The digitally marginalised communities are in focus in the EU-funded Rural Wings project [2006][2007][2008]. The aim is to identify and analyse the user learning needs in non-connected communities and to meet these needs by providing satellite Internet broadband connections, education and tools. This article reports the findings of the user needs investigation of 31 communities in 10 countries in the initial phase of the project designed and coordinated by Stockholm University, Sweden. Each national coordinator conducted a user needs study in their country using a common framework of questions and guidelines. The sites were selected according to national and regional needs and where satellite-provided Internet is believed to be the long-term solution. The 31 communities selected can be summarised as (a) mainland/lowland communities, 10 (b) mainland/highland communities, 12 (c) island/lowland communities, 5, and (d) island/highland communities, 4. The analysis reveals common threads of lack of infrastructure, accessibility and reliability concerning information and communication technology (ICT) implementation and containment in the community. There is a plethora of reasons for wanting more reliable and frequent Internet connections. Reasons range from educational opportunities, language opportunities, governmental inclusion, information/news outlets, and medical and weather initiative capabilities. This study provides in-depth macro-summaries of each participating country's user needs analysis in total. It also includes the actual analysis of each test site based on over 31 sites spanning 10 European nations. In addition, generalisations, comparisons and differences have been composed, to provide a framework for European trends in rural ICT access.
Students' cognitive representation means the establishment of cognitive frames. This article explores how students construct notions by interacting with their conceptual understanding. Our research question focused on how students represented scientific contexts through the concept of "Learning Science Through Theatre" Initiative. We focused on and analyzed students' representations both by quantitative and qualitative methods. Analyses revealed students' need to disentangling conceptual aspects of explanation. This program creates a network of knowledge and collaboration in which students focus on the mental schemata with respect to RRI Principles. All the theatrical performances during three (3) school years from 2014 to 2017 were organized by school students (2500) and embed scientific concepts, creative and art techniques and cultural/ social elements.
In 2015, the EU Educational Policy document “Science Education for Responsible Citizenship” introduced the concept of Open Schooling as a promising approach to transform schools into innovation hubs within their local communities. In an open school environment, external ideas need to challenge traditional internal views and, in turn, to benefit its students as the community it serves. Such engaging environments may vitally contribute to their community when students’ projects introduce real needs into a community outside of school, present them publicly, and enrich local expertise. Additionally, such school environments may foster learner independence—and interdependence—through collaboration and through the provision of opportunities for learners to understand and interrogate their place in the world. In our study, it was realised in the framework of the European Union–supported Coordination Action called “Open Schools for Open Societies” (OSOS), and we have analysed the development process of a large number of schools with a Self-Reflection Tool (OSOS-SRT), focusing on the organisational change during the implementation of the Open Schooling approach. Rooted in the theory of RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) principles, the tool has shown its potential to analyse the openness level of each school. In this study, we are presenting the validation of the proposed instrument and empirical data from the overall transformation process. The school environments were evaluated for one full academic year by completing two measurements, one before their involvement and one after their engagement in the transformation journey. Participating schools achieved an average increase of 11.34% in their openness levels, while based on the first measurement the lowest performers achieved a 35–45% increase while the higher scorer still reached a small but significant increase in the recorded openness levels. Our findings could act as a reference point for educational policy actions to support school development through cooperation and continuous interaction with external stakeholders. Consequences for school management, development plans, and teachers’ professional development are discussed.
Abstract-This paper presents the main operations and technologies implemented in the framework of the EU funded COSMOS project. COSMOS introduces an advanced web repository which allows teachers and students to search, retrieve, access educational content and re-use educational material for creating earning activities through a specifically designed web interface incorporating innovative technological solutions. The repository is based on an IEEE LOM representation of the content which supports educational scenarios and learning activities as well. The architecture also supports tools for describing and managing digital content rights, which are interoperably represented using the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL).
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