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.
If you have comments or questions to the author, write to:
Inger Lise
Stieng.
last update: 2.6.97; pdf