Image: Flickr/Mikel Agirregabiria/ 20160308_115148_HDR

Building on the success of the previous year, Scientix was invited for a second time to take part in one of the sessions during the 8th edition of the itworldedu conference (Barcelona, 7-8 March, 2016) with a workshop titled “Scientix and the usage of Technology in the Classroom” (http://www.itworldedu.cat/index.php/en/).

The workshop was intended to showcase experiences from teachers around Europe on how to use technology and innovative practices in STEM lessons. For that matter, three Scientix Ambassadors -Stavros Nikou (Greece), Tullia Urschitz (Italy) and Irina Vasilescu (Romania)- were selected to lead the workshop.

Stavros Nikou, a Physics and Informatics teacher and a PhD researcher in Computer Networks & Telematics Applications Lab, University of Macedonia (Greece), led an activity on innovative STEM teaching using online Inquiry Based Learning approaches. During his initial presentation, Stavros showed examples of electronic learning environments that support the development of different inquiry phases while presenting a number of innovative educational learning scenarios. As a hands-on activity, he explained the Erasthotenes experiment.

Tullia Urschitz, secondary teacher of math and science subjects, regular collaborator with the School of robotics in Genoa and researcher at CeDisMa (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), run an activity on the use of educational robots in primary and middle school as a way to ignite interest of boys and girls. During the activity, she divided the audience in different groups that had previously chosen a different robotic kit to solve a same scientific problem. The objective of the activity was to encourage attendees to distinguish how to approach different learning styles.

Last, Irina Vasilescu, a math teacher and expert in ICT in education and with extent experience in several European education projects, ran an activity on innovative strategies and tools for math classes. She offered ideas on a number of activities suitable for different learning styles as well as examples of ICT tools for implementing them. Those were all accessible online through a website of her own creation.

Participants showed great interest in the workshop as, even if running parallel to other sessions, still proved to be among the most popular. In this case, as most of the attendees were teachers (both from primary and secondary levels) in search of best practices to implement in their classroom. Therefore, it was decided to present hands-on, tangible activities that could be later be introduced in schools. Likewise, the fact that the workshop was run by teachers training other teachers, was crucial for its success as it enabled an enhanced empathy and improved understanding between the workshop leaders and the audience. All in all, it was a great experience that we expect to repeat next year!

Article written by: Marina Jiménez Iglesias, Project Officer, European Schoolnet

Tags: conference, IBL, ICT, mathematics, robotics, STEM, technology