ICT in Education: Examples of Good Practice

Part 2 of 2: Creative Uses of ICT

When ICT was first introduced in schools and universities, it was frequently observed that these technologies were used as a replacement of text books, i.e. teachers uploaded text onto a learning management system and asked their students to download the texts and read them. Fortunately, this has changed. Teachers and students do try to use the media in ways that more fully make use of their potential. We do not doubt that to really fully exploit the potential of ICT, the way teaching and learning takes place has to change, i.e. schools and universities will have to change. The potential of ICT can only fully be exploited if teachers and learners are given more freedom. Technology enhanced learning environments need to be set up so they can be used flexibly in a variety of ways: by groups or pairs of students, by single students, by a whole class of students, and changes in the spatial set up of the environment need to be accomplished swiftly. At the same time, learning needs to become a process based on questioning and exploring, instead of memorising content that is not related to students’ lives, and finally, ICT should be use in more creative ways to support new ways of learning.

In their contribution, Julio Palmero and his colleagues from Màlaga and Granada in Spain report on a study they conducted with teacher students who were asked to develop their own personalised learning environment and reflect on its use. Of particular interest was the question to what extent they used technological tools to design and implement their personalised learning environment.

One of the more creative ways of using ICT for learning is being explored in the field of serious games. Margarida Romero from the Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona will report on a study of collaborative decision making with university students. The author has developed a group awareness widget as part of a serious game on financial activities which displays students’ level of certainty during their collaborative activities. The results of the study will be presented at the conference.

Roberta Sala and Barbara Colombo from the University of the Sacred Heart in Milano did a study with pre-school and primary school children who used Web 2.0 technologies to collaboratively and with the help of their teachers create an artistic multimedia CD. The methodology of the course as well as empirical results will be presented at the conference.  

Fátima Duarte and Ana Margarida Simão from the University of Lisbon in Portugal present the results of an empirical study of the learning paths of 11th grade students who were working with the Web to find out how these students manage to collect information and self-regulate their learning. The results should be helpful in finding intervention strategies and developing technological tools to support the acquisition and improvement of self-regulated learning.