THE LAB OF TOMORROW PROJECTA CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH IN SCIENCE TEACHING

THROUGH THE EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

S. A. Sotiriou, S. Savvas, M. Orfanakis Ellinogermaniki Agogi,

N.K. Uzunoglu, R. Makri, M. Gargalakos National Technical University of Athens

H. Fischer, R. Tiemann University of Dortmund

C. Baber University of Birmingham

Introduction [Science, whatever be its ultimate developments,

has its origin in techniques, in arts and crafts…Science arises in contact with things, it is dependent

on the evidence of the senses, and however far it seems to move from them, must always come back to them.]

B. Farrington, Greek Science, 1949

There is sufficient evidence to suggest that both the persistence and the quality of learning are highly enhanced when the student is actively participating in the learning process. This is the essential and widely accepted message of “constructivism”1 [S. Papert, 1994, M. Resnick, 1993]. Juxtaposing this ideal with the current reality of organized learning in school environments creates the impression that the school is not connected at the desirable degree with daily life experiences.

One particular and most striking example is science teaching. Throughout history science has advanced through observation, inspection, formulation of hypotheses, testing of the hypotheses by means of experiments and collection of data, rejection or acceptance of the hypotheses, formulation of topics for further research. It seems that in schools this process of acquisition of scientific knowledge gets reversed. Science is presented as a coherent body of knowledge, the experiment is the illustration of the phenomenon, and the questions are answered even before they are asked. The result is that the student acquires short-term knowledge targeted at standardized test questions, and in many instances this "forced and inefficient" learning lacks on long term sustainability.

Possible pragmatical remedies have been proposed. Regarding to [E.v.Glasersfeld, 1995] the constructivist point of view has been very fruitful to develop science instruction. In this model knowledge acquisition is only a matter of individual mental activities. But, constructivism [R. Duit, 1995] in its pure, so-called “radical” version is also discussed controversially. The instructional component is missing in the model and therefore it is very difficult to derive investigation methods and codings which are able to represent the instructional influence upon learning processes. Thus, since the early 90s a pragmatic interim position was discussed, named by [M.D.Merrill, 1991] as “instructional design of the second generation”. It is seen as integration of constructivism and cognitive theory. It accepts learning as a process of individual cognitive construction and states the dependence of this process on adequate learning environments [B. Weidenmann, 1993, S.J. Derry, 1996]. Even models of situated learning [H. Mandl et al., 1997, W.M. Roth, 1995] can be seen as a combination of these two approaches, taking into account the learning situation and motivating and communicative aspects, which is an obvious weakness of radical constructivism. As it turns out the main link missing in the learning process is that students do not learn sufficiently through experience but through a systematic model based approach, which should be the culmination of learning efforts and not the initiation. A particularly disturbing phenomenon that is common knowledge among educators is that students fail to see the interconnections between closely linked phenomena in e.g. biology and chemistry, or fail to understand the links of their knowledge to everyday applications. In

1 Also referred to the literature as constructionism [E.v. Glasersfeld, 1995, R. Duit, 1995].

most cases the physical quantities have become abstract for the students and the experimental set-ups alien or distant to every day experience. Students are early faced with two separate fields: “school science” and every day life’s “rules and principles”. Such separation commonly leads to the formation of misconcepts [D. Nachtigall, 1991]. “School science” explains adequately “school science lab phenomena” while preconceptual or misconceptual reasoning explains daily phenomena. Various approaches try to bridge these two fields [D. Nachtigall, 1992]. They converge in the wide usage of every day materials and means in the classroom, something relatively easy in primary school level. In higher levels this becomes less effective since the phenomena and the concepts under study (like acceleration, momentum transfer or energy conservation) are more abstract.

In such cases technology is providing some help with the supply of educational scientific instruments and software. Both the power and the problem with modern scientific instruments used in the school laboratories are reflected in the term “black box” that is commonly used to describe the equipment. Today’s black-box instruments are highly effective in allowing students to make measurements and collect data - enabling even novices to perform advanced scientific experiments based in most of the cases on advanced simulations. But at the same time, these black boxes are “opaque” as their inner workings are often hidden and thus poorly understood by the users. Furthermore they are bland in appearance making it difficult for students to feel a sense of personal connection with scientific activity. “To many students a lab means manipulating equipment and not manipulating ideas” [V.N.Lunetta, 1998]. Electronics and computational technologies have accelerated this trend, filling science laboratories and classrooms with ever more opaque black boxes.

Paradoxically, the same electronics technologies that have contributed to the black-boxing of science can also be used to reintroduce a vigorously creative and aesthetic dimension into the design of scientific instrumentation - particularly in the context of science education.

The Lab of Tomorrow2 project is introducing innovation both in pedagogy and technology. It aims at developing tools that will allow for as many links of teaching of natural sciences as possible with every day life. It will allow the student to link i.e. physics with “physis” (Greek word for nature), biology with “bios” (Greek word for life) and so on. The Lab of Tomorrow project is developing a new learning scheme by introducing a technologically advanced approach for teaching science through every day activities. Science deals with the study of nature and the world around us, so teaching science cannot be separated from daily experiences resulting from student’s interaction with the physical phenomena. The connection of tangible phenomena and problems provides students with the ability to apply science everywhere and not only in specially designed experiments under the laboratory’s controlled conditions [D. Nachtigall, 1992].

In the Lab of Tomorrow project the re-engineering of the school lab of tomorrow is proposed by developing a new learning scheme based on the production of computational tools and project materials that allow high-school students to use their every day life environment as the field where they will conduct sophisticated experiments experiencing the applicability of the theoretical background given at school.

In the framework of the project the partnership proceeds with the development of wearable technology, a series of “artefacts”, called axions, which allow students to develop investigations drawn from their everyday activities and which, in many cases, involve data collection over extended periods of time. The axions embedded in every day objects (for example an accelerometer may be embedded inside a ball) or in cloths (for example a heart pulse meter may be embedded in a T-shirt) are used in order to collect data during students’ activities. Important factors of their design are 2 Lab of Tomorrow project is co-financed by the European Commision under the School of Tomorrow action line of the IST 5th Framework Program (IST-2000-25076). The partnership of the project consists of the following institutions: National Technical University of Athens, University of Dortmund, University of Birmingham, Ellinogermaniki Agogi, ANCO S.A and a network of 5 schools (Austria, Germany, Greece and Italy).

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ergonomics and economy, so they will not stay on a test bench nor used by a small number of users. The data collected by the axions are presented with the use of advanced programming tools compatible with graphing and analysis software components so that students can easily investigate trends and patterns and correlate them with the theory taught at school.

Project’s objectives The objectives of the Lab of Tomorrow project are the following:

Development of a pedagogical framework that will allow successful application of the emerging technology in everyday learning.

The proposed project develops an innovative educational approach, which will guide students through the learning process in science, by using day-to-day activities as possible subjects of both formal and informal investigation. Many daily activities can be seen from a different point of view, the conditions of the Lab of Tomorrow, where the every day reality, as well as the magic of science will return. With the engagement in inquiry-rich experiences students will gain deeper insight into the nature of the phenomena under investigation. The goal is to shift away from classroom learning to “daylong” learning and to use the axions to facilitate that shift. The project’s implementation will include three cycles of school-centered work in real school environments. For the first two cycles an adapted curriculum is being developed around a solid educational framework that captures the main learning objectives of the project, while during the third (students’ project assignments) the pedagogical theories of modelling and constructivism with become a school practice. The collaboration aims at the end of the project to propose a systematic, full and practical guide for the wider introduction of the embedded artefacts in school life.

Enhancement of a constructivist approach in science teaching.Usually pre-designed experiments are used in science teaching. In the framework of the proposed project students will be able to use the axions and the wearables to set up their own experiments, which they will conduct autonomously. In this way the procedure of scientific inquiry is fully simulated: formulation of hypothesis, experiment design, selection of axions, implementation, verification or rejection of hypothesis, evaluation and generalisation are the steps that will allow for a deeper understanding of the science concepts. The partnership believes that the proposed approach will act as a qualitative upgrade to everyday teaching for several reasons: Motivation: Students are more likely to feel a sense of personal investment in a scientific investigation as they will actively participate in the research procedure and will add their own aesthetic touches to their intelligent toys and cloths. Extending the experimentation possibilities: The axions can serve as spurs to the imagination, promoting students to see various sorts of daily activities as possible subjects of scientific investigation. The proposed procedure will be freed from the pressing time limitation of the teaching hour.Developing critical capacity: Too often students accept the readings of scientific instruments without question. When students will get involved in the proposed activities for example by measuring their physical parameters as they are playing, they should as a result develop a healthy scepticism about the readings and a more subtle understanding of the nature of the scientific information and knowledge. Making connections to underlying concepts: In the framework of the project’s application to the school communities, students will be asked to design their own projects. During this procedure students will figure out what things to measure and how to measure them. In the process they will develop a deeper understanding of the scientific concepts underlying the investigation. If students use a wearable thermometer, for example, they naturally encounter (and make use of) the concepts of thermal conductivity and heat capacity.Understanding the relationship between science and technology: Students participating to the project will gain firsthand experience in the ways that technology design can both serve and inspire scientific investigation.

Development of new educational tools and learning environments.In the framework of the project a family of tiny, fully programmable computational devices, the axions, is developed. Axions embedded in everyday objects and cloths receive information from sensors, communicate with one another and transmit the collected data to a base station. As an

example, students could use a “wearable instrument” that analyzes the relationship between a person’s heartbeat and their level of exertion throughout a day or they will wear T-shirts with embedded axions in their ball games and will use a "clever" ball to play. Many phenomena in mechanics and biology can be addressed through the daily analysis of the data that will be collected by these intelligent components. For instance the law of energy conservation can be observed by the simultaneous measurements of aggregate heat emission on the human body and the data on "notions" of energy collected by the ball (e.g. total distance travelled, average speed). A User Interface is being developed to be an adding tool that will bridge science teaching and technology. These software educational tools will support teachers and students in the new learning environment and will be at the same time compatible with graphics and analysis software components, so students can easily investigate trends and patterns in the data they collect. Students will be able to graphically view all quantities under study and the data correlations through a scatter diagram on the computer screen. This specially developed interface will also be used for data download (transfer from the “axion” to the PC), analysis and presentation of data, in an organized educational way. The main emphasis on the user interface is the improvement of the interaction between students and the universe of digital services. The project also has an equally important goal at the level of the social dimension of learning. It will be attempted to overcome the limits of the classroom by having a network of schools gathering the same type of data and asking the students to compare. Research will thus become a collective process, whereby the interactions will not merely be at the level of data analysis but at the level of the formulation of hypotheses, exchange of opinions, announcement and communication of results using the collected data that will be regularly submitted to a Web database.

Equal and parallel development of pedagogical and technological innovations.The involvement of the pedagogical community in the development of the innovative technology is relatively small. In most cases the educational experts are just criticising, usually negatively (e.g. video games, hand held computer games). Furthermore teachers and students are excluded from any contribution to this development. The aim of the proposed project is that the technological innovation is designed with educational targets and criteria. In the Lab of Tomorrow project students and teachers come together with science researchers, psychologists, and technological and educational experts to re-engineer the lab of the school of tomorrow. The pedagogical and technological innovation of the proposed project evolves together during the project’s implementation and the experts from both fields are in continuous interaction receiving and providing input.

Development of a concrete evaluation scheme of the educational and technological aspectsEvaluation of both aspects of the project will be done according to well-defined methodologies. The aim is to develop a better theoretical framework on how different types of tools and instruments support different types of thinking, reasoning and understanding. The research process that will be adopted in order to study the impact of the proposed educational approach will include both measurements (achievement tests) and on field observations (video captures of the activities). In the educational aspect there will be a complete evaluation of the student’s learning and of the pedagogical framework, while in the technological aspect there will be a complete evaluation in the quality, the ergonomics and the strainability of the products. The educational value of the advanced technological tools will be evaluated during the three cycles of school-centered work. Emphasis will be given throughout the project work – design, re-design and evaluation – to ethical considerations. The intention of the partnership is not to impose an ethical view, but rather pursue participatory ethics. Ethical considerations and ethical standpoints are tangled in the project at all levels taking heed of student’s co-design, but also of children, teachers and parents voices and emotions when addressing the issues of moral determination and research of ethical standards. From this accurate evaluation scheme arguments in favour of the need for wider spread of new practices in secondary education are expected to arise, arguments that will be distributed through an extended dissemination plan.

Educational concepts

Recent studies normally describe science lessons by means of negative indicators. Students behave passively and their learning outcome is mostly not seen as a basis of the acquisition of new knowledge and for further activities in the area [J. Baumert et al., 1997]. Students seem to be far away from skills proposed by “scientific literacy” to become reasonable and responsible acting citizens

[H.E. Fischer, 1993], meaning in short they are far away from presenting, discussing and criticising science related topics of society. The Lab of Tomorrow project contributes in changing the present situation by implementing the following innovations:

Teaching science through every day activities.The partnership believes that students can come to view the development of scientific experiments and projects as a craft that rewards dedication and precision but simultaneously encourages a spirit of creativity, exuberance, humour, stylishness and personal expression. Moreover the partnership believes that with the appropriate computational tools for developing their own projects, students can, over time, develop a sense of confidence and self-empowerment; they can view scientific investigation as a process in which they can take part, day-to-day, creatively and pleasurably (Figure 1). Students through a sequence of steps involving, data accessing, plotting data on a graph, creating a mathematical model to fit the data and relate the graph with the motions of the axions provided by the advanced user-interface, will have a deeper inside of the phenomena and the scientific methodology. One of the major goals of the partnership is facilitating students to become more fluent in creating their own scientific investigations based on their daily activities. It will be considered as a major success of the proposed project if students, during the third cycle of school-centered work are more likely and more able to design, implement and evaluate their scientific experiments using new tools (even very simple combinations of axions) for exploring phenomena in their everyday lives. For example an axion-accelerometer placed in a student’s shoes could be used to take a rough measurement of the wearer’s running speed; or it could be used to measure the student’s acceleration at the outset of a jump and hence to get an estimate of how high the wearer is able to get off the ground. Such projects suggest the use of wearable devices as means of measuring aspects of one’s own body and its functioning (e.g. pulse rate, blood pressure and body temperature measurements). A wearable instrument allows measurements to be taken over wide range environments and over long periods of time, and it encourages students to blend small, subtle and personally meaningful acts of scientific interest into their day-to-day activity, expanding the experimentation activities out of the conventional lab to the real life environment.

Figure 1. Teaching science through everyday activities. Scientific investigation as a process in which students can take part, day-to-day, creatively and pleasurably

Reinforcing inter-discipline approaches.The main link missing usually in the learning process is that students do not learn sufficiently through experience but through a systematic model based approach, which should be the culmination of learning efforts and not the initiation. A particularly disturbing phenomenon, that is common knowledge among educators, is that students fail to see the interconnections between closely linked phenomena or fail to understand the links of their knowledge to everyday applications. Therefore, in recent years, there is a clear focus on interdisciplinary education. This approach supports that educational experiences should be authentic and encourage students to become active learners, discover and construct knowledge. Authentic educational experiences are those that reflect real life, which is multifaceted rather than divided into neat subject-matter packages. Indeed, interdisciplinary instruction exploits the natural and logical connections that cut across content areas and is organized around questions, themes, problems, or projects rather than traditional subject-matter boundaries. Artificial barriers among subject areas are eliminated and students are given a broader context for solving real-life problems, which demands the development of analytical, interpretive and evaluative skills used in many subject-matter areas. This kind of learning is definitely of greater value to students. The project will develop these results in close interaction between the different disciplines.

On the other hand, teachers are faced with a real challenge. Having specialised in an academic discipline may cause frustration to them when it comes to creating interdisciplinary, cross-curricular activities. Such activities demand considerable knowledge in many areas, which they may lack. Collaboration with their colleagues may help them overcome this challenge, develop positive attitudes to interdisciplinary learning and gradually adopt it and make it part of their teaching practice. Educational context of Lab of Tomorrow is not transmitted in a theoretical way but rather in a biomatic way in the form of a real life experience. Interdisciplinary is crucial towards enhancing the effectiveness of education, since it provides a unique way of strengthening learning processes, such as discovering analogies, similarities etc., while providing topics, which are inherently closer to real world problems. Playing is a highly interdisciplinary subject and its implications give topics for discussion in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Health Sciences, expanding the learning resources for students.

Promoting behaviour and process oriented learning.After the familiarization of the students with the axions, projects will be assigned to them. They will be let free to approach their every day situations they want to study. Now the students will be requested to develop real problem solving practices, letting themselves free to attack situations and study them using the technique of “guerrilla approach”. By using the axions to compose their own scientific inquiring strategy, the partnership expects students to be able to engage in more meaningful and motivating science-inquiry activities. In this way these assigned projects will promote creativity through new forms of content combining highly visual and interactive media with the use of innovative ways of design, delivery, access and navigation. The versatility of the tools and results is one of the most compelling factors of the project. The students will be encouraged to present and further develop their results in settings that go beyond school boundaries. Additionally, with the assigned projects students will not see electronic equipment and measuring devices as black boxes, but as something that can “take it apart and built it again”. In this way the proposed project takes advantage of the natural tendency of children and youngsters to pursue pleasure and research in their activities.

Technological innovation

The trend of technology calls for smaller and smaller gadgets up to the point of the “disappearing computer”, an ultimate goal of the proposed project that will build in ordinary items sensors and other measuring instruments and “disappear” them into clothes, toys and furniture thus creating the “intelligent clothes”, the “intelligent toys” and the “intelligent furniture” all connected with a small wearable computer. By definition wearable computers will be used in environments, which differ dramatically from the normal domains of computer use. Wearable computers represent a new and exciting area for technology development, with a host of issues relating to display, power and processing design still to be resolved. Wearable computers also present a new challenge to the field of ergonomics; not only is the technology distinct, but the manner in which the technology is to be used and the relationship between the user and computer have changed in a dramatic fashion.

Unlike desktop computers, wearable computers have the potential to “see” as the user sees, “hear” as the user hears, and experience the life of the user in a “first-person” sense. They can sense the user’s physical environment much more completely than previously possible, and in many more situations. This makes them excellent platforms for applications where the computer is working even when you aren’t giving explicit commands. In the case of the desktop computers, the users’ primary task is working with the computer. With wearables, most of the time the user is doing something besides interacting with the computer, e.g. in the Lab of Tomorrow project students might playing in the school yard or at home as the axions will collect data.

Intelligent clothing has a series of basic capacities that can be brought together in a flexible way to realize particular functions, with or without the use of add-on modules. In this sense clothing is functional, while intelligent clothing is functionalizable. Whether this is realized using simple configurable base-functions or automatic context sensitive configuration is a matter of sophistication rather than a fundamental difference. During the development of intelligent clothes, usability is an important issue. The intelligent clothes should in fact not disturb the user, but help him and expand

his possibilities. The user should therefore fully understand them. The user interfaces should fulfill this usability item, by its design. Another important item is of course the user itself. He has to be protected and should not take any risk on wearing these clothes. The integration of the electronic parts needs a lot of research on making them completely safe. In the framework of the Lab of Tomorrow project an intelligent T-shirt has been developed so far. Various sensors are embedded on the clothe such as a body temperature sensor, a heart pulse meter sensor, accelerometers e.t.c. Apart from recording the pulse rate and body temperature of the user the “smart” T-shirt, called Sensvest, is able to record body acceleration, arm acceleration or jumping rate (Figure 2). The sensor can be easily detached from clothe while the last can be also easily be enriched with new sensors to expand the experimental possibilities of the tool. The data from the sensors is locally processed and stored on cloth and then the appropriate communication system is used to transfer all data to a base station. The last is interconnected with a personal computer via the user’s interface is order for the experimental data to be presented to the students. The research is focused so as the product to become as ergonomic and functional as it can be.

Figure 2. Left: Wearing the Sensvest. Right: Sample of raw data recorded by the body accelerometer of the Sensvest. Several qualitative conclusions regarding specific activities can be derived by simple

observation of such data.

Clearly the conclusions of the proposed project will be grounded in contemporary technology. However, it is proposed that the Lab of Tomorrow project might stimulate exploration and research beyond the current limits of software engineering and systems development, and continue the debate as to what is meant by the term wearable computer. All of these results are integrated in the technological report, one of the main deliverables of the Lab of Tomorrow project toward intelligent clothing.

Bridging the gap between pedagogy and front-end technology

The digital revolution will (or already has?) transform the world of toys and play. Technologies are increasingly incorporated into artefacts for children. Old toys will become smarter. New toys will become possible. All toys will become connected. The Lab of Tomorrow project proposes the real involvement of school students in the design, development and first use of new, technologically advanced ideas in playing. In the Lab of Tomorrow project students and teachers will be involved as designers and not just as end users. With the good starting point that playing is fun the project brings the front-end technology in to the classroom and attract the interest of young people, providing in parallel with the introduction of technology new educational approaches. There is also a tendency from the part of pedagogy community to criticize the toy industry for not creating enough pedagogical toys. The Lab of Tomorrow project gives to this community the opportunity and the challenge to design new “toys” and subsequently be criticized. In the framework of the project apart of the sensvest other clever toys and wearable have been developed as well. A clever ball with an accelerometer embedded gives to the opportunity to students to study several sport activities with such a common and popular toy (Figure 3).

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Figure 3. Left: Playing with the axion ball. Right: Data from the “clever” ball are transmitted to the base station (middle) that is connected to the pc used for the presentation and the pedagogical use of

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Students’ step rate and leg acceleration can be recorded by another toy, the leg accelerometer module. Data again transmitted to the base station and the pc can be presented with information and data form the other toys in order to perform even more complicated experimental studies. As an example we can refer to the correlation of the acceleration data recorded by the axion ball and the leg accelerometer module aiming at comparing the forces exerted to the leg and the ball during a kick, studying the third Newton’s law. The last axion system developed in the framework of the lab of tomorrow project is a local positioning system (LPS) that provide the three dimensional coordinates of selected objects in space. The LPS system is based on the use of two CCD cameras situated in two orthogonal planes in space. The information deriving from the recorded images of the cameras combined with simple geometrical arguments (Figure 4.) is used to calculate the position of the objects in space with a few centimetres accuracy.

Figure 4. The local positioning system. The information provided by the recorded frames of the two cameras combined with simple geometrical arguments are combined for the three dimensional

calculation of the coordinates of selected objects.

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In the framework of the project, a user scenario-based design methodology is used as a means of defining suitable applications of wearable technology. A series of lesson-plans (scenarios) is being developed. These series of lessons will be implemented in the science curriculum of the participating schools during the first two cycles of the school-centered work. The aim is to familiarize students and teachers with the new approach and toys as well as investigate possible qualitative upgrade of science teaching comparing with the conventional classroom lesson. At the current phase, approximately one year after the initialization of project’s activities all the axion prototypes have been developed and are tested in detail (Test Run phase of the project) in order to proceed to the first two Final Run phases of

the project mentioned before. During the test run phase the developed toys will be tested and evaluated in the different environments of the participating school and the conclusions that will be derived by this phase will be used to redesign the axions and determine the implementation parameters for the successful application of the project’s approach during the final run phases. At the third Final Run of the school-centered work students and teachers (having been used with the idea that scientific investigation is a process in which they can take part, day-to-day, creatively and pleasurably) will have the opportunity to design their own scenarios for exploring phenomena in their everyday lives. These new ideas will provide input for the development of new artefacts.

Evaluation – Ethnographic research

The evaluation of the proposed didactic approach will be initiated the second year of the implementation of the project, evolving in parallel with the Final Run Phases and it will be performed on three aspects: evaluation of student’s learning, evaluation of the underlying pedagogical framework and ethnographical evaluation.

Evaluation of the student’s learning. In assessing student’s learning, student’s engagement in science as inquiry will be primarily examined. The partnership believes that the activity of designing projects and experiments provides a powerful way for students to become meaningfully involved in scientific inquiry. In this way the dimension of self-expression will be introduced, something that is often missing in science education. Prompting students to see all sorts of daily activities, as possible subjects of both formal and informal scientific investigation will increase their motivation. Furthermore, the proposed approach will help students in developing critical capacity and deeper understanding of the scientific concepts underlying the investigation. Finally students will gain firsthand experience in the ways that technology can both serve and inspire scientific investigation.

Evaluation of the pedagogical framework. The major theoretical issue underlying the proposed project is whether the implementation of the emerging technologies (e.g. wearables) could offer a qualitative upgrade to the science teaching at the high school level. In such a case the introduction of technology would not act as a substitute of the conventional teaching but rather as an add-on that has to justify its introduction through the qualitative upgrade it offers to everyday school practice.

Ethnographic evaluation. The project will take advantage of the different school environments across Europe and will study the attitudes of students and teachers with different cultures towards the implementation of IST in education as well as the attitudes between students themselves coming from different countries.

Conclusions – Future plans

In the framework of the project the educational and technological aspects are investigated and worked on together in an open and exploratory fashion, encouraging innovation . The new ideas, concepts and technologies will be tested and evaluated in relation to real school environments. Following the echo from IST’99 session “Children shaping the future” and the hope that the passionate debate about children and how their voices can bring freshness and new meaning in the development of a better IT world will not remain a rhetorical exercise, in the Lab of Tomorrow project students and teachers will come together with researchers, psychologists, designers and technologists to re-engineer the lab of the school of tomorrow. This will be achieved by developing a new learning scheme based on the production of computational tools and project materials that allow high school students to design their own scientific projects.

The project will include three extended periods of school-centered work. These trials are not only meant for evaluation purposes (technological and pedagogical) but involve teachers and students to giving direction to the project and its technological and pedagogical results. The aim is to help both teachers and students reach beyond “cliches” to the areas in which they can make the most valuable contributions, and potentially increase their role on the world stage afterwards. To assure maximal usability of the new tools, optimal adaptation to the local environments and realistic

evaluation of the pedagogical effects, the Lab of Tomorrow project will use a heavily student-center approach.

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Author:

Dr, Sofoklis SOTIRIOUHead of Research and Development Department

Elliogermaniki AgogiD. Plakentias 25, GR-15234Sotiriou@ellinogermaniki.gr