TRAINING OF TRAINERS
Teachers’ training activity has been supported by other specific and preliminary actions necessary to an effective implementation of teachers’ training in itself. In this regard ‘training of trainers’ and ‘project awareness session’ took place since March 2010, while from September the teachers’ training has started with face-to-face sessions.
Specific details are highlighted below
First Session – Venice, 11th –13th March 2010
A first session of training of trainers was held at Cà Foscari University in Venice from 11th till 13th March 2010, managed by CIRDFA. This first session involved trainers coming from the University of Madeira (PT) and SEED, the Swiss project’s ‘silent partner’.
The participants were, for the University of Madeira: Luìsa Antùnes Paolinelli, Alcina Sousa, Aline Bazenga; for SEED: Chiara Bramani; for CIRDFA team: Umberto Margiotta (team leader), Alida Favaretto, Barbara Bevilacqua, Annalisa Zapperini, Juliana Raffaghelli.
The main training goals were:
Online Architecture
-To know the online architecture supporting communications among trainers in order to manage training processes and establish a joint strategy.
- To know the educational environment as space of collaborative learning among teachers
Teachers’ Education Programme
- To discuss and deepen on contents of teachers' training in order to reach consensus about the (Teachers) Education Programme: goals, contents, activities, methods.
- To take notice of best practices developed in school and other educational settings, about storytelling supported by new technologies.
- To share models, practices and values of trainers as stakeholders, taking into account every cultural/organizational perspective within teachers' education and testing of methods/practices.
- To analyze constructs and methods of evaluation in order to assess educational impact of Teachers' Training, and Testing of materials according to main project's goals.
Technical Skills within the context of Education Programme
- To explore Tools (I): the blog and its educational potential as learning environment
that supports storytelling processes
- To Explore Tools (II): the e-book and its educational potential as online content that encompass participatory learning processes.
- To Explore Tools (III): podcasting and its educational potential as online content that encompass participatory learning processes and allows further expression / sharing of
own creative work.
- To know and understand FLOSS applications in order to create multimedia contents
subsidiaries to blog and e-book.
Second Session – Venice, 7th June 2010
A second training for trainers session has been organised in Venice targeted at OCI’s trainers who is going to implement teachers’ training in Sicily. The session was held on the 7th of June 2010 at Cà Foscari University, managed by the CIRDFA team. The participants have been: Maura Tripi and … for OCI (Officina Creativa Interculturale); Juliana Raffaghelli and Alida Favaretto for CIRDFA
The meeting was dedicated to discuss and exchange experiences on teachers’ training and experimentation in schools in Palermo where Officina Creativa Interculturale is already implementing informal learning activities with children and their parents.
Third Session – London, 17th June 2010
A third training for trainers session has been hold in London on the 17th of June 2010, managed by CIRDFA of Cà Foscari University. The session was targeted at the Mosaic Art and Sound training (MAS) staff who will be the teachers trainers. The participants were: Paolo Cremona, Teresa Dello Monaco and Deborah Newbold (Storyteller) for MAS and Annalisa Zapperini for CIRDFA.
The first part of the meeting was dedicated to the discussion of the upcoming steps and activities to carry out and to implement for the future development of the P.IN.O.K.I.O. project, specifically:
- Introduction of the work and of the activities developed by The Mosaic Art And Sound and presentation of the general English school context with reference to schools with a large number of EAL (English as additional language) children which are more likely to need innovative tools to promote social inclusion. The quality framework of the experimentation phase was discussed;
- Presentation of the general architecture of the project with specificity of the various tools to be developed, analysis of best practices produced by the partners involved in Pinokio, showing concrete examples of their application in the classroom;
- Presentation of the virtual learning environment, developed with moodle and explanation of its philosophy, oriented to the "four leaf taxonomy" (the taxonomy combines the theory of social constructivism Bruner with the fundamental characteristic of distance learning of third generation, that is to say overcoming socio-cognitive distance);
- Considerations and discussion on the planning for delivery of teachers training;
Discussion and re-drafting of the first day foreseen for the teachers training in presence, in order to provide specific laboratory activities related to the use of tools. This change proposed in the start up of the teachers training is aimed to:
□ add more space to the workshop activity, which is considered very important to ensure a first set of activities that teachers should be making in the classroom;
□ motivate teachers over the use of tools;
□ provide a teaching pattern about practical teaching actions that can be worked out in class by teachers and promote knowledge of different tools required for specific applications;
The Mosaic Art And Sound suggested including in the teacher training two hours of simulation of practical activities on how to use fairy tales and their characters to promote the project’s key competences in the classroom. They consider this an essential part of the training, since teachers may want to have practical examples that would enable them to adapt fairy tales’ contents and story-lines in activities with children. The simple act of reading or telling the story to their pupils, or asking them drawings or mini-drama inspired to the narration, and transferring these into the project’s virtual space could not be appealing to the teachers, since they already use this pedagogical modality. Their training should entail more than just suggesting a theoretical frame and practical lessons on how to use moviemaker, podcast and e-book, as these can be learnt through online friendly users tutorials.
On the other hand, if we provide a theoretical frame accompanied by interesting new activities as examples that teacher may develop in a creative way and, in addition, we also provide training for the virtual space use, this can be a winning strategy, at least in the UK.
Therefore, The Mosaic suggests we include 10 different practical pedagogical activities in the Teacher’s Manual. For each activity we could describe: Aim, Process, Materials Required, Duration, Expected Outcomes.
The Mosaic will work with an expert storyteller, Ms. Deborah Newbold who has many years of experience of implementation of creative methodologies in primary schools, to create 3 P.IN.O.K.I.O. activities and would be pleased if other P.IN.O.K.I.O. partners would experiment and add other 7 activities. This would be a suggestion to be discussed.
During the afternoon session, Deborah Newbold reached the group. Debs, as already mentioned, will personally carry out the labs along with other The Mosaic staff and will support the project team in drawing the storyboards on which to build the laboratories.
The activities of the afternoon session were addressed to:
- Brainstorming for the realization of storyboards to be used during the first lesson (in presence) of the teacher training;
- Sharing of the methodological framework with the storyteller, aimed to clarify the interdependences between the activities to be developed by teachers with pupils and the subsequent digitization of the content produced;
- Discussion on the guidelines to achieve the handbooks for the educational program.
All sessions had the aim of presenting P.IN.O.K.I.O.’s activities and methodologies, in order to let the trainers to acquire a deepen knowledge about the project and the necessary skills in using P.IN.O.K.I.O’ s on line tools. In particular the training session were focused on the following main topics: Educational planning presentation, the working methodology within Virtual Educational Environment; P.IN.O.K.I.O. virtual tools and the schools-context; On line tools development and demonstration (blog, podcast, movie etc..); the Teachers’ Educational Programme etc...
