E2ML: A Visual Language for the Design of Instruction

The last decade has brought about a major change in higher education. Course design has developed from a craftsmanship-like process to a structured production, which involves interdisciplinary teams and requires more complex communication skills. This conceptual article introduces E2ML-Educational Environment Modeling Language-a visual language for supporting complex instructional design processes. E2ML can be used for visualizing the intermediate and final results of design, thus providing documentation in a shared language that can enhance team communication, improve design, and contribute to the development of high-quality instruction. The language and its formal features are presented from a conceptual point of view and illustrated by examples. The main results of a first evaluation study are reported, and the exploitation of E2ML in practice as well as its costs and benefits are critically discusse

“Draw the Internet.” A visual exploration of how children think an everyday technology.

The Internet is today a significant part of children’s daily lives, and digital competences have been included as basic learning goals in many school systems worldwide. In order to develop sound and effective early-age Internet education programs, information about how children use the Internet should be integrated with insights in how they understand it. This study investigates 8-to-10-year-old children’s understanding of the Internet through the qualitative analysis of 51 drawings collected in three primary school classes in Switzerland. The results confirm that children’s conceptions of the Internet are rich but often inaccurate or uncomplete. The conceptions collected in this study partially differ from those emerged in previous studies, possibly due to the diffusion of smartphones and tablets and to the commercialization of the Internet. Also, each class presents a different balance of conception types, resulting in a sot of class understanding of the Internet

Visualizing learning goals with the Quail Model

This paper introduces the Quail Model, a device for the classification and visualization of learning goals. The model is a communication tool that can smoothen the discussion within a course design team, support shared understanding and improve decision-making. Its theoretical background mingles contributions from Instructional Design (Bloom, Gagné, Merrill) with the insights of an author of Philosophy (Lonergan). The paper presents a literature review, the Quail Model and some examples. Reference to a demo application is also provided

“Draw the internet”: A visual exploration of how children imagine an everyday technology

The internet is today a significant part of children’s daily lives, and digital competences have been included as basic learning goals in many school systems worldwide. In order to develop sound and effective early-age internet education programs, information about how children use the internet should be integrated with insights in how they understand it. This study investigates 8-to-10-year-old children’s understanding of the internet through the qualitative analysis of 51 drawings collected in three primary school classes in Switzerland. The results confirm that children’s conceptions of the internet are rich but often inaccurate or uncomplete. The conceptions collected in this study partially differ from those that emerged in previous studies, possibly due to the diffusion of smartphones and tablets and to the commercialization of the internet. Also, each class presents a different balance of conception types, resulting in a sort of class understanding of the internet

Intergenerational Digital Storytelling: four racconti for a new approach

Digital storytelling has been slowly penetrating the world of education and social development since a while. Intergenerational learning seems a promising and somehow natural domain for digital storytelling, as it offers a perfect venue to bring together memory and wisdom with digital media skills AND VIBRANT COMMUNICATION. This paper presents the efforts made by Associazione seed to transfer digital storytelling to intergenerational learning, based on its previous work with the Digital Storytelling for Development model in many fields

A map of e-Learning

Goal of the paper is to provide a map of e-learning, in order to help understanding the great complexity of situations hidden under this new and trendy term. Education environments are analyzed according to four main directions: learning models, didactic relationships, activities and technology pervasiveness. The analysis reveals that many apparently new ideas do not depend strictly on new media: new technologies act as a catalyst for a critical re-thinking of teaching and learning

Digital Storytelling intergenerazionale: Quattro racconti per un nuovo approccio

Digital storytelling has been slowly penetrating the world of education and social development since a while. Intergenerational learning seems a promising and somehow natural domain for digital storytelling, as it offers a perfect venue to bring together memory and wisdom with digital media skills and vibrant communication. This paper presents the efforts made by Associazione seed to transfer digital storytelling to intergenerational learning, based on its previous work with the Digital Storytelling for Development model in many fields.Negli ultimi anni, il “Digital Storytelling” ha penetrato lentamente il mondo della formazione e dello sviluppo sociale. L’apprendimento intergenerazionale sembra un ambito promettente e in qualche modo naturale per lo sviluppo di esperienze di Digital Storytelling, in quanto offre il luogo ideale per riunire la memoria e la saggezza con abilità per l’uso dei media digitali e la capacità comunicativa. Questo documento presenta i risultati di lavoro dell’Associazione SEED per il trasferimento del Digital Storytelling nel campo dell’apprendimento intergenerazionale, sulla base di un precedente modello creato dallo stesso gruppo di lavoro SEED e testato in diversi campi, ovvero il Digital Storytelling per lo sviluppo

Screencasting Information Literacy. Insights in pre-service teachers’ conception of online searching

Information Literacy (IL) has been named a key competence for the twenty-first century and is being progressively introduced in many compulsory school curricula. Nonetheless, the actual implementation of effective IL education cannot be carried out without the sound preparation of teachers. This study explores the naïve, pre-instruction conceptions of online information searching of pre-service pre-primary and primary teachers through the structured qualitative analysis of participant-produced screencasts. The results indicate that teachers have a mainly technical view of IL, leading them to focus on basic computer literacy skills (e.g., how to use a search engine) and to overlook mental processes (e.g., the definition of an information need or strategy). Implications for the development of pre-service teachers’ IL education are discussed

Screencasting Information Literacy. Insights in pre-service teachers’ conception of online search.

Information Literacy (IL) has been named a key competence for the XXI century and is being progressively introduced in many compulsory school curricula. Nonetheless, the actual implementation of effective IL education cannot be carried out without the sound preparation of teachers. This study explores the naïve, pre-instruction, conceptions of online information search of pre-service pre-primary and primary teachers through the structured qualitative analysis of participant-produced screencasts. The results indicate that teachers have a mainly technical view of IL, leading to focus on technical skills (e.g., how to use a search engine) and to overlook mental processes (e.g., definition of the information need or strategy). Implications for the development of pre-service teachers IL education are discussed

Digitally-supported language exchanges in primary school: The AlpConnectar project

This article presents the design, implementation and outcomes of AlpConnectar, a Swiss project that exploits technologies for digitally-supported language exchange (LE) in primary schools. Launched in 2013, the project involves three Swiss cantons where different languages are spoken (namely German, French and Italian) and respectively taught as foreign languages since the third grade of primary school. In the first section of the paper the linguistic composition of Switzerland is briefly presented and the current methodologies and approaches in foreign language teaching in the country are introduced. After a literature review of online LE practices, the AlpConnectar project is presented, along with a LE example to illustrate how it works. The final sections present the results of the project, based on data collected from both pupils and teachers. The results seem to suggest that while digital technologies offer significant benefits for LEs, they are no silver bullet, and their impact depends on a number of contextual variables