Aulainnova - Innovation inspired by iTEC
August 12, 2014 12:50 PM
In June 2013, Innova&Educación started a project with Promethean to involve 10 schools from across Spain to work using the iTEC resources. The project was advertised through social networks, a video on PowToon, and school visits, resulting in about 40 schools applying out of which 10 were selected.
To their credit, the schools involved in the project turned out to be very open-minded and prepared to try out innovative approaches to develop their teaching. Some schools undertook even deeper transformations in their practices. For example the school Nuestra Señora de Las Victorias in Madrid decided to develop interdisciplinary work and give teachers the freedom to organise their schedules with more freedom. They also wanted to measure student competences and skills in different subjects like informatics, art and English. The developed a project about life in the XIX Century, during which the students developed their audio-visual, reflection and English-language skills, and communicated with outside experts.
Another inspiring example is the Colegio Base in Madrid that participated in English and mathematics projects. In mathematics the school were chosen to attend the Euromaths Competition in Sweden where they could show their work on creating games with ActivInspire and Scratch. The technique was used subsequently to create games for geometry and robotics.
Another school, CEIP San Julián in Andalucía, also worked with geometry and games, and invited students’ families to play them.
The English International College in Marbella participated through geography and languages. They carried out data collection during field trips and imported data into the classroom systems through apps like MyTracks and Google Earth. They also used data sensors outside with tablet software like ClassFlow. In languages they experimented with Augmented Reality by using Aurasma together with ClassFlow.
To communicate and share, the teachers in the project used groups in Edmodo and Facebook, Twitter (#Aulainnova), shared files at Google Drive, chats in Google Hangout, and other tools like TeamUp, VoiceThread and Flipgrid.
Several teachers have commented on the positive effects of the project, for example Chris Long, Head of Humanities EIC Marbella, Spain, tells that “the impact of the iTEC project has been immense as it gave a number of departments the confidence to develop scenario based learning as a way to incorporate and develop the technology”.
Article by María Florenzano, Educational Technology Consultant, Innova&Educación, Spain
