Ernesto Laval, elaval@enlaces.ufro.cl
Laura Flores, lflores@enlaces.ufro.cl
3 Description of some collaborative projects
Currently there are many "actors" in Chile that are carrying on significant efforts in the educational arena: Ministry of Education, local governments, universities and schools. They have assigned a great amount of time and resources in projects that try to facilitate the relation among teachers and students in a horizontal way. Teachers and students collaborate with each other in the personal development, solving subject related problems, and helping each other to adapt to this fast changing society. All these changes require from the Educational System answers that are very different from those that existed fifteen, thirty or forty years ago.
Chilean Ministry of Education and its program for increasing quality and equity of education (MECE) has considered extremely urgent to stimulate educational changes, opening new spaces for the insertion of computer and telecommunication technologies into the ordinary school room work. Following this direction the ministry has the Enlaces Project, which builds a communication network in chilean primary and secondary schools. The network is supported by a multidisciplinary teams that are in charge of training, technical and educational assistance.
Computers networks and educational projects are a direct factor that affect the teacher-student interaction and give them a new link with the knowledge world; they are invited to relate to each other in a different way and they are located in a equality position for accompanying each other in the process to learn how to "want to learn"
This kind of work was developed in a two stage process:
The first stage was to develop very simple, attractive and ludicrous projects, which were generated by the interdisciplinary team at the Educational Technology Center that gives support to the schools that are part of the Enlaces Project.
In the second stage, the schools were encouraged to generate their own projects.
Both stages have given very valuable information:
- From a pedagogical perspective it is observed a growth in teacher-student interaction. New values of collaboration and solidarity begin to arise, and the class room is vitalized since the learning process actively involves the learner.
-From the technology point of view, participants are familiarized with telecommunications, they have widened their view of the world, generated more involvement among them, the school and the knowledge and gradually assimilated the technology.
-In the curriculum, there is an important integration in contents from different subjects.
-It has been observed that this kind of work is very dependent on the singularities of each school.
The Wordarium. Is a project from third to eighth grade in the Spanish class. The work consists in the generation of an "Original Dictionary" that includes words that are currently used by the kids and that are not registered in the traditional dictionaries. The dictionary would also have examples with the use of these words.
Friends from the world. Pretends that students and teachers establish contact with kids from other countries through the electronic mail. Foreign kids help them with information for different classes (geography, Spanish, mathematics), and following they elaborate longer term international projects.
For knowing and telling Is an initiative from the school "Campos Deportivos" in the city of Temuco. It consists in publishing a not ended story and that groups from other schools have to finish.
Poetic dictionary. Is a joint initiative from the schools "Campos Deportivos" and "Augusto Winter" in Temuco. The students exchange electronic messages collecting poetic expressions with their meanings.
TV as part of my life. Initiative from the school "Augusto Winter" that pretends to orient about the use of the TV with a selective and critic attitude.
Games. Is an initiative from the schools "San Francisco" and "Manuel Recabarren" from Temuco, that consists in making a collection and exchange of traditional, current and new games.
The family all over the world. This project was originated in Spain and its objective is to talk about the family group and its habits. It pretends to facilitate the multicultural understanding, think and help to solve some of the problems that arise. The results will be edited in a book.
Both kind of projects - those proposed by the Enlaces team and by the schools themselves - area part of a chain of processes that tend to:
- Increase an enrich contact among schools and teachers.
- Enrich the collaborative activity from the students by exchanging information through the network.
Some projects like the Wordarium, evidence that further that the own satisfaction of the participants it has been a very useful material for Spanish teachers from primary and middle schools. Both the "Wordarium" and "Guessing the character" and their products of an "Original dictionary" and a "Characters Encyclopedia" tell the teacher the importance of the ordinary information in the knowledge building. It reevaluates the educational conversation related to the needs of the learner.
It is also important the learner to be the originator of its own learning process and that the product of his work to be useful to other students and teachers.
The feedback obtained in these projects generates self esteem and also these activities develop personal and group creativity that induces in the autonomy needed to generate other initiatives.
Collaborative projects is an aspect of the computer networks in education that help to generate more free interaction spaces that help to build the change needed by our educational system.
Chief Engineer
Project Enlaces
Casilla 380
Temuco
Chile
Phone/Fax: (56) 45 - 250759
email: elaval@enlaces.ufro.cl
Education Area
Project Enlaces
Casilla 380
Temuco
Chile
Phone/Fax: (56) 45 - 250759
email: lflores@enlaces.ufro.cl