Digital tools at the service of education
This is the challenge we tackled in the Albert Samain Secondary School in Roubaix, experimenting our application of collaborative work CoWo.
(Vous pouvez trouver une version française de l’article ici)
Collaborative work and mind-mapping to meet the challenges of teaching in the digital era
Project CoWo is an application that fits the philosophy of TalkMap, in the wake of Debate mixing mind-mapping and collaboration dedicated to collective intelligence.
Why this new application? CoWo stems from an observation and a conviction.
The observation that the methods and tools used in schools have evolved slower than the students. We are currently facing the necessity to adapt the educational processes to the needs of a generation that grew up in the digital era. Children learn differently, they are more connected and collaborate more easily.
And the conviction that digital tools have the assets to participate in the renewal of teaching methods, especially around two themes on which we have built our expertise, collaboration and mind-mapping.
CoWo is a collaborative platform designed to create mind-mappings, with different access levels inspired by the roles teachers and students play during a lecture (viewer/contributor/moderator), and a palette of tools to organize contents trough thematic filters. These flexible access rights allow the teacher to defer to his students, giving them the opportunity to bring in some material (comments, articles, photos, video documentaries) while keeping the control of the lecture.
A preview of CoWo :
A tool serving the educational processes
If a real awareness of the need to invest in school modernization has emerged over the last years through massive investments in schools equipment (electronic desks, computers, etc.), these tools unfortunately end up too rarely on practical teaching processes, and are too often left in the closet. Why is that?
Mainly because the tools are just tools, means to access a goal, but not the goal itself. If they do not fit teachers’ pedagogical patterns taking into account the inherent constraints of leading a class, such as maintaining the teacher/student relationship, not monopolizing the attention of the teacher who has the responsibility to monitor the class, they can be counterproductive.
Therefore, how could we insert digital tools in teachers’ educational practices without destabilizing them and without adding weight to their workload? How could we preserve the teacher/student relationship and focus the attention of the student not on the tool itself, while increasing his autonomy?
Rather than giving a definitive and closed answer, we preferred to give teachers the opportunity to design their own use cases from our prototype, because we are convinced that they are in a better position to build tomorrow’s school.
We thank the four teachers who participated in this experience for their involvement, Dallia Boudharn, Karine Martin, Marjorie Therby, Alexander Meza. Shout out to Lucas Gruez (Prefect of Studies College Albert Samain) who organized the event and helped to make this day a success!
One day at the Albert Samain Secondary School
One day with four teachers, five teaching subjects: Geography, Mathematics, Vocational Discovery 3h (DP3), English and German, for a total of seven sessions of 1 hour each with classes of about 20 pupils.
We carried out seven experiments, all different, but focusing on the same issues:
- stimulate students’ interest ;
- disinhibit speaking and increase participation ;
- develop their autonomy, and teamwork skills ;
- give them the opportunity to co-construct the course under the authority of the teacher.
English and German classes: respectively description of a photo and a movie, students are asked to comment and to correct each other. They are gratified by the very fact that their comments are selected by the teacher and integrated into the map.
Description of a movie during German class
Mathematic class: Immersion in the probability course with YouTube videos showing different types of lotteries. Then participation in class to answer questions: correcting other students wrong answers and dispatch of good answers on the map.
Geography class: Lecture about Mali. Pupils worked within two groups. They contributed by answering questions and providing comments, photos, documentaries and maps: teamwork and documentary research.
Comments, photos and maps about Mali brought by students
DP3, Vocational Discovery 3h: call for all students to share their feelings and their personal experiences when they met corporate professionals all the school year long, and dispatch of these reactions on a map.
What’s next?
After this first experiment, we are currently setting up a partnership with two secondary schools to define a learning path based on our application for the next academic year. Throughout this course we will refine the use cases and adapt the application’s functionalities to the teachers’ practical needs to make this prototype one of tomorrow’s educational tools.
If you are interested in our approach and in our tool, feel free to contact us for more information.
Thanks: the whole Albert Samain Secondary School, and especially Lucas Gruez, Marjorie Therby, Karine Martin, Alexandre Meza, Dallia Boudharn, Eric Maquer and all students who participated in this world premiere! 