ITEMS was presented twice at the Association for Science Education (ASE) conference in Nottingham in early January 2010. The ASE conference is one of the largest gatherings of science educators in Europe attracting registrations from many countries. Attendance on the first day was reduced due to snowstorms but recovered subsequently.
There was considerable interest in the ITEMS modules and operation. Partners in other EU projects also presented at the conference.
One project, Coreflect, was focused on the use of Stochasmos, a flexible web based platform to promote inquiry.
The S-TEAM project was also presented. This focuses on enabling large numbers of teachers to adopt inquiry-based and other methods for more effective science teaching.
On December 2, Agueda Gras-Velazquez attended on behalf of the Items project the pre-Educa Berlin seminar: “The Moodle Experience: Moodle in Practice and New Developments”
First of all, it was an excellent chance to meet other people using Moodle like Armin Talić from idego in Bosnia-Herzegovia or from even further away Theresa Koroivulaono from The University of the South Pacific, in Fij, or Jan Beniest from the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya. Additionally, presentations on how are the Italian Guardia di Finanza or the Welsh schools using Moodle, and about Moodle sister projects like Mahara or MoOdalis, provided a lot of food for thought. Other things that could be worth looking at are a paper from M. David Merrill on First Principles of Instruction or the discussion on Blended learning and eLearning from Hans de Zwart.
But the best part was Martin Dougiamas’s presentation of Moodle 2.0: new features, options, etc. coming up. For the Items project, the coolest new feature will be the Moodle Community Hub where they want to host Moodle courses available to anyone. Teachers will be able to search among the courses available for those fitting their interests and use them in their own Moodle platforms, which is exactly the idea of the Items project!
The teacher training at NiLS started on 24.11.2009
On 24.11.2009 the teacher training for the ITEMS course “Einführung in Funktionen (Klasse 6)” (Introduction into functions) started. The teachers where introduced into the goals and concepts of the ITEMS project. Then the teachers enrolled in the ITEMS teacher training course. This course is used in the next time to give teachers help when they start to teach the real course.
Every teacher got a copy of the course and was enrolled as a teacher in his course, which he will give in the near future.
At the end of course, a short questionnaire gave feedback about the impression the course made.
All teachers where very much convinced about the usefulness of the training session and the use of Moodle in general and the presented ITEMS course.
All teachers wanted more ITEMS courses like this.
Most teachers expected a positive reaction of the children. On the other hand, the teachers think that the needed IT competences of the children are at high level for the age group. The same holds for the teachers. No wonder that most teachers urgently wanted more training to use Moodle.
After having practised the courses, the teachers will come back and fill in the next questionnaire reporting about their results.
ITEMS was presented twice at the Association for Science Education (ASE) conference in Nottingham in early January 2010. The ASE conference is one of the largest gatherings of science educators in Europe attracting registrations from many countries. Attendance on the first day was reduced due to snowstorms but recovered subsequently.
