The primary school has about 400 pupils from 7 to 13 yeas old. The Norwegian
partner, the National Centre of Educational Resources (NCER), has been at
the school for a little more than two weeks in April to observe four teachers
and 58 children in 5th grade. The two classes were working with an interdisciplinary
project for about three weeks. The project had as an aim to make a newspaper
about Europe. The regular subject based time schedule was not used in the
project, except for Physical education and Arts.
The project was located in the regular classrooms, group rooms and the library
where 12 computers were connected to the Internet. One of the main goals
in the project was to use the Internet to get information to write articles
about Europe. Both classes had one e-mail address each. E-mail was generally
not used in the project. The pupils were very enthusiastic about the possibility
to use ICT and the Internet both as a means to access information and as
a means of producing the newspaper.
The lower secondary school has about 160 pupils from 13 to 16 year old.
NCER observed use of ICT during two weeks in February/March. This school
has many after school activities going on, also in the ICT. One night per
week the computer lab is open only for girls. The pupils are to a great
extent in charge of these activities. Most of the after school ICT activities
seemed to be focused on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). We also observed the
two graduating classes use ICT in an interdisiplinary project going on once
a week.
The project was located in their classrooms, the library and in the computer
lab with 15 computers connected to the Internet. The Internet was used for
information structured according to critical themes in the project. E-mail
was not used in the project. Our observations shows that it is a demanding
task to prepare and structure project work like this with integrated use
of ICT.
The upper secondary school has 300 students. It offers both vocational and
academic subjects. The students are 16 to 19 years old. NCER observed the
use of ICT for about two weeks in February/March in a common project for
all the graduating classes.
The students based their project work in one of the main academic subjects
with possibilities of integrating other academic subjects of relevance.
We observed the search for information on the Internet.
The first week we were there they only had one machine and a modem. Mainly
two groups, consisting of all boys studying Physics, were using the net.
The students did not have their own e-mail addresses at the school, and
generally they didn't use e-mail in the project. We also observed students
using the Internet for History and language purposes. We mainly observed
one teacher and her work at this school.
The objective in all three school was to do interdisiplinary projects using
ICT as one of many sources and tools for accessing information and as a
means to create products.
In addition to observe ICT activities in three schools, we also have carried
out group- and individual interviews about the thinking of how ICT can be
used, and the actual use of ICT in concrete activities.
NCER has not yet completed the descriptions of the actual activities and the interviews. A report from the project will be published later.
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If you have comments or questions to the author, write to: Inger Lise Stieng.
last update: 2.6.97; pdf