pedagogical and technologies present in the game / software / application chosen It is the teacher's responsibility to assess whether or not the resource is corroborate with the teaching that it wishes to present to the students, besides, the same, go to the search for more criteria that confirm or deny the potentiality of the tool. Only with the dedication and commitment of the teacher, previous to the application in the classroom, teaching can be productive, adding the interest of the students while presenting a quality teaching.

Conclusion: When deciding whether to incorporate tablets into your curriculum, it’s key to define your ultimate goals and major stakeholders. Unanimous acceptance is crucial to make the new initiative work despite the possible downsides. Tablets prepare students for the future workplace, they give confidence and creative tools unrivalled by traditional classroom infrastructure, and they engage those who are hard to reach and motivate. Last but not least, they just help our kids and ourselves speak the same language – that’s a golden opportunity for the success of the students in the schools. This conclusion meets the report of UNESCO in 2014 that created a Policy Guide for Mobile Learning, where it recommends the insertion of mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, in the day-to-day school life, pointing out several benefits of mobile learning.

The publication was created as part of the project: APP YOUR SCHOOL.

This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Tablets in the classroom