CLAN SOFT LEARNING VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT September 19, 2008 Kaunas 2nd Meeting

The SO.le Model (soft learning) General principles: - personalised timetable - learning by enjoying - personalised contents - creating permanent communities of learners - increasing interest and participation

How  Personalised timetable  First step : the communities have to “know who are the participants”, exchanging information about the single profiles  Second step: every participant has to engineer his/her own timetable planning when to act. Just one task: Keeping in touch with the community The moderator has the task to gather any useful information about the timetable organisation The community decides if and when to meet in presence

How  Learning by enjoying Some activities are actually games: e.g.  Short quiz shows  Competitions (which Clan takes the best picture telling something about the local history and post it in Picture Blog)  Role games (using virtual Worlds as they are in the Project Learning Village ) ….

How  Personalised contents  In the Clan Communities there aren't teachers and students.  They are communities of Peers.  The Moderator has to let them be able to create their contents.  The communities can invite experts to take part to the activities to give their contributions to the Clan (e.g. if the contests is about local history the Community can invite a local historian to explain something or to suggest some book to read)

How  Creating permanent communities of learners  The Clan user has to feel not a mere experimenter but a member of the community.  The aim is to continue the activities after the project is “legally” finished

How  Increasing interest and participation The learning process has to be active and cooperative  This means that:  The learners have to be involved in the activities  The learners have to consider the activities as socially and personally interesting and respondent to their needs  The learners have to feel something to share with the others

The organisation of the Clan Village The Clan Village is: A place where the communities can meet and exchange information and contents Each Clan has its own place in the village where it is possible to find many resources Each Clan member has his/her own “hut” where he/she can invite some friends

Clan village could be…

The project experimentation steps The Curricula foreseen in the project are: History of knowledge and places Citizenship rights Digital knowledge

The project experimentation steps 1. Each Clan takes possession of the village and the members meet each other 2. Each Clan chooses a moderator (one of the member or an external resource) 3. Each Clan creates the timetable and start the activities

The Phases Phase I - Network facilities (Digital Contents)  The objective of this phase is to verify the familiarity with internet and its functionalities Each Clan will be asked to develop some simple activities (such as to create a blog, to publish a video on YouTube, to upload the photo of their families, to search a famous painting and to describe it, to look for a quotation etc…)

The Phases Phase II - Knowledge of history  The objective of this phase is to describe the traditions through images, tales, quotations… Each Clan, through the use of the identified tools, will be asked to create a framework of objects to tell their story to the others, through the following areas: - Senses (taste, sight etc…) - Voices (music and sounds) - Images (photos and videos)

The Phases Phase III - Citizens Rights  The objective of this phase is to choose a hot topic about the dimension of citizenship Each Clan will: Discuss (in presence or in the village) with a guest (expert invited to join the Clan) Create some content using the e-environment (contents are related to the chosen topic. The moderator creates an index, the members have to choose how to comment the index, posting video, pictures, texts and anything is considered useful to identify the individual point of view about the chosen topic.

Number of the CLAN experimenters 7-10 for each CLAN Main characteristics: - Homogeneous Features - Groups with similar characteristics - Different formal learning Before the experimentation each partner organization will have to : - organize a meeting with the experimenters - propose a questionnaire for a deep anaysis on the different CLANs characteristics Number and characteristics of the CLAN experimenters

The CLAN experimenters will work in an on-line soft learning environment Educational technology is seen as key factor for CLAN experimentation CLAN e-learning environment needs: - a high degree of autonomy for the adult learner - to be open to eclectic sources - to support soft informal learning activity - to allow evolution both in the experience of the learner and in the context in which this occurs So to: - embed learning in a natural environment - make participants to be immerse into a mixed reality composed by physical, educational and social space. On-line soft learning environment

Main characteristics Syncronous and asynchronous interaction (the social aspect) User-friendly interface (the ICT aspect) Learning centred method (didactical aspect) So to guarantee: -Active learners -Motivation and enthusiasm -Student-centred learning

Main tools  Forum discussion  Curricula  Glossary  Resources (including links to the library, study skills materials, electronic resources, search engines, and personal notes)  Wiki space  Student area (including students’ own marks, personal homepages, student groups, chat rooms)  Data gathering  Blog  Web meeting  Educational games  Digital streaming video, audio, screen capturing, animated text, chat, discussion board, etc...

Thanks for your attention! September 19, 2008 Kaunas, Lithuania 2nd Meeting