A Quality Assurance and Control Program for PM2.5 and PM10 measurements in European Air Quality Monitoring Networks

To harmonize PM measurements in the European Union, the JRC together with the AQUILA Network of National Air Quality Reference Laboratories organized a PM QA/QC program. From 2006 – 2009, the JRC, equipped with a mobile laboratory, measured in 18 Member States, for a duration of two weeks each, PM10 and PM2.5 in parallel to measurement sites of local networks and to the National Reference Laboratories. The main goals of the project were to find out to which degree PM measurements performed in the Member States agree with the requirements of the relevant EU directive and how correction factors for automatic analyzers were applied.JRC.DDG.H.2-Climate change and air qualit

weSPOT: a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry

Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers

Fostering Computational Thinking in Primary School through a LEGO®-based Music Notation

This paper presents a teaching methodology mixing elements from the domains of music and informatics as a key enabling to expose primary school pupils to basic aspects of computational thinking. This methodology is organized in two phases exploiting LEGO\uae bricks respectively as a physical tool and as a metaphor in order to let participants discover a simple notation encoding several basic concepts of the classical musical notation. The related activities, grounded on active learning theory, challenge groups of students to solve musical encoding problems of increasing difficulty

weSPOT: A personal and social approach to inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. This paper presents the research framework of the weSPOT project, as well as the initial inquiry-based learning scenarios that will be piloted by the project in real-life educational settings

Wild Programming – One Unintended Experiment with Inquiry Based Learning

This paper describes one unplanned experiment of a 6th grade student writing her first computer program for 3D graphics before learning any programming language. Some intriguing aspects in her program are analyzed, especially the emerging understanding of key concepts like enumeration, naming conventions of variables and symmetry in 3D space. The paper also identifies two main directions of mental processes. The first direction is actively supported by the school. It is based on presenting and using knowledge in a distilled error-free way. The other direction encompasses techniques needed to identify wrong solutions and to find a way to overcome problems and reach a correct solution. This direction in underrepresented in the educational system and as a result, it is left uncultivated. Students are expected to develop such skills by themselves

Visualizando el Aprendizaje en Resolución de Problemas Abiertos en las Artes

In their paper, “Making learning visible” (Urrea and Bender, 2012), the authors describe a framework that makes the outcomes of large-scale education reform initiatives visible to and understandable and actionable by all audiences: school administrators, teachers, parents, and the children themselves. In this paper, we examine in detail data from a programming competition among schools from the “Conectandonos” project, a one-to-one computing initiative implemented in Costa Rica by Quirós Tanzi Foundation and the Costa Rican Ministry of Education. We apply the framework to the Turtle Blocks projects of 45 children. We demonstrate a correlation between the application of our framework to the children’s work and their learning outcomes as assessed subjectively. We argue that by demonstrating the efficacy of a mechanism for assessing open- ended problem-solving activities, we remove an obstacle from making the arts a more pervasive part of elementary education.En su artículo, "Hacer el aprendizaje visible" (Urrea y Bender, 2012), los autores describen un marco que hace que los resultados de las iniciativas de reforma de educación a gran escala sean visibles, y comprensibles y aplicables a todos los públicos: administradores educativos, educadores, padres de familia, y los propios niños. En este trabajo, examinamos detalladamente los datos de un concurso de programación entre escuelas del proyecto "Conectándonos", una iniciativa de la computación uno a uno implementado en Costa Rica por la Fundación Quirós Tanzi y el Ministerio de Educación Pública. Aplicamos este marco a los proyectos de Bloques de la Tortuga de 45 niños. Se demuestra una correlación entre la aplicación de nuestro marco al trabajo de los niños y sus resultados de aprendizaje, evaluados subjetivamente. Argumentamos que al demostrar la eficacia de un mecanismo de evaluación de actividades de resolución de problemas abiertos, eliminamos un obstáculo para hacer las artes una parte más dominante de la educación primaria

weSPOT: A Cloud-based Approach for Personal and Social Inquiry

Scientific inquiry is at the core of the curricula of schools and universities across Europe. weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a cloud-based approach for personal and social inquiry. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mashups out of cloud-based tools in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers.published in: Sun SITE Central Europe, 2012, pp. 7-11, Ref: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-945/The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’ s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement N° 318499-weSPOT project

Investigation of Teachers’ Attitudes towards Computer Use in Primary Education in Kurdistan

Technological advances have pervasively changed our behaviours, beliefs and approaches in working, socialising and entertaining. Educators, including those in primary education, have acknowledged the positive effects of computer use in the classroom in various ways. With regard to pedagogical consideration, primary school teachers have adopted computer use in teaching pupils with emphasis on student-centred teaching techniques. The integration of computers in the primary curriculum has been applied in many countries, from developing (Chile) to developed nations (the US and UK). With regard to Iraqi Kurdistan, in particular, the education sector has undergone a major reform in order to improve the regional education standards and, as part of a new curriculum, the computer element has been embedded alongside the mathematics subject. Since the reform occurred, no academic study has been conducted to not only evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of computer use in primary schools in Kurdistan, but also to investigate teachers’ attitudes towards the use of computers in their teaching approach. Hence, the present study aims primarily to explore the general background of primary school teachers as well as their experiences, skills and pedagogical attitudes towards computer use in primary education. Keywords: Computer use, technology, primary schools; teachers; pedagogical approaches

Bubble and Selection Sorting with Excel

The paper gives a method of learning programming the bubble and selection sorting algorithms through developing interactive applications in Excel and coding the just acquired step of the solution in Delphi Pascal. The method was tried in nine 90 minute lessons with 83 participants, which were gymnasium students, undergraduate, master and PhD students of Teaching Informatics, and university Informatics teachers. The participants were given questionnaires to find out their opinion on the method. The results are discussed

Smart rogaining for computer science orientation

In this paper, we address the problem of designing new formats of computer science orientation activities to be offered during high school students internships in Computer Science Bachelor degrees. In order to cover a wide range of computer science topics as well to deal with soft skills and gender gap issues, we propose a teamwork format, called smart rogaining, that offer engaging introductory activities to prospective students in a series of checkpoints dislocated along the different stages of a rogaine. The format is supported by a smart mobile and web application. Our proposal is aimed at stimulating the interest of participants in different areas of computer science and at improving digital and soft skills of participants and, as a side effect, of staff members (instructors and university students). In the paper, we introduce the proposed format and discuss our experience in the editions organized at the University of Genoa before the COVID-19 pandemic (2019 and 2020 waves)