Education and Technology for transformative learning: Cyberculture or Third Culture?

Alexandra Okada, Monday 30 June 2014 |

The International Forum on Education and Technology  was held in Tarragona, Spain on 27 and 28 June. Over 1000 people across the world gathered at the Palau Firal i de Congressos to discuss the role of technology in Education for transformative learning. Several topics were covered during this event: teachers’ digital competence, educational policy for a network society and new learning scenarios in the 21st century.

Prof. Dr. Jabari Mahiri from the University of California, Berkeley,  Dr. Valentí Puig from the Universitat de Barcelona,  Ronda Zelezni-Green from m-Schools GSMA and  Dr. Alexandra Okada from The Open University – UK  were invited as keynotes to discuss transformative education through technology: Cyberculture or Third Culture?

Mahiri and Okada presented together some examples to introduce both concepts: Third Culture(Brockman,1995; Snow, 1959) and  Cyberculture (Levy, Castells). Their examples highlighted how technology has been integrated into our daily lives changing the way we teach and learn in the digital age. New concepts have been emerging such as “learning culture”, which refers to colearners who develop and create new ways of learning with technologies throughout their lives (Hodkinson et al., 2005; Delni, 1998; Okada & Mahiri, 2014).  A key issue for today's education is to investigate how learners can create and disseminate knowledge as well as develop effectively their 21st century competences.

Okada also presented two European Projects: weSPOT (working with social, personal open technologies) and ENGAGE (Equipping the next generation for active engagment in Science). Both projects focus on promoting scientific literacy in formal and formal Education.  Her research team aims to investigate innovative frameworks and best practices for collaborative inquiry based learning, particularly for participatory communities to promote scientific and digital literacies.

The Education & Technology Fair received thousands of teachers, young students and educational authorities interested in digital trends in education. This event open to the public showcased the latest technologies associated with education, including robotics, augmented reality, mobile and wearable technologies. During the event, Okada was invited to participate in the research group about wearable technologies for inquiry based learning.

weSPOT in Brazil!

Alexandra Okada, Friday 23 May 2014 |

Dante Alighieri is one of the best schools in Sao Paulo Brazil, built more than a hundred years ago by Italian immigrants. Currently it has more than 4,200 students, 115 classrooms and 5 buildings. Its aims are to connect Brazilian and Italian culture, as well as to promote ethical and educational values through innovative pedagogical approaches, high quality teaching and new technologies. 

Science teachers have been using Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) applied to Middle and Secondary school for eight years. All students from 11 to 16 years of age are guided to create their IBL projects for developing their scientific reasoning, as part of their formal curriculum.Students who are very interested in science can also participate in extracurricular activities entitled "Young Scientists Programme", in order to develop more complex projects in partnership with researchers and science centres.

Over the last five years, more than 100 inquiry projects developed by Dante Alighieri’s students were awarded in several exhibitions and international fairs. These included Intel ISEF, Febrace and other events in Europe and USA. Students’ comments and outcomes show that IBL approach has been changing students’ lives.

Sandra Maria Rudella Tonidandel, Science  Coordinator, Miriam Brito Guimaraes, Science teacher and Valdenice Minatel, Educational Technology coordinator will be collaborating with the weSPOT Project by investigating the use of weSPOT environment with Dante Alighieri’s students.  The first pilot will include around 30 students from two classrooms. Sandra Tonidandel and Miriam Guimaraes are very interested in weSPOT for promoting more collaboration between participants.  What’s move it will help investigate how weSPOT can facilitate students and teachers organise, visualise and access their inquiry projects. Valdenice Minatel is focussed on the uses of weSPOT and mobile interfaces.

During the meeting at Dante Alighieri School in the second week of May, Alexandra Okada, Sandra Tonidandel and Miriam Guimaraes discussed weSPOT features and how students and teachers can include weSpot in their inquiry project. Although the school has already been using Moodle, mobile interfaces and creating Open Educational Resources during their Inquiry projects, they start to visualise the potential benefits of weSPOT. “Participants will be more aware of the inquiry workflow and its phases. This will be very useful for teachers’ training as well” (mentioned Guimaraes). After running the first pilot with 60 students, the Dante Alighieri team would like to implement an inquiry project at scale with several students to obtain more data and develop a collaborative research on the uses of a social open and mobile collaborative inquiry environment for developing scientific literacy.

13th PCST 2014 in Brazil: Inquiry Based Learning and Science communication through weSPOT

Alexandra Okada, Tuesday 20 May 2014

The  13th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PSCT 2014), held in Salvador - Brazil, is one of the most important events in Science Communication.  Ale Okada, Sonia Pinto and Silvar Ribeiro presented a case study about weSPOT for promoting scientific literacy through collaborative inquiry.   

The PCST 2014 conference aims to raise more inclusive strategies, improve citizenship through public engagement and to discuss new models and practices for communication and participation. Okada, Pinto and Ribeiro introduced collaborative open research, with the aim of addressing these three issues  by creating a framework for applying “co-inquiry” – collaborative open inquiry to scaffold citizens’ scientific skills through digital technologies.

The first pilot, which focuses on collaborative research on biodiversity, was organised by The Open University (OU) through the European project “weSPOT” for inquiry based learning, as well as the Universidade do Estado da Bahia (UNEB), coordinator of the “Telecentros.BR”training programme for Digital Inclusion.

weSPOT is a working environment with social, personal and open technologies for inquiry based learning (IBL) in formal, non-formal and informal contexts. The Telecentros.BR training programme (2013-2014) is a non-credit online course supported by the Brazil Government. The participants are over 2,500 young educators in diverse areas with low access to digital technology. The role of these young educators is to promote better use of ICT and support the Telecentro.BR’s projects, created by the local communities who do have limited access to the internet with the exception of the Telecentro.BR’s buildings.

Public Communication of Science and Technology aims to include particularly low income people who have no access to education and to science materials; people who live in remote areas and have no access to science spaces and science goods; immigrants who have difficulty in understanding the language and the cultural context; disabled people, etc.

“Scientific Literacy through Co-Inquiry” would like to bring diverse participants together from local communities, schools and universities- including learners,  educators and families to develop a collaborative investigation through weSPOT. Related Links:

• PSCT 2014 Conference

• PSCT 2014 Abstract