Reflection of Week 1

The IP isn't called intensive just because. It is really, really intensive: in work, in learning, in interaction, in interest. It has been amazing and I'm very happy to be here and have the opportunity to learn so much from all of these young students/teachers. A well prepared generation, enthusiastic, really digital natives, I really find this fascinating and all the new things: apps, tablets... "I'm loving it".

Cultural evenings are very interesting too. We get to know better the other participant countries and I've found really amazing stuff. I was fascinated by Estonia, but all the other countries were beautifully presented either.

Today we we're working on our Special Interests Group. I'm in the "Tablets in Schools" group and we are researching information to build our presentation. We've assigned tasks and we'll work online or together whenever is necessary.

But life is not only about work and study. Sunday is supposed to be resting day, but we'll have time enough to rest when we get home. We must grab this opportunity to visit Austria so tomorrow the Portuguese team is going to Vienna. I'm really excited about it, I expect it will be another wonderful day spent in good company! 

See you Monday!

Reflection of the day - 11.07.2014

Today Thomas started his presentation about mobile learning stating this quite chocking affirmation: e-learning does not exist! But in the end he probably is quite right of course, since, in fact what we call e-learning is no more, and maybe more accurately, technology enhanced learning. Yes, I think I'm confortable with that, although I would add to it exclusively technology enhanced learning.

We then made a little group work to define what is learning. My group was Kärt and Inguna, we got there real easy. This definiton generated a very interesting discussion on the topic. The Romanian teacher, Carmen, suggested an interesting article:  The Unbearable Automaticity of Being.

 Other interesting topics of Thomas lecture were the QR codes, the FNC and the concept of ORQUESTRATION OF LEARNING, which we could easely deduct.

We also got this idea from Mobile Learning: it enables longlife learningand it gives you freedom to guide your learning

Niklas Berend made his presentation on MOOCs, explaining what they were and how do they work. This generated a big discussion on MOOCs value, organization and it raised many doubts.

 After lunch Vera Cwierz introduced to us the production of interactiv videos with Adobe Captivate. Unfortunately it only has a trial version.

Afterwards, we had a Google Hangout with Gregor Cholewa about micro-learning and mobile learning in higher education. He presented some platform called KnowledgePulse used for professional training but that can also be used in schools. It was pretty interesting.

That's all for today. Next we're going to a visit to Linz. See you :)

Reflection of the day - 10.07.2014

Today's presentations were all about IT for people with disabilities. They were presented by the Romanian team who are students of Special Education, which is, you know, kindda my area.

Catrinel Frincu talked us about Technology-assisted Inclusive Education for Students with Intellectual Disabilities. She presented some apps which can be used in tablets. Unfortunately, tablets aren't generalized in Portugal due to high cost, but they sure would be of priceless value to work with children with intelectual difficulties.

Afterwards, it was the time of Andreea Hiciu. She talked about Assistive Technologies for Children with Dysgraphia and also presented some apps for tablets. Same problem, though.

Anamaria Marian presented us Assistive Technologies for Students with Hearing Impairments. We tried some of the apps on her tablet which was very enlightening. The game she prepared for us to was funny and challenging: try to read no somebody else's lips.

Later, Lavinia Mateut spoke to us about the Role of Technologies and Support Centers in Universities for the Inclusion of Visually Impaired Students envolving us in a small exercise of deciphering a message written in Braille. It was also pretty interesting and she was very thoughful by leaving us a beautiful message printed with a Braille printer. Thank you Lavinia!

Alina Mosic explained to us the Role of Technology in the Enhancement of Quality of Life for Persons with Motor Disabilities leading us to an interesting discussing on quality of life for disabled people.

I was curious about today's presentations because of their topics related to Special Education and find me thinking how great teachers these young girls will surely become as they have this concern so early in their lives, as they are still so young. I was surprised to hear that they volunteer in a center to help students with visual impairment. That's really, really great! I'm proud to have known you and hope you all many, many hapiness in your lives!

Anyway, these young students are very updated in apps for tablets and presented us some really useful ones to work with several kinds of impairments. Unfortunately, most of them are not freeware and tablets in schools are still sometime away in Portugal.

But our day was not over yet.

Estonian student 

Romanian tradicional food

Tonight we had the Romanian and Estonian night and we found out two beautiful countries which I had no idea how'd be. Romania with beautiful wildlife and historical buidings and Estonia with beautiful and happy people and all the technology, wow, it's almost like a dream come true! Feel sad, though, when I hear that in January there are only 2* hours sunlight/day. That should be really depressing for us Portuguese, who have so much sunlight all year. Oh well, nothing is perfect!

*ATTENTION, PLEASE! My fault, my mistake, sorry Kärt! It's not 2 hours sunlight, it's 5 hours but in June they have 2 hours darkness, yehey!!! It's getting better, maybe I will consider it! Thank you for your correction, Kärt!

Reflection of the day - 09.07.2014

Started the day with kind of a strange feeling of perplexion/sorrow/worry because of last night's football match between Brazil and Germany. What was that??? Is everything ok, down there?

Oh, well, as someone said early this morning, "Life is not only about football!" Congratulations to the Germans, anyway!

Now let's go down to business!

Today Thomas engaged us into a task about Digital Communication giving us the following statement by Paul Watzlawick, as a starting point: "You cannot not communicate". The goal was to get our views on this expression, by brainstorming and progressively excluding until we get to 3 expressions/words.

Generally, the reflections on this topic came to the same results but they generated several discussions about the absense of body language on online communication, the basic human need of communicate, "miss_understandings" generated by the lack of responses, the consequences of silences in synchronous communication, the risks of mixed identities and other interesting issues.

(Actually, the expression "miss_understandings" was very well captured to express the feelings/thoughts of the female gender when it comes to lack of response, that part I found very funny and realistic. Well done by the group that did it.)

In the end we all came to agree that we really cannot not communicate.

Afterwards, Thomas gave us some clues on how to behave on synchronous communication in group. I retain these two which seemed the most important to me: mute ourselves when we're not talking and wear headset because of environmental noise.

He also presented an app which allow us to call home phones, free of charge, which we can get from: getonsip.com. I didn't find it particularly interesting though it has a characteristic that appealed to me, which was the HD voice, which provides really good sound from the phone. I'll have to think about it later, as we have to download the application.

Anna Krekeler, from Germany, made a very interesting presentation about Challenges and Opportunities of Web 2.0 supported, conception based civic education. Using web 2.0 tools to work concepts in the classroom, is always a good strategy for any subject, but the way Anna presented us was very creative, using a Log Book and suggesting e-portfolios to gather information and reflections.

In the afternoon we had Tim Riplinger and Nicklas Berend's presentantion and group activity, from Germany. Very dynamic and cleverly built, they presented the results of their research on the use of tablets in schools, as it is a project they are developing (or evaluating, I'm not quite sure) in their country. The activity they proposed culminated with a Pecha-Kucha presentation built with the resources gathered from each group's task previously assigned. It led to a reflection on the topic of Tablets in school which, by the way, will be my topic on the Special Interest Group I'm in. So, some work is already done or, at least, we aren't starting from scratch.

It was another excellent day, with fruitful sharings and discussions. Mission accomplished, again. Hurray for us all!!!

Reflection of the day - 08.07.2014

Today was the day for the slovakian team to "spread magic".

They did very well and all the presentations were really interesting and introduced us to several tools we can use for educational purposes. A new generation of young future elementary or secondary teachers seems to be quite well prepared to enhance technology for teaching, as they all are already digital natives.

Here's a short summary of today's presentations with some explanatory comments, in a Mindmap built with Mindomo, one of the tools presented today:

Make your own mind maps with Mindomo.

By the end of the day, we could ask ourselves what will be teachers' role in the future, as this question arose during the presentations. I don´t believe teachers will ever be dispensable but it is my strong belief that they must be well prepared to take a different role as they, probably, should have already done. The role of the teacher in the classroom is changing to that of someone who will guide the students and provide them with the appropriate tools to engage them in building their own knowledge. ICT are the new reality known to current children/juveniles into which they are deeply immersed. It is teachers' task to go along with their wishes and abilities creating a new classroom order more appealing and engaging to the new digital generations.

I must point out the last presentation made by Marlene Groer, from Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, who quite well showed us the benefits which can be brought into education by the emmerging concept of Gamification, that is the use of games in learning activities. I liked this presentation very much, very relevant, very clear and objective. The explanation about the use of games in therapeutic context was also very relevant. Congratulations to Marlene!!!