|
 |
|
|
REPORT ON INDIRE ACTIVITIES
January-April 2002
In the first months of 2002 one of the major fields of action for INDIRE was a project established by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) for the in-service training of newly qualified teachers through an e-learning system (http://puntoedu.indire.it/).
The preparatory work was completed in January 2002. The e-learning process, involving 64,792 teachers and 2,381 tutors, started in February 2002 and ended in June 2002. INDIRE selected, customised, improved and managed the e-learning platform. It provided Guidelines for its use, co-ordinated – together with MIUR - the planning and setting up of the virtual classes, teaching units, assessment procedures, reference resources, forums and questionnaires. It also took part in the creation of the local tutoring system; processed the data related to users and to learning processes and provided a help-desk. The system offered 11 multimedia courses and six workshops dealing with 33 case studies of best practice in schools. It provided information on curricula, teacher education and final exams in Europe. Eighty-seven forums on didactics and curricular subjects were moderated by experts who were members of 22 professional teacher associations.
The underlying criteria behind this e-learning model were the following:
-
Individualised teaching, allowing learners to autonomously plan learning times and strategies, and giving them the possibility of customising their curriculum;
-
Experimenting the potentiality of new technologies for more flexible teaching/learning approaches;
-
Guiding learners to use web resources in the field of education in a competent, effective way;
-
Networking professional associations and schools co-operating with scholars in creating the teaching modules and materials;
-
An integrated approach, combining e-learning modalities with tutoring and teaching practice;
-
An international dimension, through international learning materials, including online English courses, learning environments and best practice either documented or directly available on the net.
At the moment (July) INDIRE is processing the assessment questionnaires completed by the end-users expressing their degree of satisfaction.
The same approaches and criteria were adopted in a similar course directed to the so-called “Funzioni-obiettivo”, i.e. teachers responsible for special tasks (support to the development of the school curriculum; support to teachers’ work, services for students, school-community relations, etc.). Eighteen thousand teachers are involved in the program, which will last until the end of the school year (June 2002).
INDIRE maintains a number of bibliographical and non-bibliographical data-bases for teachers and researchers, which have been regularly updated:
-
BIBL, a selective database of bibliographic references regarding Italian and foreign scientific literature in the field of education (+ 711 – Total:16,532 records).
Within the BIBL project, the bi-annual seminar of the Clearing Houses contributing to the project was held. An analysis of the data-base, concerning the trends of Italian scientific research in the field of education and didactics - was presented by the co-ordinator. The report was a starting point for discussing the state of the art, methodological issues and possible improvements to the data-base.
-
" Risorse Internet per la Didattica",
a selective directory of Internet sites classified by curricular subjects, indexed and abstracted. (523 revised and updated + 39 new records. Tot: 562)
-
RIVI,
database of bibliographic references about a database of bibliographic references on periodical literature in the field of education (+ 518 – Tot.: 32,874 rec.)
-
EMER,
a directory of current Italian educational periodicals, with an index and a content annotation. (+ 19 – Tot.: 380)
-
DIA: Immagini per la didattica ,
a selective database of images covering a number of curricular areas, with indexes and content descriptions. (+ 350 Tot.: 3,200);
-
GOLD,
a database of documentary units relating to best practice in Italian schools at all levels of education. (+372 – Tot.: 3,983);
-
Two information services were managed and updated:
- Scuola, handicap, tecnologie,
dealing with educational technologies for disabled pupils. Information is given on products, providers, events, news, funds, competitions, official documents, and legislation. Best practice in the field was signalled anda forum was maintained;
- SET: scienza e tecnologia,
an information service about pilot projects on scientific and technological education promoted by MIUR in school year 2001-2002. The service provided end-users with information on educational resources and best practice in the field. A team of experts gave advice on how to create and to manage a scientific laboratory. Teaching methods and strategies could be discussed within a forum moderated by an expert. A set of documents deals with particularly relevant scientific topics. Fourteen new pilot projects were published on the website in the first months of 2002.
Being the Italian agency of the European network Eurydice, INDIRE revised the Italian data related to the following Eurydice publications:
- Key Data 2001/2002
- Key Topics on Education in Europe - Volume III - On teachers
- Glossary on Education - Volume IV
- Basic skills survey
- Key data extract on special education
INDIRE also updated the data referring to:
- Summary fiches on education systems
- Structures
- Organisation of school time
- Dossier 2001
The Eurydice working group maintained the portal of the Unità italiana di EURYDICE,
providing information on European education systems (EURYBASE), on specific educational matters of common interest and on educational indicators. The links to international web-sites in the field of education, educational policy and educational administration were updated.
A study on the professional standards of teachers in the UK and in the USA was published in the Eurydice collection (Standard professionali per l'insegnamento - Inghilterra e Stati Uniti d'America, n.21, 2002).
Finally, three queries launched by Italian researchers and decision-makers in the Eurydice network were processed: the first on university student national councils, the second on teaching foreign languages to immigrant children, the third on teacher status.
Being the Italian agency of the European programme ‘Socrates’, INDIRE – through several task groups - instructed and set up the required actions for the implementation of all Socrates activities. Within this context, together with representatives of MIUR, INDIRE examined and selected 1,825 ‘Comenius Action 1’ projects out of 2,241 (related to foreign languages, development of education, innovative learning/teaching practices); 1,009 ‘Comenius 2.1’ projects out of 1,264 (co-operation/partnership projects); 143 ‘Comenius 2.2’ projects out of 647 (initial training for language teachers, foreign language assistants); 204 ARION study visits out of 471 for experts in the field of education; 155 ‘Grundtvig 2’ out of 155 and 38 ‘Grundtvig 3’ out of 53 projects.
36 preparatory visits out of 41 were authorised.
Furthermore, an information service on the net devoted to 'Socrates: il programma
europeo per l'istruzione'
was maintained by the Socrates working groups, providing updated information on all the European educational projects and related measures, application forms, opportunities for contacting partner schools, a help desk, an events calendar. A monitoring activity is also being carried out.
Being a reference point for school libraries and documentation centres in Italy, in the same period INDIRE also provided information, training courses, technical assistance to school librarians and documentalists. Within this context, a help-desk, a mailing list and a forum were maintained. Furthermore, an important task was carried out for revising and improving WINIRIDE, the INDIRE documentation software for managing school media centres: a new functionality for derivative cataloguing from the BNI (the national bibliographic index) was implemented.
An INDIRE expert took part in an ARION study visit in Rennes (FR), whose topic was the analysis of CDIs (Centres de Documentation et Information) in secondary schools in France, an opportunity for discussing the state of the art in several European countries. The INDIRE expert was also the official reporter of the visit.
The sub-site ‘Dalle biblioteche scolastiche al CREMS’, a support and information service for school librarians and documentalists, was temporarily closed in order to be entirely restructured. A task group, including teachers and librarians, was established to plan the new service.
INDIRE also acted as a documentation and support agency for the IFTS (Istruzione Formazione Tecnica Superiore) Italian system. Within this system, INDIRE was also involved in an intervention plan established by MIUR through the PON (Programma Operativo Nazionale), whose purpose is defining the minimum competence standards of technicians obtaining a further education degree in the field of ICT.
In the first four months, the INDIRE IFTS working group carried out the activities concerning the maintenance of the IFTS-PON site and of the platform for 6 discussion groups on the net.It managed the discussion group ‘Development of the data base and IFTS nets’, and it designed the data-bases related to the IFTS and IFTS-PON projects. Moreover, they took part in all the activities for the planning, implementing and managing of the IFTS-PON system. They also managed an IFTS-PON helpdesk, planned a restyling of the IFTS site, and wrote reports on the state of the art and on the project selection criteria.
The Department of Relational Analysis and Software Development made a statistical analysis of two national educational programs: ‘Monitoraggio Autonomia’ (2000-2001), concerning the school autonomy after the recent educational reforms, and ‘Progetto Lingue 2000’ (2000-2001), whose purpose is to expand the knowledge of foreign languages. The results were published in the INDIRE website.
A specific project on adult education was started (the EDA project), whose purpose is to create a data-base of web resources and to promote the establishment of standards for the certification of the competencies acquired by adult learners.
The design of the data base, including a classification system, a collection of international information sources and a first selection of resources was the task of a specific working group.
In this period, INDIRE took part in the following European projects:
-
The ETB project, whose purpose is the creation of a European database of educational web resources for schools. The product of this project consists of a multilingual infrastructure able to map national educational repositories and to run a native repository that will be directly improved by schools or by individuals. Specific quality criteria are required. The infrastructure includes both the metadata of the resources and a searching multilingual interface based on a multilingual thesaurus. INDIRE co-ordinated Working Group No. 5 for the construction of the ETB multilingual thesaurus in 9 languages, including Hebrew. Furthermore, the institution took part both in Working Group No. 4 on quality criteria, and in Working Group No. 6 on multilinguality and heterogeneity . In the first months of 2002, INDIRE finalised the revision and the input of all the planned language versions of the ETB thesaurus, published a “Recommended data model format to be used as a standard by national systems to include national/local resources” and took part in the technical work of conceptually mapping different indexing vocabularies with the ETB thesaurus.
-
Dotsafe project. The aim of the project is to audit what is available to raise awareness of Internet safety in schools, to develop new and adapted pilot materials and technical solutions in the field, to develop plans to make teachers and other audiences aware of the potential dangers of the Internet, to offer practical solutions to guarantee safe use of the Internet by Europe's young learners. During the first four months of 2002, INDIRE took part in the elaboration of the questionnaire for assessing web resources and organised an international Conference entitled: “Dotsafe: Internet sicuro per gli studenti = Dotsafe: safe Internet for school children”, which took place on May 27-28th , 2002.
-
EUN-CLE project- (Internet awareness programme).
The aim of the project is to create a multi-lingual international learning environment for young people aged 8 to 14, acceptable with different national educational approaches to Internet safety, thus improving learning opportunities, demonstrating the value of the Internet and helping to build eLearning in eEurope. INDIRE took part in the preparatory work for designing the site, by carrying out research and by collecting information.
- CELEBRATE project: a 30-month Information Society Technology project supported by the European Commission. The main task of this project is to create an innovative approach to teaching by using eLearning technologies, based on the outlook of what electronic contents (resources, services and communication tools) may be like in the future. The project will provide schools with an online content database that includes multimedia assets for learning – learning objects (LOs). LOs are conceived as modular units that can be assembled or re-assembled in different ways according to one’s learning approaches, interests or goals. INDIRE, being one of the partners in the project, took part in the preparatory work of setting up the project .
Furthermore, INDIRE has expressed its interest in two new or renewed projects:
- Network of Excellence (within the Sixth Framework Programme).
The project – still under discussion - aims at strengthening scientific and technological excellence on a specific research topic by networking European quality resources and expertise in order to become both a leader and a reference point. The related activities are expected to create durable integration of research capacities of the partners and to provide the opportunity of advancing knowledge in the field;
- Netdays 2002, an initiative of the European Union, founded in 1997, whose aim is to promote participation in activities, to facilitate the flow and the dissemination of information and to foster reflection on the educational use of Computer Networks as well as of Information and Communication Technology. Although it is addressed to all areas of education, special emphasis will be placed on the promotion of European Educational Projects that require the use of Internet, within the Socrates framework.
Interest was also expressed by INDIRE in the research that will be carried out on Mobile Learning within the Sixth Framework Programme.
Finally, INDIRE took part in the planning of the restyling of Comenius Space, the site of the European Commission for teachers and trainers who are active in COMENIUS projects and/or want to join.
Within the PERINE project, INDIRE carried out the following activities:
-
Translation of the PERINE questionnaire;
-
Creation of the mailing list of researchers in the field of education to whom to send the above questionnaire;
-
On-line extensive survey of the Italian institutions dealing with educational research;
-
On-line initial survey of web resources for educational research;
-
Contribution to the design of the PERINE logo.
Moreover, within an article concerning the contribute of INDIRE to the educational
research, the PERINE project was presented in a detailed way.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pedagogical and Educational Research Information Network for Europe
|
|
|
