#ATS2020

The Pilot in GreeceM. Fountana – D. Nousia

Computer Technology Institute & Press “Diophantus” (CTI), Greece Partner Meeting 6

Zagreb, Croatia

13th - 15th March, 2017

#ATS2020

The “Whole School” Approach (vs 2 teachers per school):

Implementation in Numbers • 15 schools have been recruited throughout the project

• 10 accepted to participate• 1 dropped out• Teachers teaching to other schools continue to participate

• 9 Implementation Schools (2 from Athens, 5 from Achaia, 2 form Ilia)• 1 primary school• 8 secondary schools

• 55 teachers participating in trainings!

• 40 teachers from 9 schools completed the pre-test questionnaire

• ~30 teachers performed actual interventions in the classroom

• 325 students participate in ATS2020• 199 in experimental classrooms• 126 in control classrooms

• 309 students from 9 schools took the pre-test

• 1 case study school

• 6 people supporting, training, coordinating

#ATS2020

Adopted model for Teacher training & support: Not only implementation but also TRAINING is based on the ATS2020 Model!

• Numerous meetings of the training and support team

• 36 training sessions so far:• 9 PRE-TRAININGS (school visits in situ plus Communication)• 22 Lab Trainings • 5 online and face-to-face sessions for community building• Some trainings with all teachers together in 3 sites, 1-2 trainers per site

• Support of the teacher community• Trainings in sub groups• Face-to-face community building sessions• Getting members active / create ownership / maintaining the sparkle

• Development of training material that is reusable for EXPLOITATION:• Numerous Presentations for training + Lab Activities for training developed from scratch.• Numerous recorded training videos from the training sessions and additional themes • Complilation + details of useful tools to be used with Portfolios• Organized PROPOSALS to / from the teachers (ΠΡΟΤΑΣΕΙΣ)

• Utilised ed. material by WP2/Andrea and some other Pilots (IR, SL, FI)!

• A dedicated compilation of reading material, inspiring sources, literature review

• A surprisingly active enough Community of practice – Pehlivanides. Not sustainable through.

• Teacher technical + educational support in one during pre-testing

• Teacher support during implementation

#ATS2020

Time & effort investment in otherproject – related activities (some not foreseen)

• Collection of feedback in every step

• Localisation, Beta testing and contributing critically:• Students’ pre-test• Teachers’ questionnaire• Distribution of tests through EIS • Scoring process

• Involving schools in dissemination activities

• Important exploitation activity to stakeholders: Training of school consultants in Greece -22nd March 2017, Patras)

• On going quality assurance activities

• Monitoring one case study school but very closely

#ATS2020

Schools implement ATS2020 following the curriculum – Good examples (1/3)

• School Engagement in ATS2020 activities - Some examples:▪ Teaching Greek Literature following the curriculum (Roula Tendoma):

➢ Objectives: study of flashback / recursion / timelines in literature➢ Means: Mahara groups/pages/forums/quiz/my learning cycle, spreadsheets/googledocs, Internet➢ Skills: collaboration (work in groups to form timelines in spreadsheets),critical thinking, creativity (color each time period according to the main hero’ssentimental status at the time), information literacy (searching for an image thatwould fit the profile of each hero at a specific period)➢ Assessment: quizzes, my learning cycle

▪ Teaching Velocity in Physics following the curriculum (Sarantos Oikonomou):➢ Objective: concepts of position and velocity and the phenomenon of motion➢ Means: Mahara groups/pages/forums/quiz/my learning cycle, Padlet, google search,google forms, software for video analysis of motion➢ Skills: Information Literacy (Select appropriate/ relevant resources/ tools that respondto the specific information inquiry and use effectively), Communication (Listen, discussand debate information and ideas), Collaboration (create videos in groups)➢ Assessment: Calendar entries from students, anecdotal records and evaluation of thelearning cycle part from the teacher through rubrics with three levels of attainment andand connection with evidence.

#ATS2020

Schools implement ATS2020 following the curriculum – Good examples (2/3)

▪ Building collaboration on the basis of Ancient Greek Epic Poetry (The Iliad by Homer) at the edge of the curriculum (Giorgos Assimakopoulos): ➢Objective: team building and collaboration inspired by ancient greekepic poetry➢Means: Padlet, Mahara groups/pages/forums/my learning cycle➢Skills: collaboration (form groups and name them after Iliad), creativity, information literacy

▪ Teaching information literacy in Informatics that corresponds

more with the needs of the school ATS2020 activities

(e.g. Mahara, google forms) and less with the curriculum (George Mitrainas)

▪ Teaching about the protection of personal data and

best practices on the internet, in Informatics according to

the curriculum (Konstantina Koemtzidou).

#ATS2020

Schools implement ATS2020 following the curriculum – Good examples (3/3)

▪ Teaching Ohm’s Law in Physics following the curriculum (Nikos Kokkinakis):➢ Objective: experimenting with interactive simulations➢ Means: Mahara groups/pages/forums/my learning cycle, Phet simulation, Google Docs / Google Sheets / Google Forms.➢ Skills: Problem solving through experimentation, Collaboration (group work), Information Literacy

▪ Teaching about Internet Safety in Informatics following curriculum

(Christos Christakoudis)➢ Objective: teaching about netiquettes, passwords, phishing, online safety➢ Means: Mahara groups/pages/forums/my learning cycle, Internet➢ Skills: Information Literacy, Collaboration, Critical Thinking

▪ Environmental education in the Primary school of Arachovitika

(Ilias Bisoukis & Anastasia Stergiaki)➢ Objective: teaching environmental consciousness through the study of ”The Forest”➢ Means: Mahara groups/pages/forums/my learning cycle, Internet, Google docs➢ Skills: Information Literacy, Collaboration, Critical Thinking

#ATS2020

Enthusiasm no matter what…

• Highlights• Teachers work well with each other despite not being able to invoke significant external motivation • Students respond although they often do not comply with ATS2020 related homework • The new routine is adopted and immediate student improvements are recorded systematically • The ATS2020 model is being used in

- Implementation- Teacher Training- Exploitation Activities- Hopefully, project evaluation activities will be used to offer formative assessment to teachers’ work

• Challenges• a lot of moving around inside the school (students move to the lab)• lab fully booked and working overtime • limited time available for interventions (due to the recent reduction of teaching hours in some subject areas, e.g. Informatics)• project model and concepts still in distance from GR curriculum • autonomous learning – distance from the student/teacher/parent culture in GR• student difficulty in complying with asynchronous tasks at home• Student preference in specific social media has an impact on student communication / collaboration through Mahara outside

the classroom

#ATS2020

In teachers’ own words…

• Excited but also frustrated and tired

• See active student participation in class but not from home

• Suggest portable labs as a good alternative

• Underline the need for curriculum change• project based • interdisciplinary subject design• appropriate time management (e.g. provision of 2 consecutive hours per session)

• Underline the need for change in classroom preparation and delivery (reversed classroom)• change of attitude towards autonomous learning• quality vs quantity• depth vs speed

• Teacher Requests:1. Post test: it should be available by the end of April! 2. Receive feedback on the pre-test findings

#ATS2020

Not simply scoring: We actually read what students have been answering to the pre-test. We plan to inform teachers in detail!!!

• Lack of skills out of the scope of the project which made scoring difficult and will troubleshoot the evaluation of the scoring results. E.g. difficulty in:• concentrating and reading carefully (performed better in initial tasks than in final ones)

• understanding the text and the questions before answering (wrong answers very often totally irrelevant to the questions)

• articulating thoughts and views (often poor vocabulary and dictation)

• forming complete answers (either too short or too long without essence)

• argumentation (repetition of same argument in other words)

• observeness vs assuming too quickly (e.g. Students do not notice that the content in both types of message is almost identical. They choose to read the 2nd option which they select and then give as an argument the message content)

• existence of stereotypes (e.g. a doctor cannot be changing his mind / correcting / revising)

• Resourcefulness and lots of humor ☺ (especially when they got tired and did not want to think any more)

• Common misunderstandings / common misconceptions offer clear indication on what students ignore / have not been taught / do not understand. E.g.:• Document rights / Sharing public or in private

• Handling personal data (often too skeptical, issues of personal data protection rising in private discussions etc)

• Taking advantage of collaborative tools (when, why, how?)

• Passwords (if I can remember it easily - it can be hacked)

• Cultural issues: • no idea what the test meant with intercom / the use of loud speakers in schools

• they rarely leave blanks

• they first implement peer review before asking for expert review

• Student answers touching upon issues out of the scope of the pre-test:• polite vs impolite message exchange

• Democracy, when is it best served?

• Bullying issues

• Strange answers – we got some that got us thinking :-) (e.g. if I speak to too many people in person, they could take advantage of my views and tell them to the Mare so that I would go to prison)

• Scorers - Smiling too much with some of the technically wrong answers ☺

#ATS2020

ENJOY + things to say

• Overall:• We have adopted the ”whole school approach”• Besides Implementation, we have ALSO adopted the ATS2020 model in:

- Teacher training- Internal evaluation / formative assessment - we will be providing feedback to the teachers about the pre-test- Internal management – we adapt to the needs of each school in relation to its previous experience and its vision

of what would be the one step further (example of pre-test at the primary school)- Exploitation activities

We also have:

• things to say about the process of the pre-tests

• suggestions to make about the post test / evaluation

• Case study school first observation by our independent researcher

Now or later?

#ATS2020

To be continued…

☺☺☺ hvala

#ATS2020

Case study A: 3rd Gymnasium NikaiasLearning Cycle 1 Learning Cycle 2 Learning Cycle 3 Learning Cycle 4

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Brief Description

Greek Literature, 2 lessons observed in the beginning of cycle. Learning Cycle 1 contains the class work on a series of Greek literary texts on the basis of Autonomous Learning. Learning Cycle 1 is in progress.

Science, 1 lesson observed in the beginning of cycle (Motion and Velocity) . Learning Cycle 2 is in progress.

Informatics, 2 lessons observed (formed the whole Learning Cycle). Cycle completed. More Learning Cycles on Informatics to follow.

Lessons took longer than expectedLearning Cycle within the school curriculum, long but coherent.

Lessons took longer than expected. Learning cycle out of the school curriculum (taught by a different teacher), enhancing what is already tought.

Learning cycle out of the school curriculum, aiming to develop further students' competences of ICT. Students are divided in two groups and attend the lesson separately in order to have one computer per student.

#ATS2020

Significant observations: Feedback from RA & informal discussion with Teachers• Interventions in everyday school life:

• The school program- 2 consecutive hours per ATS2020 session.

- Dividing students in smaller groups of 12 for the ATS2020 sessions in Informatics.

- Expansion of the school day for the completion of the pre-test or for the completion of a learning cycle, if needed.

• Teachers’ free time - Co-teaching

- Providing teaching and learning opportunities for the student group which does not participate in an Informatics ATS2020 session.

• Interdisciplinarity- Collaboration between different teachers from different subject areas

- Alignment of the activities between different subject areas

- But also liquidity in the learning design (it takes time to form a full scheme of what is going to be taught and when)

• Innovations in the daily school routine:• Every new sessions begins with the exploration of pre-existing knowledge, in teams or individually

• Students complete their diary

• Students share their pages, receive feedback and correct their pages

• Students keep an ATS2020 folder with notes and taught material which they bring with them in class

• Self or peer assessment during the completion of the course

However:

• Keeping an e-portfolio still needs to become a habit for students.

• Seeing things from a different point of view about students’ role in the classroom• The example of the silent student who is actually very much interested in the lesson

• The example of the discovery of hidden student skills (hard to recognize in the Greek educational system)

• Innovative practices during the sessions• Students use Padlet to exchange views and ideas

• Physics is taught through simulations and video development and analysis

• Mahara and my learning have become part of the teaching and learning routine

#ATS2020

A general remark

• Not having access to the case study school mahara platform (discussions, e-portfolios, class notes) prevents researchers from highlighting nodal points of the procedure. The greek researcher asked and was given access to the above at an earlier stage, before the Artefacts analysis phase.

Monica Gavrielidou, Research Assistant for Greece

#ATS2020

About the pre-test

• Intervals were in most cases avoided

• Technical issues were successfully overcome due to a good preparation on behalf of the schools before the initiation of the test

• 5-10 minutes were used in most cases as an introduction before the beginning of the test, in order for teachers to explain the process and the constrains as well as to draw the students’ attention of the difference between the “0” and the “o” and the use of the “-” in students’ usernames and passwords.

• An effort has been made for absent students to take the test on another day.

• There have been some cases where students finished the pre-test too early. In other cases, students needed some time extension. In one case, students had a 5 minute break but did not pause the test. So, a 5 minute extension was used.

• In many cases, free computers were logged in and ready for use as a backup solution in case of technical issue.

• Common misunderstandings in students’ answers have been noted by the supervisors of the test in some cases.

• No problem was reported from using different browsers to take the pre-test.

Challenges and Solutions

• Limited number of workstations: in most of the schools, students were divided in groups to take the pre-test in relevance to the number of available workstations in the school IT Suite. In some cases, schools added extra workstations (teachers’ personal laptops or extra equipment from the school or even from a neighbour school) in order to limit the school time spent for the pre-test. Extra hubs and wireless 3G routers were also used to increase the capacity of the school IT Suite. In one case, students also took the test at both the computers of the school library and the IT Suite.

• Organising the classroom program for the pre-test. Pre-test were either taken in one full day (group by group would take it in turns to take the test) or in separate days.

• Minor technical issues in completing the pre-test were overcome through the experience gained from the first groups that took the test (e.g. a problem with drag and drop in Activity 11 of one of the tests)

• Tasks were foreseen for the students (with negative consent forms) who did not participate in the pre-testing process.

#ATS2020

About the Post - Test

• Questions with less text are easier to comprehend (otherwise we are missing correct input due to lack of other skills from students)

• Questions which do not include several parts in the same phrase are more likely to be answered correctly.

• Common “mistakes” may suggest problematic approach to some parts of scoring (e.g. tasks requesting correct order – commonly exchange not only the first 2 options but also the last 2)

• Could make the scoring process quicker: • some parts could still be scored automatically (e.g. putting phrases in the correct order)• missed answers acknowledged by the system automatically make the question about Blanks or

wrong answer unnecessary • decimal numbers more difficult to enter than integers in EIS• If we need to score only when one specific selection has been made in the 1st part of a

question, maybe we could only be provided with the answers that fall in this category

• Let’s have it ready soon!