Jun
2
As regards the gathering of information concerning Schools, Teachers, Students and Parents, questionnaires were designed with pre-defined answers and some open questions by the WP3 team coordinated by BIBA depending on the different profiles.
Those questionnaires have been translated into local languages (French, Greek, …) to be sent to the local representatives of the Pilot sites. In particular, the French questionnaires have been slightly revised to fit with the French envrionment.
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May
26
BEACONING was represented at the Eurographics 2016, from the 9th to the 13th of May in Lisbon, Portugal.
This conference continues a series of conferences organized by the Eurographics Association covering the wide field of computer graphics, from applied geometry techniques of meshing and surface reconstruction to photorealistic techniques (e.g., path tracing), as well as computer animation and simulation of natural phenomena.
See more at: http://eurographics2016.pt/
The BEACONING had a booth to receive researchers interested in collaborate.
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May
10
BEACONING is aiming at developing a platform that provides access to lessons plans, games, moocs, mobile application etc. in an easy way. The main target groups are students in the age of 16-24 with and without disabilities and teachers. BEACONING will support individual learning by providing personalized user interface and lessons plans. It will support the teachers in the preparation of his/her classes by providing a set of lessons plans, learning materials, games etc. aiming at teaching STEM subjects in different European countries. The success of the BEACONING platform will to a large extent depend on the user acceptance, and how well we manage to cover the different, sometimes contradictory needs. Thus, for the requirements elicitation process carried out by BIBA we use a participatory design approach, in which we involve user groups representing the different stakeholders (including the providers of learning material and applications students, teachers, school authorities, from the very beginning). This process has already started and the first workshops on the issue has been carried out. From Mid May to mid June, we will also run a set of interviews and online questionnaires for getting more information on the needs and to identify regional differences and also provide some examples for nurturing the ideation process. You will find access to the questionnaire here soon, and the summary of the outcome will be available end of June.
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Apr
28
We thought to take the BEACONING concepts to next level of complexity, therefore we can poke and testify its fundamental principles, adaptability, scalability and sustainability. We wanted to apply the BEACONING concepts to a physical skills development scenario, one of the extreme cases of BEACONING pilots.
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Apr
28
As educators, aren’t we all are guilty of ‘old school’ approaches? We force upon students regulated, constrained classroom learning, driven by theories and models of learning styles that limit development of higher intellect.
Here are some observations…
Witness the conventional transmittal of “knowledge”, where a hundred pairs of eyes stare at projected material, listening to a narrative that tries to contextualise the listerners minds’ eye, and when interaction is called upon, the resulting outcome is normally as engaging as a brick. Exam times are another useful insight… notice the bowed heads in buses, some with scribble and scrawls on scrap paper, others more organised with notes and folders, all hoping to cram in to their last memory space a piece of information that makes or breaks their career path, nevermind their day. Homework is the bugbear to students and indeed to parents as well. News from the grapevine suggest a good percentage (~50%) of parents are either flummoxed by the work or attempt to complete it on behalf of their child. News from the corridors are even more revealing. Dr Sandi Mann a senior lecturer in occupational psychology at the University of Central Lancashire has some useful findings on strategies adopted by students to cope with boring lectures: Daydreaming (75% of students admitted doing this); Doodling (66%); Chatting to friends (50%); Texting (45%); Note passing to friends (38%). Over 25% of students leave the lecture at the mid-session break. The last point is poignant since its consequence is disengagement, leading to poor grades, even dropping out. From the learners’ perspective this defeats the purpose of education, i.e. the development of both horizontal growth (knowledge acquisition, building competence) and vertical growth (interllectual and personel development, the maturing of the mind). From the institutions perspective, poor retention is not a favourable business model.
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