an intermediate evaluation report of netd@ys 1998 experience

AN INTERMEDIATE EVALUATION REPORT OF NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCE Presented to

European Commission DGXXII Submitted by

NetD@ys Evaluation Group University of Helsinki (Kai Hakkarainen, Piialiisa Laine, Juha Syri, Matti Keltanen, Hanni Muukkonen, Lasse Lipponen, Marjaana Rahikainen, Liisa Ilomäki, Minna Lakkala) and University of Athens (Stella Vosniadou, Vasillios Kollias, Thanasis Mol)

March 1999

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience CONTENT 1

INTRODUCTION

7

1.1

Educational impacts of ICT

8

1.2

Pedagogical Challenges of Using ICT in Education

9

2

METHODS AND RESEARCH MATERIAL

16

3

RESULTS: NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCES

18

3.1

Participation in NetD@ys Activities

18

3.2

Awareness Raising Activities

20

3.3

Facilitation of ICT Literacy

21

3.4

Facilitation of Social Collaboration

22

3.5

Connecting School with the Outside Community

23

3.6

Acquisition of Subject-Matter Knowledge

27

3.7

Publishing Students' Own Productions

28

3.8

Facilitation of Equality in Education

30

3.9

Knowledge of Other Cultures and Facilitation of European Identity

31

3.10 4

Categorisation of NetD@ys Project RECOMMENDATIONS

33 34

4.1

Data collection procedure

34

4.2

Challenges in the Pedagogical Development of NetD@ys Activities

35

2

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience SUMMARY

The purpose of the present report is to evaluate NetD@ys 1998 experience from pedagogical viewpoint. The evaluation process aims at assessing strengths and weaknesses of NetD@ys 1998 activities and using these experiences to facilitate school children's cognitive and social development in general and in-depth learning in particular by the means of online media in education across Europe in 1999. We evaluated NetD@ys 1998 by analysing the nature of its events and projects. The material analysed in this evaluation consisted of project descriptions of 121 projects as well as NetD@ys project reports and questionnaires sent to the project co-ordinators. Altogether, there was either the project report or questionnaire available in 55.4% (67) of the cases; this appeared to provide sufficient information for purposes of the present evaluation task. NetD@ys Europe 1998 was presumably the largest educational technology event in Europe. Approximately 35.000 schools participated in the project through organising various of activities. Approximately 500.000 connections were taken to the Internet site of NetD@ys 1988 (www.netdays.org). Approximately 1000 projects and 4000 events were organised across Europe; this is five times more than in 1997. According to the analysis, approximately 77% (f=93) of the projects focused on facilitating awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT in general and the Internet in particular. Many of these projects simultaneously were designed to facilitate students’ and teachers’ ICT literacy, national and international networking or acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. According to the project co-ordinators’ assessment, the development of students' ICT literacy was facilitated in practically every NetD@ys project. Approximately 65% of projects helped students to learn to use email or search the Internet. A slightly smaller number of projects assisted students in learning to make a web page. The percentage of projects in which students built software, such as a multimedia presentation, was only about 10%. Further, some projects trained students to participate in on-line chat as well as videoconferences. Learning to use ICT was not always the main focus of these projects but was often a byproduct of participation in NetD@ys projects. In some of the projects, however, training of students' and teachers' ICT skills, as such, appeared to be an important goal. In the case of 40% (f=48) of the projects, intensive training sessions for teachers were organised. These training sessions focused on helping teachers to develop their ICT expertise and to learn to use the Internet in their teaching. About the same proportion of projects focused on fostering students' ICT skills (36%, f=44). The analysis indicated that the use of ICT was very motivating for the students. Practically all project co-ordinators answering the questionnaire, reported that NetD@ys activities facilitated the students’ motivation for learning. Over 60% (f=76) of the projects analysed mentioned national and/or European collaboration as an important aspect of their projects. It is noticeable that only 15.7% (n=19) of the participating projects appeared to be designed to facilitate teacher networking. Further, only a portion of NetD@ys 1998 projects (24.8%, f=30) explicitly aimed at facilitation of collaborative learning between students, such as engagement in joint problem solving or inquiry. Many projects mentioned different kinds of learning projects that were going to be organised, but, as yet, one cannot determine whether these projects facilitate pedagogically valuable, social collaboration that would elicit in-depth learning. An examination of the material revealed that there were a substantial number of projects that focused on facilitating interaction between schools and the outside community. The analysis indicated that as many as 46 (38%) projects engaged in local community-building, i.e., focused on engaging parents and local organisations in an interactive process of discussing and developing the school(s). Engagement of parents with introduction of ICT at school is very important condition for successful school development. Further, 41 projects focused on 3

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience creating connections between schools and different kinds of expert communities. The projects promoted partnership between students and local enterprises, research institutions and cultural organisation with approximately same intensity. Some projects had simultaneous connections with all of the mentioned, expert cultures (business, research, and arts). Many of the NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. In these projects, ICT was a tool of learning some subject-domain knowledge rather than a focus in itself. The NetD@ys activities appeared to facilitate students' learning and understanding of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in various processes: carrying out projects, participating in discussions and contests, searching information from the Internet and so on. The subject-matter areas included, for example, philosophy, science and mathematics, biology, history, social sciences, and art education. It is psychologically and pedagogically very important to provide students opportunities to publish their own productions by using the new means provided by ICT and the Internet. Examination of the study material indicated that publishing of the students' work in the Internet was involved in 45% (f=54) of the examined NetD@ys projects. NetD@ys activities appeared to foster equality in education through offering young students from all of Europe an access to the new information and communication technology as well as engaging them in many kinds of activities that fostered not only development of ICT skills but also their own understanding of subject-matter knowledge, as explained above. Beyond this general support for equality in education, approximately 28% (f=34) of the sample projects addressed one or another special issue concerning equality in education, such as participation of female students, disadvantaged or unemployed families or handicapped students. Approximately a half of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating networking between schools either nationally (27), nationally and the European level (25) or only at the European level (24). It is plausible to assume that the networking projects, in which the participating students got an opportunity to communicate with their peers from different countries, facilitated understanding of cultural differences and provided knowledge of the other cultures. The interaction between students and teachers representing different countries frequently focused on exchanging information about different ways of living and varied cultural traditions and, therefore, facilitated students' knowledge of other cultures, differing values, and languages. The NetD@ys projects analysed were classified in three groups by performing an exploratory hierarchical cluster analysis through the most important variables analysed. The analysis indicated that 66 projects focused mainly on activities that facilitated awareness of the new educational possibilities provided by ICT as well as supported learning of ICT skills by teachers and the students. Many of these projects represented initial attempts at starting to use ICT in a specific educational environment. The most important activities included demonstrations concerning applications of ICT and workshops for teachers concerning possibilities of ICT.In many cases, the focus was clearly on teachers' professional development rather than students' learning. Further, 40 projects that focused on facilitating acquisition of subjectmatter knowledge. In these projects ICT was clearly used as a tool of learning specific domains of knowledge rather that being the main focus of activities. An important aim of all of these projects was to publish student's own productions on the web. Although these projects were frequently involved with community building, they did not, however, emphasise networking with expert cultures. Thus, it appears that, in many cases, studying of different domains of knowledge, and networking with expert communities were not integrated. Finally, a small group of projects (f=16) focused very strongly on creating connections with expert cultures, whether it was business, research or cultural community. These projects aimed at aris4

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience ing awareness about the possibilities for student-expert partnership through organizing exemplary videoconferences and other events in which students were able to interact with experts. In these cases, interaction with experts was usually connected with acquisition of subjectmatter knowledge. Typical for these projects was also to foster in-depth learning through guiding the students to publish their productions in the Internet. Interestingly, also an emphasis on social collaboration was more typical for these projects than for the other groups of projects. Recommendations From a research perspective, it would be of utmost importance to develop a structured data-collection procedure that would support a longitudinal analysis of technologysupported learning in Europe. The NetD@ys event provides a good opportunity to follow up the development of educational use of ICT in European schools and other educational institutions. There should be an explicit, official requests for detailed descriptions of activities undertaken by students and teachers consequent upon their experiences on NetD@ys and other exposure to ICT. We recommend that procedures for data collection on NetD@ys events be explicitly developed in a way that would allow scientific assessment of the NetD@ys experience. This may be conducted by creating a questionnaire or a standard form that projects applying for EC funding would have to fill in when submitting their proposal and again at the time of reporting their results. This questionnaire would address the nature of the project in question, the underlying pedagogical and practical goals, and activities to be organised for attaining these goals. In order to facilitate equality in education we have to ensure equal opportunity of access to ICT for all children in Europe. Therefore, it is important to disseminate NetD@ys experiences about the educational benefits of ICT, initiate new NetD@ys projects and encourage new schools and educational institutions to start using ICT for educational purposes. The current NetD@ys practices appear to function very well in this area; from one year to another the quantity and quality of NetD@ys projects have been increasing. Teachers have a very important role in guiding students to use ICT as a tool of learning and thinking. They should be guided toward developing and testing new instructional practices that help to utilise ICT in fostering active, thoughtful, and self-regulated learning. Experiences of networking of teachers indicate that networking with other schools and teachers is much easier if there are continuous connections between the participants. This is also likely to produce more stable positive pedagogical effects. Therefore, it is very important to support continuous or permanent collaboration between schools, teachers, and students through NetD@ys activities nationally and at the European level. Teacher networking is very important because only a teacher who has learned to extend his or her pedagogical and intellectual resources though networked activities is able to understand the value of a networked student. The preliminary examination of NetD@ys project indicates that even if networking with experts and networking between students and teachers was frequently involved, only a few NetD@ys projects acknowledged the pedagogical value of social collaboration. In many cases, collaboration appeared to support social corresponding more than joint problem solving. Although international or cross-cultural social interaction is very important for its own sake and provides invaluable information about ways of living and thinking in different cultures, it would be profitable to guide international school networking towards teamwork and distributed problem-solving that characterise practices of modern work. This approach does not necessarily eliminate the current social interaction or correspondence but may enrich it by engaging participants in working jointly for attaining common cognitively-valuable learning goals. 5

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Students find the use of ICT very motivating. However, the degree to which initial interest will be maintained depends on the nature of the educational experiences that children receive within the new ICT environment. As a consequence, it is very important not only to focus on improving students' and teachers' technical skills but also to guide them to productively use ICT as a tool of learning and teaching. The integration of ICT use with different domains of knowledge is especially important in the context of female students, who may not appear very interested in technology as such. An important educational task is to build an extended community that brings together teachers, students, parents, local authorities, software developers, and universities. From this kind of networked community may emerge new cultures of working for transforming current educational practices and developing new applications of ICT that facilitate students' cognitive and social development. Especially, various kinds of student-experts partnerships promise to provide new intellectual resources for human development. The competitiveness of European education appears to require that spontaneous and accidental student-expert connections be replaced by permanent structures that help students to authentically participate in expert cultures and corresponding practices of working with knowledge. The following questions emerged from our analysis: •

How could student-business partnerships be used to facilitate solving of authentic, meaningful real-world problems in their actual context?

•

How may student-expert partnerships be transformed into permanent research projects in which students set up and solve problems, and collect and analyse data with the help of scientific and other kind of experts?

•

How we could help schools to find mentors (experts who are willing to work with school children) to help them solve the authentic, complex problems really being investigated?

Most of the reported NetD@ys projects used on-line chat, videoconferences or virtual meetings to organise their collaboration. However, only a few projects used the new collaborative technology (e.g., computer-supported collaborative learning environments, groupware systems designed for educational use) that allows students and collaborating experts jointly to construct and share knowledge. Through disseminating the new collaborative technology and corresponding pedagogical practices, the organisers of NetD@ys would be able to promote new and fruitful practices of using the Internet in education. One possibility would be to create a NetD@ys mentor database from which one could find an astronomer, molecular biologist, historian, sociologist or a philosopher willing to help students to solve problems that cannot be solved by using local intellectual and knowledge resources. European network structures that would support student-expert partnerships in different domains of knowledge would significantly facilitate pedagogically productive connections between schools and expert cultures. Further, new European projects should be initiated in which students and scientists collect data and solve problems together. Although we would like to emphasise the pedagogical significance of student-scientist partnership, facilitation of the development of students’ moral, aesthetic, and social development is equally important. Therefore, the proposed student-expert partnership should also concern students and writers, painters, musicians and so on. In order to facilitate pedagogical development of NetD@ys projects, it would be profitable to set up a European award for innovative ICT-in-education projects. The award could have several series focused on different types of projects, such as innovative a) awareness rising activities, b) European educational networking initiatives, and c) practices of student-expert partnership. 6

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience 1

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the present report is to evaluate NetD@ys 1998 experience from pedagogical viewpoint. The dissemination of good pedagogical practices of using knowledge media is the special focus of the evaluation part of the NetD@ys 1999 project. The evaluation process aims at assessing strengths and weaknesses of NetD@ys 1998 activities and using these experiences to facilitate school children's cognitive and social development in general and in-depth learning in particular by the means of online media in education across Europe in 1999.

Educational systems in many countries are facing major challenges as a consequence of the revolution of the new information and communication technologies (ICT). The new technology is changing the environment of human activity in many ways. Our ways of working, studying, and collaborating are changing dramatically. There are changes occurring throughout the world which will have long-term effects comparable to the major points in the history of human civilisation, such as the agricultural revolution or the first industrial revolution (Keating, 1995; 1996). These challenges cannot be met without restructuring the educational system.

One of the basic requirements for future education is to prepare learners for participation in an information society in which knowledge is the most critical resource for social and economic development and where distributed expertise and networked activities more and more characterise the emerging types of work (Tabscott, 1996). Distributed expertise and collaborative processes are connected with personal cognitive competencies and higher-level skills not formerly in general demand for employment. Skills of independently searching, producing, and managing knowledge will be essential for thriving in the emerging knowledge society. In the collaborative learning organisations of the future, it will be necessary to be able to independently regulate one's own cognitive activity, to productively collaborate with the others, and to function within networks of experts. These challenges do not only concern those aiming for professional or high-managerial positions. We argue that, in the future society, middle levels of the workforce will be required to have basic technical, self-directing, and collaborative skills and, importantly, to have the capacity to continuously upgrade them. Every citizen will need to be able to engage in education and professional development throughout his or her life.

Educational institutions are required to find appropriate pedagogical methods to cope with these new challenges. In this development, new information and communication technologies (ICT), properly taught and implemented, could play an important role. They could be used as tools to restructure learning-instruction processes in ways that facilitate the overall development of the students' skills of collaborating and working productively with knowledge. Skills of using ICT include the ability to solve increasingly complex problems in a variety of knowledge-rich domains, to participate in knowledge work, and to engage in various networked activities. This evaluation project, undertaken at an 7

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience intermediate point, examines a substantial body of evidence regarding the NetD@ys 99 projects which indicates how European schools – their students and teachers – are beginning to answer these challenges.

1.1

Educational impacts of ICT Cognitive research on technology-enriched learning environments indicates that the mere in-

troduction of ICT in education often leads to improved learning results. According to a recent metaanalysis of educational impact of ICT based on hundreds of international studies, the use of ICT significantly enhances learning outcomes (Lehtinen & Rouhelo, 1998). These studies indicate that the use of ICT as such or the accompanying changes in practices of learning and instruction has a significant positive effect on learning. Students are generally very motivated to work with the new technology. Introduction of ICT is also likely to involve changed structures of classroom activities and an increase in students' control over their own learning. Students engaged in technology-enriched learning are not usually doing the same kinds of things in classrooms with ICT; they are involving themselves in many different kinds of independent projects. These positive effects require working with computers over extended periods of time. Further, such effects are present in all levels of education from elementary to university level education. The best results have been obtained in science studies although there are a many studies that indicate positive effects in humanities.

In order to obtain the above cognitive and pedagogical effects, certain basis conditions should be met. It is necessary that a) teachers and students have access to the new technology; b) the schools have an adequate network infrastructure and connections to the wide-area networks; c) teachers and students have necessary technical skills to use ICT; and d) there is available suitable educational software. Yet Vosniadou's (1997) assessment of EU schools is unsettling: "schools in Europe are poorly and unequally equipped with computers. Few primary schools have access to wide-area networks, which when they exist are hampered by the unavailability or high cost of telephone services, and by the poor quantity and quality of the available information. In addition, there is only a small number of good quality software for the education of young children. Last and most important, teachers are inadequately trained to use the technology. As a result they either avoid using computers or assimilate the technology to current, mastery oriented educational practices with the result that much of the innovation is lost." Although the situation may have somewhat improved in two years since Vosniadou's study, many European countries do not meet the basic conditions of educationally meaningful use of ICT.

The use of new medium and pedagogical tools creates enormous challenges in respect to teachers' and students' expertise in using ICT as well as finding productive ways of learning through using the on-line media. As Vosniadou (1997) argued, teachers have to change their instructional prac8

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience tices significantly and become facilitators of students' learning activities rather than dispensers of information. In order to pedagogically utilise the new possibilities of ICT, the teachers need to know how to guide students' active learning. Yet it is unlikely that an individual teacher can make much progress in his or her pedagogical practice without support of the whole pedagogical community of school as well as national and European authorities (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997).

Surviving in the emerging knowledge society requires that each citizen be able to productively function in a high-tech environment. International reviews, however, indicate that there is a significant gender difference in relation to the new technology; male students have frequently better access to the new technology as well as more positive attitudes towards ICT. Nonetheless, recent studies carried out in Finland indicate that this gender difference might be changing among younger generations of students (Hakkarainen, Ilomäki, Lipponen, Muukkonen, Rahikainen, Tuominen, & Lehtinen, submitted a). The study indicates that female students were also frequently developing pre-requisites for using ICT as a tool of learning, in particular, a positive disposition toward collaboration in thinking and working. It was very encouraging that female students, especially younger ones, appeared to have rather positive attitudes towards ICT in general and the use of ICT as a tool for learning in particular. In establishing new resources for learning and development to support the female students' learning, it is very important to integrate educational use of ICT with various subject domains and subsume the use of ICT under overall pedagogical goals (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997, Hakkarainen & Lipponen, 1998). Thus far, however, ICT is mainly studied as a separate subject instead of used as tools for solving subject-domain problems.

1.2

Pedagogical Challenges of Using ICT in Education The introduction of new information and communication technologies in schools and other

educational levels promises to offer new opportunities to facilitate meaningful and in-depth learning. Students using ICT develop their technical ICT skills, learn to search information and use extended sources of information, and become very motivated. These general positive effects, of course, may be pedagogically very valuable achievements and represent a significant improvement over traditional practices of learning and instruction. Yet these effects do not, as such, facilitate advancement of the students' deeper, principled and conceptual understanding. It is important to notice that ICT can be used also as a new means towards traditional ends (see Salomon, 1997). Several cognitive researchers (e.g., de Corte, 1993; Salomon, 1997; Salomon & Perkins, 1996) have pointed out that many current applications of educational technology support only lower-level processing of knowledge, such as direct transmission or copying of knowledge. For example, Salomon (1997) has commented on the point of the opportunities afforded by the Internet: 9

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience “At first glance it appears to afford everything a constructivist approach would wish to have: Multiple sources of information to draw from, a whole information world to explore, and an invitation to become an active, fully participating member of the larger, virtual, and diverse information society. The problem, though, is that it is too much of a good thing. Too many sources, too much information, too many communication links, and too much excitement relative to the meager pedagogical rationale to justify the process of surfing this abundance for the purposes of learning.” (pp. 17-18) It is possible, for instance, that students use the Internet only for the passive downloading of information rather than doing in-depth processing of knowledge. Studies indicate that "surfing" the Internet frequently encourages a student to bounce from link to another without any specific learning goal. Sometimes free exploration of the Internet may be educationally useful and help a student to become familiar with the virtual world. However, it should not be the only or most important activity. Our experiences from Finnish schools suggest, for instance, that sometimes students engage in surfing the Internet in order to avoid pursuit of cognitively more demanding learning tasks.

This may lead to what Salomon calls the butterfly Defect. The Butterfly Defect means that students may learn to construct webs of knowledge in terms of the on-line media they use, e.g., casual, associative, fragile webs. Furthermore, they are disposed to mentally "hop around" as they do with multimedia. The problem is that the flood of randomly obtained information does not support development of a coherent conceptual understanding. In order for ICT to have a real educational benefit, a student should not only be a passive consumer of information while working on the Internet, but also engage in critical thinking and gradually adopt a role of an active, as well as reflective, producer of knowledge.

An important condition for productive educational use of ICT is to subsume the use of new technology under pedagogical and cognitive goals rather than use ICT only for its own sake. In advanced pedagogical practices, the use of ICT and the Internet becomes an integrated part of the whole curriculum, learning environment and the culture of learning. As such, technology is used for building up social structures that encourage learning, for supporting reflective discourse, and for helping students and teachers build knowledge as well as to deepen their understanding of the basic principles of different domains. Cognitive research on technology-supported learning indicates that the following principles and practices facilitate in-depth learning.

(A) Facilitation of Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning

Vosniadou (1997) argued that ICT can be used to create a learning environment rich in intellectual activities that are enjoyable but also cognitively challenging, socially meaningful and culturally relevant. New pedagogical models of using ICT in education promise to facilitate learning for under-

10

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience standing through problem-based and inquiry learning. In such learning students are guided to ask and answer questions, design and conduct investigations, search and explore information and data, generate and evaluate explanations or interpretations, and report findings (Hakkarainen & Lipponen, 1998). These kinds of activities encourage students to take responsibility of directing their own learning. In that way, the students may not only improve their conceptual understanding of domain knowledge but develop their skills of regulating their own processes of thinking and problem solving (metacognition) as well. The emerging new models of technology-supported inquiry learning promise, with appropriate institutional support and teacher facilitation, to elicit development of higher-level skills of knowledge processing needed in the present, knowledge society.

(B) Facilitation of Social Collaboration

Cognitive research on educational practices strongly emphasises the significance of collaborative learning in human cognitive and social development (see, for example, Brown, Ash, Ruherford, Nakagawa, Gordon, & Campione, 1993; Norman 1993; Perkins 1993; Pea 1993). The emerging research on collaborative learning involves the mutual engagement of participants in co-ordinated efforts to build new knowledge and to solve problems together (Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O'Malley, 1996). Many cognitive problems that cannot be solved individually, can be addressed by combining limited knowledge and skills of several students (Hatano & Inagaki, 1992; Miyake, 1986; Norman, 1993; Oatley, 1990; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). In a shared problem-solving process, students who have partial but different information about the problem in question appear to improve their understanding through social interaction. Further, through social interaction, weaknesses and limitations of a student's ideas are likely to be identified because such contact forces him or her to manipulate the ideas from different points of view. From the standpoint of collaborative learning, diversity of cognitive styles, heterogeneity of developing competencies, differences in experiences and knowledge, and multiplicity of interests are strengths rather than weaknesses; advancement of the whole learning community may be fostered by capitalising on cognitive diversity through joint problem solving. A fundamental aspect of using ICT in education is to give users tools (e.g., groupware systems or distributed databases) for sharing their process of solving problems and the knowledge they produce; as well, educational ICT should provide them with network tools for communication between themselves.

Although the scientific community has considered the principles of Computer-supported collaborative learning highly promising for the development of future learning environments, practising teachers are often less informed about basic changes in how learning is conceptualised. In many cases, the educators are still relying on the so-called solo-learning model and focus more on individual highachieving students than on facilitating the advancement of a whole learning community. For example, in recent large survey studies, Finnish teachers did not, they reported, regard collaborative learning as an important application of computers (Hakkarainen, Muukkonen, Lipponen, Ilomäki, Rahikainen, &

11

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Lehtinen, submitted b).

(C) Participation in Expert Cultures

Managing complex and ill-defined problems and dealing with rapid change are becoming more and more important in "survival" strategies for the future. Citizens, at present, are exposed to a vastly increasing amount of information. Thus the traditional practices of learning and instruction, based on routines and absorption of transmitted information, have become more and more problematic. Traditional schools that focus on well-defined and partitioned problems do not appear to be able to provide students the higher-level cognitive skills needed. Optimally, ICT will help students participate in solving authentic, complex "real-life" problems. Students find such problems and activities both intriguing and meaningful.

Solving of these kinds of problems with the help of teacher or adult experts, students develop flexible mental processes, improve their ability to deal with uncertainty, and learn to adopt practices of expert-like working with knowledge (see, for example, Vosniadou, 1997; Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Lamon, 1994). Through ICT, the problems addressed at school may be better "anchored" to the meaningful, complex problems outside school (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1997), including those certainly to be encountered in a future workplace.

From cognitive research on educational practices have arisen various forms of student-expert partnership for building connections between schools and varied kinds of expert cultures and communities. This kind of partnership is critical because higher-level cognitive competencies are developing in a close interaction with expert cultures and through participating in "communities of practice" (Lave & Wanger, 1991). A connection with an expert culture may help to understand the experts' ways of solving problems and to approach tasks in their domain, adopt their tacit knowledge, and, generally, learn to understand how experts think. Information networks and networked learning environments allow one to bring various kinds of authentic expert knowledge to schools as well as mediate direct student-expert communication. For example, such networks open classrooms to many kinds of extended sources of information in databases. Creating virtual communities of distributed expertise (students-experts, teachers-experts, students-teacher-parents) enables multiple forms of engagement within projects. A promising approach is to facilitate local community building, i.e., break the common place boundaries of school through involving parents, local organisations, and associations into an extended learning community.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

(D) Building Networks of Student Experts

Recently, there has emerged an approach to education that emphasises the importance of a child's learning to adopt an expert-like role, and engage in a process of progressive problem solving in a particular domain of knowledge. The metaphor of student-as-expert assumes that an ordinary student can, to a significant extent, adopt some essential features of an expert role; specifically, he or she can take on challenging problems and engage collaboratively, in extended processes of question-driven inquiry. Indeed, many children may be regarded as "experts" insofar they have a rich body of accessible and usable domain knowledge. For example, Hakkarainen et al.'s (submitted a) study indicated that a large number of the students, most of them males, mastered ICT and were able to take responsibility for many kinds of expert tasks, such as maintenance of ICT at school or coaching their fellow students or teachers. Adoption of an expert's role was closely connected with networking – being in contact with other persons interested in the domain or with professionals. Considering the pedagogical goals of the school, this expert functioning is very positive, and may also significantly facilitate development of other academic skills. The fact that many students who are not experts in ICT were reportedly ready to take on challenging problems indicates that educational use of ICT may encourage a larger number of students to set themselves more ambitious learning goals.

The internet-based networked learning environments appear to facilitate students' forming their own networks whenever there are common interests, similar problems to solve or shared interest in a some domain of knowledge. These environments provide tools for interacting and collaborating with other schools or public or private organisations nationally or across Europe. Direct international interaction also provides new authentic means for multicultural education. This may help a student to learn to understand cultural differences and facilitate emergence of a truly European identity. Although network-mediated interaction between students is a valuable experience as such, from a pedagogical perspective it is important to guide these networked activities to facilitate pursuit of learning goals rather than just social correspondence. This may be conducted by supporting emergence of a network of students interested in same subject domains or other areas of interests.

(E) Facilitation of In-Depth Learning Through Production of Knowledge

ICT provides teacher and students with very effective tools for working with knowledge and making their productions accessible to a large audience through Internet publishing. These new opportunities to engage in active production of knowledge and make a real contribution to cultural knowledge are pedagogically most valuable. Firstly, engagement in production of knowledge through writing and visualisation, facilitates in-depth learning. Writing can be seen as the most important tool of thinking, and it has a crucial significance in explication and articulation of one's conceptions. It facilitates

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience transformation of knowledge and pushes a student to articulate his or her ideas more thoroughly. Visual presentation of one's thought and ideas has a corresponding effect on learning (Edelson, Pea, & Gomez, 1996). By externalising one's thoughts and ideas through writing and visualisation, learners are able to reduce the cognitive processing load and thus to solve problems that were otherwise completely unattainable.

Practices of reading and writing determine, to a great extent, how effectively cognitive resources provided by externalisation are used in education. However, according to Geisler's (1994) analysis of recent studies on school writing, students are not usually required to write extensively at school. The audience of writing is almost always the teacher, and the function of writing is most often to demonstrate that students have understood texts in question and acquired desired knowledge. Students are not encouraged to use writing for articulating their ideas in an extended way. Extensive thinking is not facilitated through writing assignments; such assignments do not usually require production of more than one or two paragraphs. Presumably as a consequence of practices of writing at school, students are generally not able to use knowledge in a reflective way in texts they produce.

On the basis of these considerations, it is very important to guide students to use ICT for production of knowledge. In order to facilitate extensive and deep thought, writing, visualisation, and other forms of knowledge production should be integrated with inquiry learning (see Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1991; Brown & Campione, 1996). Further, publishing of one's production on the Internet appears to change the psychological nature of knowledge productions; it may push a student to carry out deeper investigations and achieve better results through forcing one to consider his or her productions from the viewpoint of the possible audience. Producing of knowledge for a real audience is often also a very motivating and rewarding experience.

The present report emphasises the importance of using ICT for facilitating collaborative inquiry learning. This may require a deep change in teachers' and students' conceptions of knowledge and the pedagogical practices of school. In order to facilitate higher-level practices of inquiry in education by the means of ICT, a substantial change in pedagogical practices and in the wider culture of schooling is needed. This is, of course, a very difficult task. The culture of school learning cannot be expected to change immediately; basic changes presuppose a long process of exploring and testing varied cognitive and pedagogical practices, as well an invigorated, informed 'public will', embodied in educational policy, to seek and foster change. On the basis of the above discussion, we suggest that NetD@ys Europe has a strategic importance in development of the educational use of ICT. Through awareness-raising activities, promoting national and European ICT projects as well as emergence of many kinds of partnerships that facilitate advancement of European education with new technology, NetD@ys promises to help to answer the future challenges of European education. In the following sections of this intermediate evaluation, early results are set out based on evidence presently in hand;

14

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience these constitute a pedagogical assessment, in process, of NetD@ys Europe 1998 activities.

15

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

2

METHODS AND RESEARCH MATERIAL We evaluated NetD@ys 1998 by analysing the nature of its events and projects. The evalua-

tion includes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the NetD@ys projects, participants, connections between educational, cultural and business organisations, and public authorities. The present, intermediate, evaluation was carried out under severe time limitations; there was not enough time to gather sufficient information about all projects. The material analysed in this evaluation consisted of the following sets of data: •

Project descriptions of 121 projects (these had been called 'sample projects' but will simply be referred to as 'projects,' below) funded by the EC. Some of the sample projects were so-called umbrella projects. At this point of time, however, we were not able to analyse the individual (sub)projects carried out within the umbrella projects.

•

Project reports sent by the projects to the EC. Only 41.3% (f=50) of the funded projects returned the project reports early enough to be included in the present evaluation process.

•

Questionnaires sent to the project co-ordinators (see Appendix 1). About 32% of projects answered the questionnaire in time to be included into the present, intermediate report (March 1999). The rest of the projects have received a letter encouraging them to answer the questionnaire as soon as possible. The questionnaire was written in English, and some project coordinators asked to have the questionnaire also in French. We are currently working to produce a French version of the questionnaire.

•

A search of NetD@ys website through the Internet revealed approximately 250 associated projects that are going to be analysed in details for the final report. This material includes also information about approximately 50 Finnish NetD@ys projects obtained from the (Finnish) National Board of Education and Helsinki City Department of Education. However, several links are not active any more because preparation of NetD@ys 1999 started later than normally. This material has been analysed qualitatively, and descriptions of some exceptional school projects are included into this report. The present analysis was based on all material presently available from projects (March,

1999). Altogether, there was either the project report or questionnaire available in 57% (69) of the cases. Only in a few cases did we have to change our initial interpretation of the nature of a project deriving on the project description on the basis of project reports or questionnaire (although it was, naturally, enriched). Thus, we have evidence that the material likely provided sufficient information for purposes of the present evaluation task.

A forthcoming component of the evaluation is an analysis of the pedagogical value of the Internet in education through an international review of research articles. The NetD@ys evaluation group has searched databases of international research articles concerning the Internet and education and found about 1149 articles. Of these articles, 100-200 will be selected for closer analysis. The results of the international literature research will be available in the fall of 1999 and included into the final NetD@ys evaluation report.

16

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience A methodological limitation of the evaluation process was that detailed information was not available concerning a) the actual learning processes which took place during NetD@ys activities, or b) pedagogical effects of participation in NetD@ys. As a consequence, it was very difficult, for example, to assess whether active or deep learning (e.g., problem-based, inquiry learning or other forms of in-depth learning) was facilitated. Therefore, this report represents mainly an analysis of the distribution of various readily identifiable, pedagogical events involved in NetD@ys activities. Another problem is that there was no standardised format for submitting a project proposal or project report. As a consequence, project descriptions and project reports vary a great deal; they do not always give consistent information. Some reports focused exclusively on quantitative issues, such as the number of schools and students involved in NetD@ys activities and did not provide sufficient pedagogical information about actual events organised.

17

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

3

3.1

RESULTS: NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCES

Participation in NetD@ys Activities NetD@ys Europe 1998 was presumably the largest educational technology event in Europe.

Approximately 35.000 schools participated in the project through organising various of activities. Approximately 500.000 connections were taken to the Internet site of NetD@ys 1988 (www.netdays.org). Approximately 1000 projects and 4000 events were organised across Europe; this is five times more than in 1997.

A summary of the frequency of NetD@ys projects in each European country is presented in Table 1. As mentioned above, the evaluation of NetD@ys 1998 focused on an intensive analysis of NetD@ys projects funded by the EC. It is noticeable that there were significant differences between different countries for participation in NetD@ys activities. Austria (which was organising the NetD@ys Europe 1998 event), was very active as well as France, Spain, and United Kingdom. Sweden and Denmark, for example, were relatively more passive, although these countries have relatively welldeveloped network infrastructure and ICT resources at school.

However, it should be noticed that in some countries, such as Finland, there were about 100 NetD@ys projects that functioned under two umbrella projects; these projects were not registered as official NetD@ys projects. Similar practices was followed in some other countries so that the numbers presented in Table 1 do not necessarily provide complete information about the intensity of national NetD@ys activities.

18

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Table 1. Number of NetD@ys 1998 Projects in European Countries Sample projects

Registered projects

COUNTRY

f

%

f

%

Austria

18

15.0

92

11.7

Belgium

12

10.0

74

9.5

Denmark

3

2.5

8

1.0

Finland

3

2.5

7

0.9

France

18

15.0

204

26.1

Germany

11

9.2

42

5.4

Greece

3

2.5

12

1.5

Iceland

1

0.8

1

0.01

Ireland

3

2.5

8

1.0

Italy

7

5.8

140

17.9

Luxembourg

2

1.7

4

0.5

Netherlands

2

1.7

6

0.8

Norway

1

0.8

3

0.4

Portugal

4

3.3

14

1.8

Spain

14

11.7

78

10.0

Sweden

2

1.7

23

2.9

United Kingdom

16

13.3

67

8.6

TOTAL

120

100.0

783

100.0

In Table 2 we present the types of organisations that were involved in organising NetD@ys projects. From the table, one can infer that although educational institutions and school administration had a dominant role in organising NetD@ys events, there were a large number of other kinds of organisations involved as well, such as cultural organisations (theatres, museums), scientific organisation (research institutions, universities) or business organisations (firms usually working in the area of educational multimedia or network services).

19

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Table 2. Types of Organisations Setting up NetD@ys Projects EC funded Type of organisation

f

%

Educational institution

39

32.5

School administration

28

23.3

Cultural organisation

23

19.2

Scientific organisation

8

6.7

Business organisation

9

7.5

School network

4

3.3

Other organisation

9

7.5

120

100.0

TOTAL

In this classification, municipal departments of education are considered to represent school administration. Local authorities, such as the cities of Bologna, Helsinki, Milan, Vienna, Leeds, Strasbourg, Berlin, were particularly active in organising and promoting high-quality NetD@ys projects. Other kinds of organisations included, for instance, hospitals.

3.2

Awareness Raising Activities According to the analysis, approximately 77% (f=93) of the sample projects focused on facili-

tating awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT in general and the Internet in particular. Many of these projects simultaneously were designed to facilitate students’ and teachers’ ICT literacy, national and international networking or acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. The following categories of activities were organised:

In interpreting the above presented results, one should take into consideration that several types of activities were frequently organised within a given project (up to four different activities were taken into consideration in the analysis). As a consequence, the frequencies do not represent numbers of projects but numbers of these events. In some cases, however, a much larger number of activities was organised (up to 50), so that the table provides information about the general frequency distribution of types of activities (events). Table 3. Typology of NetD@ys Events TYPE OF EVENT

f

%

Open doors

24

11.1

(Media) Campaign

14

6.5

Conference

19

8.8 20

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Virtual visit or meeting

54

24.8

Videoconference

21

9.7

Workshop for teachers

38

17.5

Exhibition

9

4.1

Competition

31

14.3

Other event

7

3.2

217

100.0

TOTAL

Note: the frequencies presented in the table do not correspond to actual numbers of projects because one and the same project may consist of several activities. A majority of NetD@ys projects focused on activities that aimed at raising awareness of the possibilities of ICT in education. Some of the projects were large-scale "ICT-promoting campaigns" for the greater number of people. For example, the German city and district of Rosenheim was building a Citizen network, which aimed to bring the Internet to people in all areas and from all sectors of society. It launched a large-scale, well-attended information day on 17 October, which included a presentation of the Rosenheim school server to the public and a showcasing of the schools' online projects. There were 100 schools with, in all, about 70,000 students who had been invited to contribute to this event.

An Italian project, "Scuola di libera navigazione", aimed to promote and encourage learning throughout the population ranging from primary schools to senior citizens. The purpose was to learn about the use of the Internet as an educational, information, professional, communication and cultural tool, through a network of public and school libraries in Mugello Alto Mugello Val di Sieve. The network consisted of the Interlibrary System, co-ordinated by Comunit Montana (16 town councils), including 15 municipal libraries and 18 school libraries.

3.3

Facilitation of ICT Literacy The questionnaire study indicated that according to the project co-ordinators' assessment, the

development of students' ICT literacy was facilitated in practically every NetD@ys project. An analysis of projects that returned the questionnaire indicated that approximately 65% of projects helped students to learn to use email or search the Internet. A slightly smaller number of projects assisted students in learning to make a web page. The percentage of projects in which students built software, such as a multimedia presentation, was only about 10%. Further, some projects trained students to participate in on-line chat as well as videoconferences.

Learning to use ICT was not always the main focus of these projects but was often a byproduct of participation in NetD@ys projects. In some of the projects, however, training of students'

21

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience and teachers' ICT skills, as such, appeared to be an important goal. In the case of 40% (f=48) of the projects, intensive training sessions for teachers were organised. These training sessions focused on helping teachers to develop their ICT expertise and to learn to use the Internet in their teaching. About the same proportion of projects focused on fostering students' ICT skills (36%, f=44). Teacher education was a special focus of NetD@ys 1998 event, and helped to create a basis for increasing the use of ICT in European education as well as developing NetD@ys activities in the future.

The analysis indicated that the use of ICT was very motivating for the students. Practically all project co-ordinators, that answered the questionnaire, reported that NetD@ys activities facilitated the students’ motivation for learning. The following transcription illustrates the motivational effect of ICT: “The students were highly motivated and felt that their contribution was important. In a certain way they were more advanced that the teachers and archaeologists. Some of them supported the technical training of the teachers. They liked to obtain full responsibility for the documentation of the workshop and to learn how handle cameras and how to make interviews…” Several projects (f= 44, 37%) focused on creating a technical infrastructure for using ICT and the Internet in education. Approximately a half of these projects (f=25, 21%) aimed at creating a web site. Some focused on building network infrastructure (9); others involved producing digital study material (4), setting up a database for subject-domain knowledge (2), or creating new tools for helping students and teachers to publish their productions on the Internet (4).

3.4

Facilitation of Social Collaboration One of the most promising approaches to ICT in education is computer-supported collabora-

tive learning that guides students to work together to solve complex open-ended problems with the help of new technology. Use of computers at school facilitates naturally collaborative activity; usually there are only a few computers, and students and teachers have to use them together.

Simultaneously, the very nature of NetD@ys activities fosters collaboration between students. Practically all schools engaged in collaborative preparation of NetD@ys activities within school facilities. Approximately a quarter of the sample projects (f=30) mentioned importance of within-school collaboration between students and teachers as a part of NetD@ys activities.

Further, almost 60% of the projects (f=71) mentioned national, European or international collaboration as an important aspect of their projects. Moreover, it should noted that the schools participating in NetD@ys activities have quite intensive European and international collaboration through Comenius and other EC projects; thus many other projects are probably engaged in collaboration na22

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience tionally or internationally though it was not specifically reported.

Only a few NetD@ys 1998 projects, however, were explicitly designed to facilitate collaborative learning between students, such as engagement in joint problem solving or inquiry. Many projects mentioned different kinds of learning projects that were going to be organised, but, as yet, one cannot determine whether these projects facilitate pedagogically valuable, social collaboration that would elicit in-depth learning. Even in the case of the above mentioned 30 projects that engaged in withinschool collaboration, it is difficult to estimate to what extent collaborative learning was facilitated, in contrast to mere social interaction or joint activity. It is remarkable that there was an equal larger number of projects (f=30) focused on organising competitions (such as, what is the best web page) than collaboration between students (f=30). Of course, collaboration and competition are not mutually exclusive activities; students frequently prepared, as a team, for competition. In any case, it might be profitable to try to facilitate development of genuinely collaborative learning projects in the context of NetD@ys.

It is noticeable that only 15.7% (n=19) of the participating projects were designed to facilitate teacher networking. Nevertheless, there were excellent examples of teacher networking that facilitate, for example, professional development in teachers' particular subject domains recognised in a school. The Finnish TIETOBOXI network connects all teacher of handicraft in Finnish schools by the means of the Internet and shared databases. That allows them to share new innovations and practices in an exceptionally effective way. Presumably, the fact that teacher networking was not much emphasised in NetD@ys may be due to the fact that many projects were initial attempts to introduce the Internet at school, and practices of teacher networking have not had yet emerged. On the other hand, there are other European initiatives (e.g., Comenius) that are more strongly focused on teacher networking. It might be very productive to try to facilitate more intensive teacher networking through NetD@ys and other corresponding activities in Europe.

In modern schools, the teachers' pedagogical community has a very significant role; a teacher is a team worker, not an independent practitioner. Frequently, the most innovative pedagogical ideas and best solutions emerge from the common visions, discussions and efforts of the whole teaching community rather than from one individual's creativity. A good example of this team approach was found in Vesala lower secondary school, Helsinki. Their NetD@ys project aimed to help all teachers get a first experience of using the Internet with students. The teachers organised workshops for all students. In every workshop, an experienced teacher worked together with a less experienced one, and they were jointly responsible for their workshop.

3.5

Connecting School with the Outside Community

23

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience An examination of the material revealed that there were a substantial number of projects that focused on facilitating interaction between schools and the outside community. The analysis indicated that as many as 47 (38%) projects engaged in local community- building, i.e., focused on engaging parents and local organisations in an interactive process of discussing and developing the school(s). Engagement of parents with introduction of ICT at school is very important condition for successful school development. The following transcription of a project co-ordinator’s response illustrates importance of local community building: "It is sometimes observed that parents exert pressure against the introduction of the Internet into the classroom because of prejudices and misconceptions or treat efforts in this direction with indifference. This is especially problematic, since parents and the wider public are typically called on, financially and politically, to support innovations which are vital to the realisation of school projects involving the Internet. Our project, by extending the target group to the wider public, can play a significant role in the realization of innovative initiatives, [and] provides a basis for a future activities in the field." A part of community building is to break the traditional boundaries of educational institutions and create connections between schools and the local community. A good example of this kind of activity was "Public Lessons" project organised by HTBLuVA St. Pölten. Sectors involved in the project were schools, firms, banks, shops and public in general. Lessons, which are normally held in classrooms, were presented to the public, and companies offered their rooms, which made teaching outside the schools possible. The main aim was to inform public (and pupils) about the Internet. Also participating pupils got acquainted with the Internet as a modern teaching method; they learned its limits as they observed the difficulties in using the Internet experienced by the public and gave advice about the Internet's educational possibilities. In every school day, 8 lessons took place in different business firms in St. Pölten and Krems. Different subjects (Geography, English) were taught by using the Internet, to enable interested people to watch the forms of modern teaching practice. In addition to the normal teacher, a specially trained teacher answered questions and presented material without interfering with the normal lesson. The firms also showed a great deal of interest.

Further, 41 projects focused on creating connections between schools and different kinds of expert communities. The projects promoted partnership between students and local enterprises, research institutions and cultural organisation with approximately same intensity. Some projects had simultaneous connections with all of the mentioned, expert cultures (business, research, and arts). Table 4 presents a frequency distribution, by project, of different types of student-expert activities involved in NetD@ys 1998 events. Table 4. Networking with Expert Cultures Type of networking

f

24

%

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Local community building

47

40.9

Networking with business communities

24

20.9

Networking with research communities

21

18.3

Networking with cultural community

21

18.3

Other kind of networking (e.g., politicians)

2

1.6

115

100.0

TOTAL

Note: one project may simultaneously engage in all of these forms of networking; hence these frequencies do not represent the frequency of individual projects. A significant percentage of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating collaboration between schools and business enterprises (firms) and cultural organisations. An example of this kind of projects is the HauD@ys 98 project of the Haukkala Secondary School, Finland. During the project week, pupils of the Haukkala School trained in practical skills needed in using the Internet (paying bills etc., bank services) and learned to search information on web shops, consumer's rights and bank services. The school had many visitors from co-operating organisations (Finnish business banks, the telecommunication company, local newspapers) and educational institutions (vocational schools) during the week. Courses and workshops with these partners were arranged. Responses from the students were positive; they thought that it was useful and fascinating to network with business communities.

An internet-based co-operation between schools of different types and museums, archaeologists and other cultural organisations was facilitated in the German project: "The Heuneburg − a Celtic hillfort on the upper Danube". All participating groups of students were introduced to the history of the Heuneburg, one of the best excavated and most extensively studied late Hallstatt period hill forts in western Europe, situated on the upper Danube. Each group worked on specific subjects. For example, some students wrote about an invented journey from the Heuneburg to Athens around 500 BC. Others experimented in Celtic religion, and so on. All of the student groups were supported by experts via the Internet. Project planners arranged a workshop and the Internet chat with teachers, people from the Heuneburg museum and the interested public.

Another type of collaboration between the school and the outside community was organised in the project: "Superhighway Patrol Europe" (UK). Police officers and school advisers jointly organised a one-day crime-solving event for school on the Internet. Schools registered in advance and received a pack of classroom materials; students became "detectives" for a day. They received a stream of information about a crime by e-mail and sent back questions to real police officers. After the event an Internet forum will be set up for discussion of attitudes to the crime and how different countries treat offenders.

Out of 21 projects in which research communities were reported to have been somehow involved, 16 focused on facilitating learning of subject-domain knowledge (e.g., science, history). This

25

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience kind of approach is pedagogically very valuable. International cognitive research on ICT in education strongly emphasises the importance of connecting scientific experts representing different domains of knowledge with learning communities; it is spoken of as "student-scientist partnership".

An excellent example of networking between schools and research communities is NetScience 98 project initiated by Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Vienna. Through NetD@ys activities the project aimed to bridge the traditional gap which separates girls from physics and technology. Online chats, video-conferencing and distance learning were used to bring together female scientists and students, discussing themes in physics and technology. Activities undertaken included •

A chat-line for discussing the role of female scientists;

•

Videoconferencing that allowed a virtual visit to a research laboratory;

•

A pilot project on distance learning that connects schools and universities;

• A presentation of students' achievements through a competition organised by the Austrian Physical Society. •

A one-day workshop to explore the possibilities of using the Internet in science teaching. The NetScience 98 project appears to improve the quality of science teaching; it addressed

equality in education through encouraging female students' to participate in studying science and to engage in ICT-related activities; it helped to build a basis for genuine student-scientist partnership.

Another excellent example of projects focused on learning science was Softciências project organised by Centro de Competência Nónio, Portugal. The objective of the project was to make public and private institutions, parents, pupils, and teachers aware of the pedagogical value of the use of the Internet in the learning of science. The project included a contest, the "Internet Scavenger Hunt" designed to facilitate learning in children of all ages. The students had to search information about science and scientists from the Internet either individually or as a team, and answer a set of questions. Participating in this activity, nation-wide, were 37 schools and 504 students with the support of 73 teachers. The project also included an opportunity for students to follow and participate in real-time debates of scientists about the theme "The Internet and Science" (mathematics, physics and chemistry).

26

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

Further, practically all project co-ordinators that answered the questionnaire indicated that the collaboration between the school and the outside community provides a basis for joint activities in the future. When asked whether NetD@ys collaboration would lead to joint activities in the future, one project co-ordinator responded, "It does, for sure. The NetD@ys is more than a week for us. The computer firms have seen their sales increased since that week, and they are looking forward to co-operating with us in new projects. We also have the support of these experts in our daily activities. Cultural associations have seen in our pages to show their activities to the world. Our students have had the opportunity of joining different projects to increase their knowledge of new technologies. And our partners in other countries know much better our activities and interests."

3.6

Acquisition of Subject-Matter Knowledge Many of the NetD@ys projects (f=58) appeared to facilitate acquisition of subject-matter

knowledge. In many of these projects, ICT was a tool of learning some subject-domain knowledge rather than a focus in itself. The NetD@ys activities appeared to facilitate students' learning and understanding of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in various processes: carrying out projects, participating in discussions and contests, searching information from the Internet and so on. Projects focused on various subject-matter areas including •

Philosophy (1 project) (Hôtel Philosophique was organised for the second time through collaboration between a selected group of forty children, four famous philosophers--from Belgium, United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Austria--and business partners from Belgium. One afternoon of NetD@ys took place at The Cybertheater in Brussels. The topics of the discussions were prepared beforehand and included overpopulation of the world, the most difficult question anyone can ask, and the kinds of questions that philosophers had pondered when they themselves were young. The discussion was presented live at the www-site for this occasion (http://www.kidcity.be/hotel) and translation for the audience was provided. Any other pre-registered classes from Europe could also participate in the discussion at the web-site. More than 140 written comments were registered.

•

History (6) (for example, in an Internet-based co-operation project between German schools and museums, the students were introduced to the history of the Heuneburg, the most extensively studied of the late Hallstatt period (~600-400 BC) hill forts in Western Europe.)

•

Media education (4) (for example, the European Television Centre (ECTC) invited youngsters from all over Europe to discuss television programs with representatives from audiovisual industry. They had the chance to use innovative multimedia applications and work on the development of the "Audio-visual Forum For Youth" network.)

•

Physics (7) (for example, in an international "Space-visual observation"-project the objective was to learn more about space and science through unique experiences observing the night sky (iridium satellites) and reporting the observations on the Internet.)

•

Biology (9) (for example, an Irish wildlife competition-project invited primary school students to enter up to three competitions based on Irish wild mammals and birds; also environmental issues were studied in several projects.)

27

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience •

Language studies (2) (for example, the Europe Speaks Latin project, organised by Bundesgymnasium (Wien) aimed to get acquainted with other European Latin schools' ways of learning the Latin language, and //create// post common learning material to the Internet.)

•

Arts (7) (for example, an Italian I.C.S. contest invited participants to look for texts taken from Italian and European literature or to work out new scientific or science fiction texts; a French project "L´Art moderne sur le net" aimed to introduce young people to modern art; it invited them to actively create, in order to show them the place of modern art in today’s society.)

•

Social Sciences (16) A school in Iceland (and its partner school in USA) worked to create a drug-prevention web site. The pupils published articles on the web site and also the results of e-mail interviews with people who had specialist knowledge of drug problems and of druguse prevention.

Several other topics were also investigated in the NetD@ys 98 projects. There were several projects dealing with specific issues relevant for multicultural education (e.g., human rights, racism, peace, religion, European identity, see section 3.9). Some of the projects specifically addressed the students' writing and reading skills and literacy (see, for example, the Fahrenheit 451 project, below). Some projects focused, simultaneously, on several subject domains. It is difficult to assess these projects from a pedagogical viewpoint because not enough information was provided in the project descriptions. Yet it appears that NetD@ys activities facilitated students' learning and understanding of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in processes in which they had to carry out projects, participate in discussions, search information from the Internet and produce a research report or some other kind of written document.

3.7

Publishing Students' Own Productions As mentioned in the introduction of this report, it is psychologically and pedagogically very

important to provide students opportunities to publish their own productions by using the new means provided by ICT and the Internet. Examination of the study material indicated that publishing of the students' work in the Internet was involved in 45% (f=54) of the examined NetD@ys projects. Some of the projects provided technical education for assisting students and teachers in publishing of their work, such as learning to make a web page. Some other projects focused on creating tools that would make it easier to publish one's productions on the Internet.

In the most of the projects, publication in certain formats occurred; pupils prepared web pages describing, for instance, their school projects, communicative activities (correspondence with other schools) and various NetD@ys events. In some of the projects, however, much more attention was paid to the publication. For example, in the ELETA (European Legends and Tales) project of the Laukaa Comprehensive School, Finland, publishing the Web magazine ELETA was the major objective. Pupils wrote articles about the tales and traditions in Finland; the aim was to exchange collected and

28

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience translated tales with other countries so that pupils could consider the differences and similarities in the folklore. A www-magazine was also published by the Koli Primary School, Finland, with the topic "our local area". All the articles designed and written by the pupils were made with a "professional attitude" and in co-operation with pupils' parents. The issue to follow would cover history, science and everyday subjects with a European perspective.

An excellent example of a project that guided students to use writing as a tool of thinking is the Fahrenheit 451 project organised by the Municipality of Bologna (co-ordination, financial monitoring) together with the secondary school "Il Guercino"(implementation of the project's activities) and the N. Ginzburg public library (publishing). The main aims of the project were to demonstrate the pedagogical value of the Internet and to emphasise the European dimension. Launched by the Guercino school in June ´98, the telematic competition consisted in having schoolchildren read and write a review on a story book chosen from a list of titles selected by an important children's literature professor, in order to stimulate their reading, writing, synthesis and literary criticism skills. A total number of 180 students, from 14 schools, joined the initiative by sending their reviews to designated e-mail addresses. The reviews were collected in a publication "Collection of reviews elaborated by young readers". During the NetD@ys-week, a multi-point videoconference took place between the schools in Italy, UK and Sweden. A topic of discussion was violence within towns and schools (bullying). During the NetD@ys week, the Guercino School was open to students, parents and operators who were invited to visit the school and its PC lab. Direct communications were promoted between students and teachers participating in the project. The work of the project also elicited new instructional innovations, which provide a good basis for, continued development of practices of learning and instruction. Traditional cultural activities, such as reading and the development of human relationships, were stimulated by the NetD@ys 98 project. These goals were satisfactorily reached according to the report of the school principal, Mrs. Elviana Amati: "The initiatives provoked great interest, and many of the students and teachers from the countries involved took an active part. Direct communications between school-aged contemporaries and school staff were created, and the participants became united in a European dimension by the new technologies. The work of the projects also activated new teaching ideas which have great potential for development in the coming years. One of the positive results of the experience has been the way it has brought together the professional commitment of people working in different fields towards a common objective, thus enriching the educational possibilities proposed, and at the same time raising the standards" Pictorial material also was published in the Internet. The East Pori Middle School, Finland, posted a Human Rights Mini Gallery site in the web, and encouraged students world-wide to create 120 x 120 pixel gifs or jpqs to illustrate solidarity and concern for one's fellow human beings. Next year the students of the East Pori are going to create an animation by using all the Mini Gallery material acquired. In Germany, a game with pictures, ideas and clichés around the figure of the social worker/social educator was in turn launched by the project, "What kind of social worker am I?" The project co-ordinators invited people to send scanned pictures of their images of "social workers", and 29

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience promised to publish all original, funny pictures and texts in their gallery of Types of Social Workers.

The material examined does not allow precise determination as to whether all students or only a sample of high-achieving students got an opportunity to publish their productions. Such opportunity varied from one project to another due to practical constraints, limitations of writing and computer skills and so on. From a pedagogical viewpoint it is, in any case, very important to guide all students, regardless of their educational achievement, to use writing and visualisation as tools of thinking, and engage in the process of knowledge production (active, reflective pursuit of knowledge) with the help of new technology. Correspondingly, it is very important to help each student to contribute to publishing knowledge produced by the learning community, perhaps with the help of his or her more skilful peers. Although publishing selections of the best productions might encourage some students to produce higher quality of work, it does not sufficiently support the learning for all persons in the community.

3.8

Facilitation of Equality in Education NetD@ys activities appeared to foster equality in education through offering young students

from all of Europe an access to the new information and communication technology as well as engaging them in many kinds of activities that fostered not only development of ICT skills but also their own understanding of subject-matter knowledge, as explained above. Beyond this general support for equality in education, approximately 28% (f=34) of the sample projects addressed one or another special issue concerning equality in education: •

Some of the projects focused on facilitating equality in education through supporting equal participation of female and male students in ICT related activities. (For example, in order to counteract the gender gap in the use of new information and communication technology, a GirlsNet-project (Germany) was launched for girls aged 12-16. The project supported ICT training for girls and the creation of special information and communication awards for them; girls were invited to create websites, pictures, and essays about the Internet and how girls can use it. Selected presentations were awarded a prize).

•

Several projects helped students from socio-economically-disadvantaged homes to get access to ICT. (For example, the aim of the WIPE-Project (Widening Participation in Education, UK) was to train economically and socially excluded young people in the use of the Internet. Training sessions in accessing the Internet, creating web pages and using e-mail were held for youth workers and young people, and communication by e-mail with other youth centres and EU partners was encouraged. In the Metro Project (Making Employment The Real Objective, Germany) young socially disadvantaged people were helped to gain skills in ICT in order to improve their chances of getting jobs and to enhance their social lives. Discussion forums on particular themes were set up, and electronic newspapers were produced.

•

Some awareness-raising projects that concerned whole socially disadvantaged areas were also designed. A large awareness-raising project "What can the Internet do for us?" (UK) was arranged for citizens of the former mining-town of Barnsley, which is considered an economically disadvantaged area. A key issue was that of fostering in the children of Barnsley, and the 30

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience wider public, a desire to use the new technologies. The objective of the project was to give people reason for using the Internet and to identify, in relevant local terms, the possible benefits. Awareness-raising events and family workshops were also set up in 20 schools in disadvantaged areas (Norfolk Family learning programme, UK) to raise families' awareness of educational opportunities offered by the Internet. •

The functional and vocational training centre of Nanteau-sur-Lunain (CRPF), France, offered workshops (conducted by educators and trainees) for disabled young workers and long-term unemployed persons engaged in a return-to-work process. The workshops provided an introduction to the Internet and its major applications and demonstrations of the potential use and educational applications related to guidance, training and vocational integration. A conference on "The Internet and professional training" invited also other professionals and partners of the CRPF to the training centre.

•

Some of the projects sought to facilitate equality through promoting participation of disabled people. (For example, pupils with physical disabilities were encouraged to connect to each other through a telematic network [the SOLAS project, Ireland]. The project aimed to reduce isolation and address educational needs specific to this group. In the NetdaysVOICE-project (Italy), in turn, voice-to-text recognition systems for automatic subtitling of school lessons for the deaf was demonstrated. Handicap International's L’Enfants À L’Enfant L'Hôpital project fostered engagement of hospitalised children, who are excluded from the school environment and normal life, as well as of disabled people. The aim of this project was to offer, via the Internet and access to the world network, new prospects for the delivery of text and audiovisual information to hospitalised children and disabled persons. This comprises offering sick children, who are excluded from the school environment and normal life, a window to the world. It also permits disabled persons to benefit from new training opportunities via the Internet. The innovative projects mentioned here represent, of course, only a small sample of projects

that fostered equality in education in various ways. The ingenious projects that emerged through NetD@ys Europe promise to break many traditional boundaries between socially, culturally or physically disadvantaged persons and the rest of the population, provide new perspectives for economically disadvantaged areas, and truly democratise access of all Europeans to resources for intellectual growth.

3.9

Knowledge of Other Cultures and Facilitation of European Identity Approximately a half of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating networking between

schools either only nationally (27), nationally and at the European level (25) or only internationally (24). The result analysis indicated that 45 projects did not include neither national nor international networking. Those projects in which networking activities were not involved differed in nature from the networking projects: Many of the former projects focused on awareness-raising and concerned promoting educational use ICT in one school or other educational institution. However, it is likely that some of these projects also included networking activities even if it was not particularly emphasised in their project description or NetD@ys activities.

One third of the networking projects elicited national connections between schools, and twothirds involved European or international networking. It is plausible to assume that the latter projects, 31

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience in which the participating students got an opportunity to communicate with their peers from different countries, facilitated understanding of cultural differences and provided knowledge of the other cultures. The interaction between students and teachers representing different countries frequently focused on exchanging information about different ways of living and varied cultural traditions and, therefore, facilitated students' knowledge of other cultures, differing values, and languages.

Some of the NetD@ys 1998 projects aimed to provide multicultural education through networked activities. There were 36 projects (30%) that were more or less explicitly focused on facilitating multicultural education or European identity. In many cases the projects had a more concrete theme or topic, and European identity was facilitated through working with that topic. Some of the projects focused on European languages (e.g., English as a second language) or some specific historical issue (e.g., the holocaust). The European community, its history, heritage, environment ("Eurogreen project") and the unity of European children were topics addressed in projects.

Although European identity was the main topic only in a few projects, communication between students and teachers representing various European countries, presumably also facilitated the development of European identity. It is plausible that the networking activities, in addition, fostered sensitivity towards other cultures. Some of the projects focused on facilitating the knowledge of other cultures/European identity through providing knowledge of traditions, values and ways of thinking of other cultures. Several projects addressed problems of racism and helped students to understand cultural differences and respect the multiplicity of the European cultural heritage and environment.

"Youth online - teleschool" project (Germany) was a media project in Berlin offering Internet courses to young people. One of the primary objectives of such a course was to use new media to connect young people representing different cultures and nationalities, especially German and Turkish young persons from the district of Kreutzberg. The intention was to help them learn about the Internet and, simultaneously, to improve cross-cultural understanding. Turkish associations were actively involved in organising the courses, which included lessons in multimedia and ICT.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

3.10

Categorisation of NetD@ys Project A hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted in order to examine whether the projects could

be so classified into categories. The variables used in the analysis and results of the cluster analysis are presented in Table 5. The analysis served mainly exploratory purposes and should not be taken as, in any way, definitive. The present results should be taken with caution because we did not get detailed enough information about each project. Nevertheless, the categorization appears to provide a rough estimation of types of projects carried out during NetD@ys 1998. Table 5. Categories of NetD@ys Projects Variable

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Awareness raising

1.97

1,44

1.75

Networking with enterprises

1.08

1.03

1.81

Networking with research communities

1.05

1.18

1.56

Networking with cultural communities

1.21

1.15

1.75

Publishing students’ work

1.06

1.64

1.94

Acquiring subject-matter knowledge

1.20

1.82

1.88

Social collaboration

1.12

1.23

1.81

Teacher training (ICT)

1.61

1.08

1.34

Students’ ICT literacy

1.55

1.10

1.25

66

39

16

Number of projects

Cluster 1 (Awareness raising activities): The analysis indicated that there were 66 projects focused mainly on activities that facilitated awareness of the new educational possibilities provided by ICT as well as supported learning of ICT skills by teachers and the students. In some cases, these projects included local community building as well as networking with business communities. Many of these projects represented initial attempts at starting to use ICT in a specific educational environment. The most important activities included demonstrations concerning applications of ICT and workshops for teachers concerning possibilities of ICT.

In many cases, the focus was clearly on teachers' professional development rather than students' learning. As a consequence, these networking activities did not yet appear to affect the content of curriculum or provide authentic problems to solve; such activities helped the school community to get access to advanced technological resources, such as video links and to obtain support for the development of schools' network infrastructure linking them to various technological resources. These projects did not usually focus on publishing of students' work or learning of subject-matter knowledge. Nevertheless, various NetD@ys activities undertaken probably also facilitated learning of content knowledge (the topics being pursued) as well as provided skills needed in publishing one's productions 33

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience on the Internet.

Cluster 2 (Facilitation of subject-matter learning): Further, the analysis indicated that there were 40 projects that focused on facilitating acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. In these projects ICT was clearly used as a tool of learning specific domains of knowledge rather that being the main focus of activities. An important aim of all of these projects was to publish student's own productions on the web. Although these projects were frequently involved with community building, they did not, however, emphasise networking with expert cultures. Thus, it appears that, in many cases, studying of different domains of knowledge, and networking with expert communities were not integrated.

Cluster 3 (Participation in Expert Communities): Some projects (f=16) focused very strongly on creating connections with expert cultures, whether it was business, research or cultural community. These projects aimed at arising awareness about the possibilities for student-expert partnership through organizing exemplary videoconferences and other events in which students were able to interact with experts. In these cases, interaction with experts was usually connected with acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. Typical for these projects was also to foster in-depth learning through guiding the students to publish their productions in the Internet. Interestingly, also social collaboration was more typical for these projects than for the other groups of projects.

From the pedagogical perspective, this variability of NetD@ys projects is a strength rather than weakness. Through organising a large variety of projects, NetD@ys Europe may support educationally meaningful use of ICT in a manner congruent with varied technological resources, network infrastructure and teacher training; such use may also support culturally specific approaches to learning and instruction. However, in order to effectively utilise European-wide pedagogical resources, NetD@ys activities should help projects to develop from initial awareness-raising activities to more focused undertakings that help students to adopt advanced skills of knowledge production needed in the future.

4

4.1

RECOMMENDATIONS

Data collection procedure NetD@ys is the most important European-wide educational event, to date, concerning ICT in

education. The scope of the NetD@ys initiative has been growing rapidly from one year to the next. From a research perspective, it would be of utmost importance to develop a structured data- collection procedure that would support a longitudinal analysis of technology-supported learning in Europe. The NetD@ys event provides a good opportunity to follow up the development of educational use of ICT

34

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience in European schools and other educational institutions.

The existing NetD@ys tradition could be used to gather more systematic information concerning how the educational use of ICT develops from one year to another. There should be an explicit, official requests for detailed descriptions of activities undertaken by students and teachers consequent upon their experiences on NetD@ys and other exposure to ICT. On the basis of these kinds of considerations, we recommend that procedures for data collection on NetD@ys events be explicitly developed in a way that would allow scientific assessment of the NetD@ys experience. Components and phases of a procedure for developing a more rigorous assessment and evaluation process for NetD@ys are as follows:

4.2

•

Creating a questionnaire or a standard form that projects applying for EC funding would have to fill in when submitting their proposal and again at the time of reporting their results. This questionnaire would address the nature of the project in question, the underlying pedagogical and practical goals, and activities to be organised for attaining these goals. If properly constructed, this kind of data collection procedure would also provide more detailed information about actual pedagogical processes going on during NetD@ys. There should be a follow-up form for activities continuing in the months after NetD@ys. The mere existence of the form could facilitate pedagogically meaningful use of ICT though guiding the participants to think of their projects from pedagogical viewpoint. This data collection procedure would provide information about development of goals and practices of using ICT in learning and instruction process as well as emerging networks of schools and extended learning communities supported by enterprises, research institutions or cultural organisations.

•

Optionally, it would be advisable to start collecting data during NetD@ys about students' and teachers' skills and practices of using ICT, their practices of learning and instruction as well as the educational and pedagogical impact of NetD@ys events. This kind of background information would help to properly assess the genuine pedagogical advantages of ICT in general and NetD@ys in particular. One is concerned with the acquisition of in depth, principled knowledge; thus, in addition to inferential evidence gathered in macrostudies of activities, considered generically, there is a crucial need, in NetD@ys research in selected locations, for microstudies of students thinking, discussing, and collaboratively using ICT.

Challenges in the Pedagogical Development of NetD@ys Activities The analysis revealed that there were substantial differences between NetD@ys projects in the

use of ICT. Some projects aimed clearly at using ICT for attaining pedagogical goals while the others focused on raising initial awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities of ICT. While developing NetD@ys practices, it is essential to take the varying stages of ICT projects in European countries into consideration. In order to be successful, NetD@ys activities need to adequately facilitate development of each type of project. In order to facilitate equality in education we have to ensure equal opportunity of access to ICT for all children in Europe. Therefore, it is important to disseminate NetD@ys experiences about the educational benefits of ICT, initiate new NetD@ys projects and encourage new schools and educational institutions to start using ICT for educational purposes. The current NetD@ys 35

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience practices appear to function very well in this area; from one year to another the quantity and quality of NetD@ys projects have been increasing.

Students find the use of ICT very motivating. However, the degree to which initial interest will be maintained depends on the nature of the educational experiences that children receive within the new ICT environment (Vosniadou, 1997). As a consequence, it is very important not only to focus on improving students' and teachers' technical skills but also to guide them to productively use ICT as a tool of learning and teaching. The integration of ICT use with different domains of knowledge is especially important in the context of female students, who may not appear very interested in technology as such (Hakkarainen et al., 1998). Thus, it appears to be necessary to help to transform the awareness-raising projects towards the pursuit, through ICT, of subject-matter studies.

Teachers have a very important role in guiding students to use ICT as a tool of learning and thinking. They should be guided toward developing and testing new instructional practices that help to utilise ICT in fostering active, thoughtful, and self-regulated learning. In order to "survive" in the emerging knowledge society, the students should be encouraged to take responsibility of and control over their own learning process. From a pedagogical viewpoint, it is important to design NetD@ys projects that facilitate active learning through encouraging students to ask questions, carry out investigations as well as take control of their own learning. The ICT provides new tools for school children functioning as active builders of knowledge and engaging in expert-like processing of knowledge. Adoption of these kinds of higher-level skills appears to be even more important for the future information society than mastery of subject-matter knowledge as such.

Experiences of networking of teachers indicate that networking with other schools and teachers is much easier if there are continuous connections between the participants. This is also likely to produce more stable positive pedagogical effects. Therefore, it is very important to support continuous or permanent collaboration between schools, teachers, and students through NetD@ys activities nationally and at the European level. Teacher networking is very important because only a teacher who has learned to extend his or her pedagogical and intellectual resources though networked activities is able to understand the value of a networked student. A good example of a working teacher network can be found from Espoo (Finland). A group of 12 elementary schools worked several years developing new ways of using ICT in education and relied on intensive mutual networking. The schools built a www-based journal and formed discussion groups. As a product of the collaboration, there emerged a new virtual learning environment, MATILDA, for teaching literature. This environment supports both students’ discussions and publication of their literature reviews that can be searched on the system's database. In the course of the projects, the teachers have been developing their expertise through networking with experts, such as writers or researchers. MATILDA facilitates teacher collaboration by providing a communal calendar of joint activities and helping participants them to share good instruc-

36

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience tional practices.

A further question is how one could help European communities of learning to transform and restructure the current practices of learning and instruction in a way that elicits development of higherlevel cognitive competencies needed in the emerging knowledge society. Toward this end, it is important to facilitate emergence of good practices of using ICT in education through disseminating the best NetD@ys practices. NetD@ys is, of course, only one activity among many kinds of other initiatives that are designed to increase competitiveness of European education. Further, NetD@ys concerns only one week's intensive activity in a year (although it may include supporting activities that extend across several weeks or months). Even if NetD@ys, therefore, represents very limited resources, it is important to use those resources as wisely as possible. From this viewpoint it is crucial to support pedagogically well-grounded NetD@ys projects that facilitate development of students' cognitive and collaborative skills.

The preliminary examination of NetD@ys project indicates that while several projects fostered student-expert interaction, there were only a few projects that emphasised the pedagogical importance of computer-supported collaborative learning. Even if networking with experts and networking between students and teachers was frequently involved, only a few NetD@ys projects acknowledged the pedagogical value of social collaboration. Although many projects included national or international collaboration, there were only a few projects fostering collaborative solving of problems. In many cases, collaboration appeared to support social corresponding more than joint problem solving.

Although international or cross- cultural social interaction is very important for its own sake and provides invaluable information about ways of living and thinking in different cultures, it would be profitable to guide international school networking towards teamwork and distributed problem-solving that characterise practices of modern work. This approach does not necessarily eliminate the current social interaction or correspondence but may enrich it by engaging participants in working jointly for attaining common cognitively-valuable learning goals.

An important educational task is to build an extended community that brings together teachers, students, parents, local authorities, software developers, and universities. From this kind of networked community may emerge new cultures of working for transforming current educational practices and developing new applications of ICT that facilitate students' cognitive and social development (Vosniadou, 1997). Especially, various kinds of student-experts partnerships promise to provide new intellectual resources for human development. The competitiveness of European education appears to require that spontaneous and accidental student-expert connections be replaced by permanent structures that help students to authentically participate in expert cultures and corresponding practices of working with knowledge (see Lave & Wanger, 1991). The material analysed did not always allow 37

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience specific determination of the actual pedagogical value of student-expert connections. In many cases, these connections appeared merely to represent first attempts to connect expert cultures with schools using the new technology. The following questions emerged from our analysis: • How could student-business partnerships be used to facilitate solving of authentic, meaningful real-world problems in their actual context? • How may student-scientist partnerships be transformed into permanent research projects in which students set up and solve problems, and collect and analyse data with the help of scientific experts? • How we could help schools to find mentors (experts who are willing to work with school children) to help them solve the authentic, complex problems really being investigated? Most of the reported NetD@ys projects used on-line chat, videoconferences or virtual meetings to organise their collaboration. However, only a few projects used the new collaborative technology (e.g., computer-supported collaborative learning environments, groupware systems designed for educational use) that allows students and collaborating experts jointly to construct and share knowledge. Through disseminating the new collaborative technology and corresponding pedagogical practices, the organisers of NetD@ys would be able to promote new and fruitful practices of using the Internet in education. Facilitation of the educational use of collaborative technology would foster joint problem-solving and research projects with students and experts. Videoconferences, however, require extensive co-ordinating efforts and do not necessarily facilitate in-depth pursuit of inquiry.

An asynchronous interaction mediated by distributed databases, in contrast, may facilitate more reflective and active communication on the part of the students, and also help them to get expert support not only in a short period of time (1-2 hours) but during a whole study project. One possibility would be to work to create a NetD@ys mentor database from which one could find an astronomer, molecular biologist, historian, sociologist or a philosopher willing to help students to solve problems that cannot be solved by using local intellectual and knowledge resources. European network structures that would support student-expert partnerships in different domains of knowledge would significantly facilitate pedagogically productive connections between schools and expert cultures. Further, new European projects should be initiated in which students and scientists collect data and solve problems together.

Although we would like to emphasise the pedagogical significance of student-scientist partnership, facilitation of the development of students’ moral, aesthetic or artistic, and social development is equally important. Therefore, the proposed student-expert partnership should also concern students and writers, painters, musicians and so on. From psychological perspective, an actual contact with a working expert may significantly affect on a student’s thinking and practices, helping him or her to commit on a more progressive problem solving or other kind of in-depth learning.

38

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Good experiences have been obtained from telementoring, i.e., expert mentoring of school children's study projects that relies on asynchronous e-mail connections (Lento, O'Neill, & Gomez, 1998). An interesting aspect of practices of telementoring developed in the context of the CoVis project (Edelson, Pea, & Gomez, 1996), is creation of a mentor database that helps a project to find a suitable mentor for them. A well-matched telementor could help students to focus their study projects by using his or her professional knowledge. In many cases the mentor could help students to obtain and process data that would not otherwise be available. Telementors have been successfully recruited from local companies and government agencies. In this, one could capitalise on existing relations between the school and community. Telementors do not need to be professors; masters' or doctoral students may do well enough. Further, the database contains a routing mechanism that allows the telementors to send their e-mail directly to the whole group of students. It would be profitable to examine possibilities of constructing corresponding mentor databases in national and European NetD@ys projects in order to facilitate in-depth learning.

In order to facilitate pedagogical development of NetD@ys projects, it would be profitable to set up a European award for innovative ICT-in-education project. The award could have several series focused on different type of project, such innovative a) awareness rising activities, b) European educational networking initiatives, and c) practices of student-expert partnership.

Simultaneously with acknowledging the results of mainstream psychological and educational research regarding technology-supported learning, it is important to be sensitive to cultural differences in practices or in learning and teaching that may affect how the new technology is used at schools in particular countries or regions thereof. Some of the culturally specific factors may, for instance, support adoption of collaborative learning or more active, inquiring learning; some of these factors may necessitate considerable modification of new pedagogical models to national or other specific circumstances (Hakkarainen, Järvelä, Lipponen, & Lehtinen, 1998). As a consequence, it is vital to initiate national and European research and development projects in which the emerging new models of teaching and learning are carefully examined, and new forms of learning and instructing developed and tested.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Keating, D. P. (1996). Habits of mind for a learning society: Educating for human development. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), Handbook of education and human development: New models of learning, teaching and schooling (pp. 461-481). Oxford: Blackwell. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehtinen, E. & Rouhelo, A. (1997) Educational impact of information technology: a dream or reality? Helsinki City Department of Education. Working Papers of Helsinki 2001 Project. Helsinki. Lento, E., O’Neill, D. K., & Gomez, L. M. (1998) Integrating internet services into school communities. Teoksessa Dede, C. (Ed.). ASCD Year Book 1998. Learning with technology. Associatiom for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria. Virginia. USA. Lipponen, L. & Hakkarainen, K. (1997). Developing culture of inquiry in computer-supported collaborative learning. In R. Hall, N. Miyake, & N. Enyedy (Eds.) Proceedings of CSCL, The Second International Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning, December 10-14, 1997 University of Toronto, Canada. Miyake, N. (1986). Constructive interaction and the iterative process of understanding. Cognitive Science, 10, 151-177.

Norman, D. A. (1993) Things that make us smart. Defending human attributes in the age of the machine. New York: Addison-Wesley. Oatley, K. (1990). Distributed cognition. In H. Eysenck, A. Ellis, E. Hunt, & P. Johnson-Laird (Eds.), The Blackwell dictionary of cognitive psychology (pp. 102107). Oxford: Blackwell. Pea, R. D. (1994) Seeing what we build together: Distributed multimedia learning environments for transformative communications. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 285-299. Pea, R. D. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47-87). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, D. N. (1993). Person-plus: a distributed view of thinking and learning. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 88-110). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salomon, G. (1997) Novel Constructivist Learning Environments and Novel Technologies: Some Issues to Be Concerned With. Invited Key note Address presented at the EARLI conference, Athens, Greece, August 1997. Salomon, G. & Perkins, D. (in press). Learning in wonderland. What do computers really offer education? To appear in S. Kerr (Ed.), The 1996 NSSE handbook. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994) Computer support for knowledge-building communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 265-283. Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C. & Lamon, M. (1994) The CSILE project: Trying to bring the classroom into World 3. In K. McGilly (Ed.) Classroom lessons; Integrating cognitive theory & classroom practice. (pp. 201-228). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tabscott, D. (1996) Digital economy. New York: McGrew-Hill.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience Vosniadou, S (1997) The scientific approaches to new learning models for new learning environments. In The application of multimedia technologies in school: their use, effect and implications. European Parliament. Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA). Luxembourg, November 1997.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE USED TO EVALUATE NETD@YS 1998 PROJECTS Dear Sir or Madam, The University of Helsinki is currently preparing a profound evaluation of the NetD@ys Europe 1998 in collaboration with the Helsinki City Department of Education (the coordinator of NetD@ys 1999). The purpose of this questionnaire is to obtain information on your Netd@ys project. This information is valuable for the evaluation of Netd@ys '98 experience as well as for the planning of Netd@ys Europe 1999. We kindly ask you to return the questionnaire no latter that 11th of March 1999 by using electronic mail (email: [email protected] or [email protected]). In the case that your project consisted of several clearly independent projects (and your project was so call “umbrella” project), we would like to ask you to forward this questionnaire to the project coordinators, and ask them to fill in the questionnaire, and return it to the NetD@ys evaluation group at the University of Helsinki (email: [email protected]). In addition, we would be very happy if you could send us the list of project coordinators in question so that we could directly correspond with them. Further, we would like to ask you to send us all information that you have about your project in the electronic form. We are particularly interested in material that would provide us information about the nature of pedagogical activities carried out during NetD@ys Europe 1998. You can fill in the questionnaire either by using the enclosed “text-only” version of the questionnaire or the attached form (in rich text format). We are looking forward to receive your response, and we hope that this evaluation process would help us to organise very successful NetD@ys event during 1999. Sincerely yours, Dr. Kai Hakkarainen, Ph.D. Information Technology Center for Schools & Department of Psychology University of Helsinki P.O. Box 13 SF-00014 University of Helsinki Email: [email protected] Tel (mobile): +358-50-5634248 Tel: +358-9-19123772 Fax: +358-9-19123443

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR ORGANISATION Name of organisation _____________________________________________ Country _______________________________________________________

Please, indicate what kind of organisation you represent a) b) c) d) e) f)

Educational institution School administration Cultural organisation (e.g. opera, museum) Research organisation (e.g. university, research institution)) Business organisation (e.g. industry, company) Other, please, specify ____________________________

Please indicate what is the main purpose of your organisation a) providing basic education b) providing vocational education c) providing higher education d) promoting cultural activities e) publishing digital information f) providing Internet services g) administering schools and educational system h) providing teacher training and education i) building school networks j) providing continuing education (informal education, lifelong learning) k) other, please, specify ___________________________

A) DID YOUR PROJECT SUPPORT ICT LITERACY? How was ICT literacy facilitated during the project? - a) Learning to communicate through email - b) Learning to search/use the Internet - c) Learning to make a webpage - d) Learning to build software - e) Other, please specify __________________________

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Yes

No

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience B) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE STUDENTS’ ACTIVE LEARNING? Yes

No

Please, indicate/explain how students’ active learning was facilitated through your project

C) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE SOCIAL COLLABORATION? Yes

No

Please, indicate whether 1) the collaboration was facilitated between - a) students and students; - b) students and teachers; - c) teachers and teachers Please, indicate whether 2) collaboration was facilitated - a) within school or - b) between schools nationally, - c) between schools at the European level, - d) between schools internationally Please, explain how your project facilitated collaboration

D) DID YOUR PROJECT HELP THE SCHOOL TO CONNECT WITH THE OUTSIDE COMMUNITY Yes No Please, specify what kind of connection were involved - a) schools and parents, - b) schools and enterprises, - c) schools and scientific communities, - d) schools and cultural organisations

-

Please, explain what kind of activities were organised

-

Please, indicate how these activities facilitate students’ learning and motivation.

- Do you think that this collaboration between the school and the outside community provides a basis for joint activities in the future?

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

D) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE ACQUIRING OF SUBJECT-MATTER KNOWLEDGE Yes No What kind of themes or topics your project focused on?

Please, indicate how the NetD@ys activities facilitated students’ learning and understanding of subject matter knowledge

F) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE EQUALITY IN EDUCATION? Yes

No

Please, explain how your project supported equality in education (e.g., an equal participation of female and male students or high and low achieving students)

G) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION FOR LEARNING? Yes No Please, indicate how your project facilitated students’ motivation for learning.

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An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

H) DID YOUR PROJECT PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLISHING STUDENTS’ OWN PRODUCTIONS? Yes No

Please, specify what kinds of productions were published and how many students got an opportunity to publish their work.

I) DID YOUR PROJECT FOSTERED KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER CULTURES AND/OR EUROPEAN IDENTITY? Yes No Please indicate how knowledge of other cultures/European identity was facilitated (for example, did it provide knowledge of other cultures, values, languages, or cultivated sensitivity towards other cultures?)

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