Digital learning materials in science and mathematics for basic education
Participants: experts in science education, learning materials and ICT from OPH (Finland), ENS de Lyon (France), OFI (Hungary), The Norwegian Centre for ICT Education, Education Scotland (UK), UT (Estonia), Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, Information Technology Foundation for Estonia, Estonian Physical Society.
The main topics presented and discussed during the expert meeting were:
- The policies of each country represented, concerning designing and use of digital learning materials.
- Actual conditions in schools, teachers’ and students’ attitudes on using digital learning – overviews of results from recent investigations.
- Pedagogical, technical and organizational aspects of creating and using digital textbooks and other learning materials.
On the first day the topics were presented by each participating country and discussed further.
In Norway and France development of digital learning materials has been a longer process. Scotland had developed a variety of materials in connection with the Curriculum for Excellence. For every country there is a problem how to find better balance in using traditional and digital materials. Estonia has legal obligations to prepare digital learning materials but several authors (incl. teachers) have already done it before on commercial basis. Now the cooperation with Finland is in progress. Hungary is relying also on the international cooperation and use of international materials.
The second round was dedicated to demonstrations of examples of digital materials in use and ideas about new digital textbooks. Each showed and commented some examples used in his/her country. Kaido Reivelt, senior researcher on didactics of physics at UT discussed the issues on the example of his current work on digital material of school physics – problems to solve, how to organize texts, video-clips, hyperlinks for the best usage of students and teachers; how users could organize their own study material on the proposed digital textbooks.
Entire report: Expert Meeting Tartu (PDF)
The presentations are found: www.curriculum.ut.ee
