Breeding ecology of eurasian curlew (Numenius arquata) on Ljubljansko barje

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Pedagogical and organizational concerns for the deployment of interactive public displays at schools

This paper is a pre-print of an accepted paperThe integration of digital technology into schools is facing substantial challenges. In this study, we address the roles that public displays in communal spaces at the school can play as an additional vehicle for learning practices and, particularly, as a medium for sharing educational videos created by students themselves. Using a participatory design methodology, three hands- on workshops were conducted with teachers of a secondary school from the north of Portugal in order to elicit expectations towards the system design and its integration into school practices. Based on recorded video, direct observations, paper prototypes and open ended questionnaires created during the workshops, we conducted a systematic content analysis of teachers’ concerns associated with the deployment of public displays at schools. Findings suggest that teachers are receptive to the technology and were able to generate scenarios that take advantage of the possibilities offered by digital public displays to stimulate learning processes. However, to accommodate the constraints of learning practices and organizational realities, the design of the system needs to take into account a broad range of sensitivities.CIEC – Research Centre on Child Studies, UM (FCT R&D 317)European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)Centro Algoritm

Monitoring Teachers’ Complex Thinking while Engaging in Philosophical Inquiry with Web 2.0

The purpose of this study was to examine how we can exploit new technologies to scaffold and monitor the development of teachers' complex thinking while engaging in philosophical inquiry. We set up an online learning environment using wiki and forum technologies and we organized the activity in four major steps to scaffold complex thinking for the teacher participants. In this article, we present the evolution of complex thinking of one group of teachers by studying their interactions in depth

Extracurricular activities for improving the perception of informatics in secondary schools

In order to introduce informatic concepts to students of Italian secondary schools, we devised a number of interactive workshops conceived for pupils aged 10\u201317. Each workshop is intended to give pupils the opportunity to explore a computer science topic: investigate it firsthand, make hypotheses that can then be tested in a guided context during the activity, and construct viable mental models. This paper reports about how we designed and conducted these workshops

Let's talk evidence: The case for combining inquiry-based and direct instruction

Many studies investigating inquiry learning in science domains have appeared over the years. Throughout this period, inquiry learning has been regularly criticized by scholars who favor direct instruction over inquiry learning. In this vein, Zhang, Kirschner, Cobern, and Sweller (2022) recently asserted that direct instruction is overall superior to inquiry-based instruction and reproached policy makers for ignoring this fact. In the current article we reply to this assertion and the premises on which it is based. We review the evidence and argue that a more complete and correct interpretation of the literature demonstrates that inquiry-based instruction produces better overall results for acquiring conceptual knowledge than does direct instruction. We show that this conclusion holds for controlled, correlational, and program-based studies. We subsequently argue that inquiry-based and direct instruction each have their specific virtues and disadvantages and that the effectiveness of each approach depends on moderating factors such as the learning goal, the domain involved, and students' prior knowledge and other student characteristics. Furthermore, inquiry-based instruction is most effective when supplemented with guidance that can be personalized based on these moderating factors and can even involve providing direct instruction. Therefore, we posit that a combination of inquiry and direct instruction may often be the best approach to support student learning. We conclude that policy makers rightfully advocate inquiry-based instruction, particularly when students' investigations are supplemented with direct instruction at appropriate junctures