Teachers endorse software to integrate ICT use in classroom

The Specialised Animated Interacted Learning (SAIL) project, the ICT-based educational tool for the planning, delivery and assessment of teaching in primary schools, is being extended till next year, despite the fact that its term of funding from the European Commission expired in April.

Antoine Gambin, projects coordinator at MetisEducation, an educational-based institution which carries out projects in the field of education, and Michelle Caruana Dingli, academic coordinator at MetisEducation and lecturer in English at the Junior College, said they received positive and encouraging feedback from teachers, who showed significant interest in integrating the software into their lesson plans, and from children, who continued to use the software even at home.

"The teachers, whose ICT training varied according to which school they were teaching in, have responded well because they learnt with the children, some of whom are already very knowledgeable in computers." Ms Caruana-Dingli said. "They took the project seriously and even met on Fridays after school hours to talk about the outcome of using the software with the children, and to share their own experience with other teachers from other schools and therefore from different backgrounds and situations."

"ICT has become a part of everyday use, such as at school and at the workplace. It has become a lifelong skill," Ms Caruana-Dingli said. "If you let children experiment with computers, they achieve confidence in the tool very quickly, and in fact we also got positive feedback from them. Collaborative training continued after school hours - some children even practised using the software from each other's homes."

The project, which received funding under the Socrates Minerva Action, started off from research carried out in schools by the coordinators and a number of teachers, who participated in the International Conference on IT and Education in September 2002 at the SAS Radisson Bay Point Resort (www.metiseducation.org/maltaconference/default.html) which formed part of the SAIL project, and put together the software package.

It was thought that ICT would revolutionise the manner of teaching, yet substantial progress was still required to actually integrate ICT within classroom practice.

In 2002, a two-year pilot-project for teachers to help them integrate ICT tools in class through a software package that could be integrated into lesson plans and existing curricula, while making children more independent and more aware of what makes them learn, was introduced in five primary schools targeting children aged nine to 11 - De La Salle, Little Angel in Balzan, Stella Maris in Balzan, Lija Primary School and Birkirkara Primary School B.

The software - which includes information about cross-border cultural diversities of European minority groups through text, video clips and other materials compiled from the internet and through Dutch partners Haagse Hogeschool, the Hague - is a freeware package available to schools and teacher training institutions interested or specialised in new teaching practices. It is available from the project's website www.studentlearningcentre.org.

The pilot activities were carried out in two phases - first an exercise in collaborative learning and, second, the same exercise using ICT tools - giving teachers and students two opportunities to participate in two diverse exercises.

The coordinators also organised seminars and dissemination activities to make sure that the benefits of research and reflection on this new classroom environment reach potential teachers and institutions in the most effective manner.

The software also enables the teacher to bring the classroom together to build projects thus facilitating the integration of all the students despite their different learning abilities. It also left space for the students to work on their own, allowing the teacher space and time to look after the students at work and assess their personalities and preferred learning processes.

Mr Gambin said that an agreement with Keyworld was recently concluded to support the project till December 2006. "Keyworld will be hosting websites from which the software can be downloaded, thus disseminating the product to as many beneficiaries as possible.

"The project is now on a self-sustaining basis and we are welcoming cultural and heritage entities who wish to include educational information in the software package, which will be made available to an increased number of schools".

Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna have taken up this exercise and are therefore preparing materials for teachers to use in project work in class.

Research on the integration of ICT tools in the classroom, including research undertaken by Ms Caruana-Dingli for her Ph.D. on how teachers react to receiving training through a constructivist approach using ICT, as well as contributions by the teachers, will be published shortly.