An Intermediate Evaluation Report of Netd@ Ys 1998 Experience

AN INTERMEDIATE EVALUATION REPORT OF NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCE

Presented to

European Commission

DGXXII

Submitted by

NetD@ys Evaluation Group

University of Helsinki (Kai Hakkarainen, Piialiisa Laine, Juha Syri, Matti Keltanen, Hanni Muukkonen, Lasse Lipponen, Marjaana Rahikainen, Liisa Ilomäki, Minna Lakkala)

and

University of Athens (Stella Vosniadou, Vasillios Kollias, Thanasis Mol)

March 1999

An Intermediate Report of Evaluating NetD@ys 1998 Experience

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CONTENT

1 INTRODUCTION 7

1.1 Educational impacts of ICT 8

1.2 Pedagogical Challenges of Using ICT in Education 9

2 METHODS AND RESEARCH MATERIAL 16

3 RESULTS: NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCES 18

3.1 Participation in NetD@ys Activities 18

3.2 Awareness Raising Activities 20

3.3 Facilitation of ICT Literacy 21

3.4 Facilitation of Social Collaboration 22

3.5 Connecting School with the Outside Community 23

3.6 Acquisition of Subject-Matter Knowledge 27

3.7 Publishing Students' Own Productions 28

3.8 Facilitation of Equality in Education 30

3.9 Knowledge of Other Cultures and Facilitation of European Identity 31

3.10 Categorisation of NetD@ys Project 33

4 RECOMMENDATIONS 34

4.1 Data collection procedure 34

4.2 Challenges in the Pedagogical Development of NetD@ys Activities 35


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SUMMARY

The purpose of the present report is to evaluate NetD@ys 1998 experience from pedagogical viewpoint. The evaluation process aims at assessing strengths and weaknesses of NetD@ys 1998 activities and using these experiences to facilitate school children's cognitive and social development in general and in-depth learning in particular by the means of online media in education across Europe in 1999. We evaluated NetD@ys 1998 by analysing the nature of its events and projects. The material analysed in this evaluation consisted of project descriptions of 121 projects as well as NetD@ys project reports and questionnaires sent to the project co-ordinators. Altogether, there was either the project report or questionnaire avail-able in 55.4% (67) of the cases; this appeared to provide sufficient information for purposes of the present evaluation task.

NetD@ys Europe 1998 was presumably the largest educational technology event in Europe. Approximately 35.000 schools participated in the project through organising various of activities. Approximately 500.000 connections were taken to the Internet site of NetD@ys 1988 (www.netdays.org). Approximately 1000 projects and 4000 events were organised across Europe; this is five times more than in 1997. According to the analysis, approximately 77% (f=93) of the projects focused on facilitating awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT in general and the Internet in particular. Many of these projects simultaneously were designed to facilitate students’ and teachers’ ICT literacy, national and international networking or acquisition of subject-matter knowledge.

According to the project co-ordinators’ assessment, the development of students' ICT literacy was facilitated in practically every NetD@ys project. Approximately 65% of projects helped students to learn to use email or search the Internet. A slightly smaller number of pro-jects assisted students in learning to make a web page. The percentage of projects in which students built software, such as a multimedia presentation, was only about 10%. Further, some projects trained students to participate in on-line chat as well as videoconferences. Learning to use ICT was not always the main focus of these projects but was often a by-product of participation in NetD@ys projects. In some of the projects, however, training of students' and teachers' ICT skills, as such, appeared to be an important goal. In the case of 40% (f=48) of the projects, intensive training sessions for teachers were organised. These training sessions focused on helping teachers to develop their ICT expertise and to learn to use the Internet in their teaching. About the same proportion of projects focused on fostering students' ICT skills (36%, f=44). The analysis indicated that the use of ICT was very motivat-ing for the students. Practically all project co-ordinators answering the questionnaire, re-ported that NetD@ys activities facilitated the students’ motivation for learning.

Over 60% (f=76) of the projects analysed mentioned national and/or European col-laboration as an important aspect of their projects. It is noticeable that only 15.7% (n=19) of the participating projects appeared to be designed to facilitate teacher networking. Further, only a portion of NetD@ys 1998 projects (24.8%, f=30) explicitly aimed at facilitation of collaborative learning between students, such as engagement in joint problem solving or in-quiry. Many projects mentioned different kinds of learning projects that were going to be or-ganised, but, as yet, one cannot determine whether these projects facilitate pedagogically valuable, social collaboration that would elicit in-depth learning.

An examination of the material revealed that there were a substantial number of pro-jects that focused on facilitating interaction between schools and the outside community. The analysis indicated that as many as 46 (38%) projects engaged in local community-building, i.e., focused on engaging parents and local organisations in an interactive process of discuss-ing and developing the school(s). Engagement of parents with introduction of ICT at school is very important condition for successful school development. Further, 41 projects focused on


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creating connections between schools and different kinds of expert communities. The projects promoted partnership between students and local enterprises, research institutions and cul-tural organisation with approximately same intensity. Some projects had simultaneous con-nections with all of the mentioned, expert cultures (business, research, and arts).

Many of the NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. In these projects, ICT was a tool of learning some subject-domain knowledge rather than a focus in itself. The NetD@ys activities appeared to facilitate students' learning and understanding of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in various processes: carrying out projects, participating in discussions and contests, searching information from the Internet and so on. The subject-matter areas included, for example, philosophy, science and mathematics, biology, history, social sciences, and art education.

It is psychologically and pedagogically very important to provide students opportuni-ties to publish their own productions by using the new means provided by ICT and the Inter-net. Examination of the study material indicated that publishing of the students' work in the Internet was involved in 45% (f=54) of the examined NetD@ys projects.

NetD@ys activities appeared to foster equality in education through offering young students from all of Europe an access to the new information and communication technology as well as engaging them in many kinds of activities that fostered not only development of ICT skills but also their own understanding of subject-matter knowledge, as explained above. Beyond this general support for equality in education, approximately 28% (f=34) of the sam-ple projects addressed one or another special issue concerning equality in education, such as participation of female students, disadvantaged or unemployed families or handicapped stu-dents.

Approximately a half of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating networking be-tween schools either nationally (27), nationally and the European level (25) or only at the European level (24). It is plausible to assume that the networking projects, in which the par-ticipating students got an opportunity to communicate with their peers from different coun-tries, facilitated understanding of cultural differences and provided knowledge of the other cultures. The interaction between students and teachers representing different countries fre-quently focused on exchanging information about different ways of living and varied cultural traditions and, therefore, facilitated students' knowledge of other cultures, differing values, and languages.

The NetD@ys projects analysed were classified in three groups by performing an ex-ploratory hierarchical cluster analysis through the most important variables analysed. The analysis indicated that 66 projects focused mainly on activities that facilitated awareness of the new educational possibilities provided by ICT as well as supported learning of ICT skills by teachers and the students. Many of these projects represented initial attempts at starting to use ICT in a specific educational environment. The most important activities included dem-onstrations concerning applications of ICT and workshops for teachers concerning possibili-ties of ICT.In many cases, the focus was clearly on teachers' professional development rather than students' learning. Further, 40 projects that focused on facilitating acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. In these projects ICT was clearly used as a tool of learning specific do-mains of knowledge rather that being the main focus of activities. An important aim of all of these projects was to publish student's own productions on the web. Although these projects were frequently involved with community building, they did not, however, emphasise net-working with expert cultures. Thus, it appears that, in many cases, studying of different do-mains of knowledge, and networking with expert communities were not integrated. Finally, a small group of projects (f=16) focused very strongly on creating connections with expert cul-tures, whether it was business, research or cultural community. These projects aimed at aris-


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ing awareness about the possibilities for student-expert partnership through organizing exem-plary videoconferences and other events in which students were able to interact with experts. In these cases, interaction with experts was usually connected with acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. Typical for these projects was also to foster in-depth learning through guiding the students to publish their productions in the Internet. Interestingly, also an empha-sis on social collaboration was more typical for these projects than for the other groups of projects.

Recommendations

From a research perspective, it would be of utmost importance to develop a struc-tured data-collection procedure that would support a longitudinal analysis of technology-supported learning in Europe. The NetD@ys event provides a good opportunity to follow up the development of educational use of ICT in European schools and other educational institu-tions. There should be an explicit, official requests for detailed descriptions of activities un-dertaken by students and teachers consequent upon their experiences on NetD@ys and other exposure to ICT. We recommend that procedures for data collection on NetD@ys events be explicitly developed in a way that would allow scientific assessment of the NetD@ys experi-ence. This may be conducted by creating a questionnaire or a standard form that projects ap-plying for EC funding would have to fill in when submitting their proposal and again at the time of reporting their results. This questionnaire would address the nature of the project in question, the underlying pedagogical and practical goals, and activities to be organised for attaining these goals.

In order to facilitate equality in education we have to ensure equal opportunity of ac-cess to ICT for all children in Europe. Therefore, it is important to disseminate NetD@ys ex-periences about the educational benefits of ICT, initiate new NetD@ys projects and encour-age new schools and educational institutions to start using ICT for educational purposes. The current NetD@ys practices appear to function very well in this area; from one year to another the quantity and quality of NetD@ys projects have been increasing.

Teachers have a very important role in guiding students to use ICT as a tool of learn-ing and thinking. They should be guided toward developing and testing new instructional practices that help to utilise ICT in fostering active, thoughtful, and self-regulated learning. Experiences of networking of teachers indicate that networking with other schools and teach-ers is much easier if there are continuous connections between the participants. This is also likely to produce more stable positive pedagogical effects. Therefore, it is very important to support continuous or permanent collaboration between schools, teachers, and students through NetD@ys activities nationally and at the European level. Teacher networking is very important because only a teacher who has learned to extend his or her pedagogical and intel-lectual resources though networked activities is able to understand the value of a networked student.

The preliminary examination of NetD@ys project indicates that even if networking with experts and networking between students and teachers was frequently involved, only a few NetD@ys projects acknowledged the pedagogical value of social collaboration. In many cases, collaboration appeared to support social corresponding more than joint problem solv-ing. Although international or cross-cultural social interaction is very important for its own sake and provides invaluable information about ways of living and thinking in different cul-tures, it would be profitable to guide international school networking towards teamwork and distributed problem-solving that characterise practices of modern work. This approach does not necessarily eliminate the current social interaction or correspondence but may enrich it by engaging participants in working jointly for attaining common cognitively-valuable learning goals.


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Students find the use of ICT very motivating. However, the degree to which initial interest will be maintained depends on the nature of the educational experiences that children receive within the new ICT environment. As a consequence, it is very important not only to focus on improving students' and teachers' technical skills but also to guide them to produc-tively use ICT as a tool of learning and teaching. The integration of ICT use with different domains of knowledge is especially important in the context of female students, who may not appear very interested in technology as such.

An important educational task is to build an extended community that brings together teachers, students, parents, local authorities, software developers, and universities. From this kind of networked community may emerge new cultures of working for transforming current educational practices and developing new applications of ICT that facilitate students' cogni-tive and social development. Especially, various kinds of student-experts partnerships prom-ise to provide new intellectual resources for human development. The competitiveness of European education appears to require that spontaneous and accidental student-expert connections be replaced by permanent structures that help students to authentically participate in expert cultures and corresponding practices of working with knowledge. The following questions emerged from our analysis:

• How could student-business partnerships be used to facilitate solving of authentic, meaningful real-world problems in their actual context?

• How may student-expert partnerships be transformed into permanent research pro-jects in which students set up and solve problems, and collect and analyse data with the help of scientific and other kind of experts?

• How we could help schools to find mentors (experts who are willing to work with school children) to help them solve the authentic, complex problems really being in-vestigated?

Most of the reported NetD@ys projects used on-line chat, videoconferences or virtual meetings to organise their collaboration. However, only a few projects used the new collabo-rative technology (e.g., computer-supported collaborative learning environments, groupware systems designed for educational use) that allows students and collaborating experts jointly to construct and share knowledge. Through disseminating the new collaborative technology and corresponding pedagogical practices, the organisers of NetD@ys would be able to promote new and fruitful practices of using the Internet in education.

One possibility would be to create a NetD@ys mentor database from which one could find an astronomer, molecular biologist, historian, sociologist or a philosopher willing to help students to solve problems that cannot be solved by using local intellectual and knowledge resources. European network structures that would support student-expert partner-ships in different domains of knowledge would significantly facilitate pedagogically produc-tive connections between schools and expert cultures. Further, new European projects should be initiated in which students and scientists collect data and solve problems together. Al-though we would like to emphasise the pedagogical significance of student-scientist partner-ship, facilitation of the development of students’ moral, aesthetic, and social development is equally important. Therefore, the proposed student-expert partnership should also concern students and writers, painters, musicians and so on.

In order to facilitate pedagogical development of NetD@ys projects, it would be profitable to set up a European award for innovative ICT-in-education projects. The award could have several series focused on different types of projects, such as innovative a) aware-ness rising activities, b) European educational networking initiatives, and c) practices of stu-dent-expert partnership.


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1 INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the present report is to evaluate NetD@ys 1998 experience from pedagogical

viewpoint. The dissemination of good pedagogical practices of using knowledge media is the special

focus of the evaluation part of the NetD@ys 1999 project. The evaluation process aims at assessing

strengths and weaknesses of NetD@ys 1998 activities and using these experiences to facilitate school

children's cognitive and social development in general and in-depth learning in particular by the means

of online media in education across Europe in 1999.

Educational systems in many countries are facing major challenges as a consequence of the

revolution of the new information and communication technologies (ICT). The new technology is

changing the environment of human activity in many ways. Our ways of working, studying, and col-

laborating are changing dramatically. There are changes occurring throughout the world which will

have long-term effects comparable to the major points in the history of human civilisation, such as the

agricultural revolution or the first industrial revolution (Keating, 1995; 1996). These challenges cannot

be met without restructuring the educational system.

One of the basic requirements for future education is to prepare learners for participation in an

information society in which knowledge is the most critical resource for social and economic devel-

opment and where distributed expertise and networked activities more and more characterise the

emerging types of work (Tabscott, 1996). Distributed expertise and collaborative processes are con-

nected with personal cognitive competencies and higher-level skills not formerly in general demand for

employment. Skills of independently searching, producing, and managing knowledge will be essential

for thriving in the emerging knowledge society. In the collaborative learning organisations of the fu-

ture, it will be necessary to be able to independently regulate one's own cognitive activity, to produc-

tively collaborate with the others, and to function within networks of experts. These challenges do not

only concern those aiming for professional or high-managerial positions. We argue that, in the future

society, middle levels of the workforce will be required to have basic technical, self-directing, and col-

laborative skills and, importantly, to have the capacity to continuously upgrade them. Every citizen

will need to be able to engage in education and professional development throughout his or her life.

Educational institutions are required to find appropriate pedagogical methods to cope with

these new challenges. In this development, new information and communication technologies (ICT),

properly taught and implemented, could play an important role. They could be used as tools to restruc-

ture learning-instruction processes in ways that facilitate the overall development of the students' skills

of collaborating and working productively with knowledge. Skills of using ICT include the ability to

solve increasingly complex problems in a variety of knowledge-rich domains, to participate in knowl-

edge work, and to engage in various networked activities. This evaluation project, undertaken at an


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intermediate point, examines a substantial body of evidence regarding the NetD@ys 99 projects which

indicates how European schools – their students and teachers – are beginning to answer these chal-

lenges.

1.1 Educational impacts of ICT

Cognitive research on technology-enriched learning environments indicates that the mere in-

troduction of ICT in education often leads to improved learning results. According to a recent meta-

analysis of educational impact of ICT based on hundreds of international studies, the use of ICT sig-

nificantly enhances learning outcomes (Lehtinen & Rouhelo, 1998). These studies indicate that the use

of ICT as such or the accompanying changes in practices of learning and instruction has a significant

positive effect on learning. Students are generally very motivated to work with the new technology.

Introduction of ICT is also likely to involve changed structures of classroom activities and an increase

in students' control over their own learning. Students engaged in technology-enriched learning are not

usually doing the same kinds of things in classrooms with ICT; they are involving themselves in many

different kinds of independent projects. These positive effects require working with computers over

extended periods of time. Further, such effects are present in all levels of education from elementary

to university level education. The best results have been obtained in science studies although there are

a many studies that indicate positive effects in humanities.

In order to obtain the above cognitive and pedagogical effects, certain basis conditions should

be met. It is necessary that a) teachers and students have access to the new technology; b) the schools

have an adequate network infrastructure and connections to the wide-area networks; c) teachers and

students have necessary technical skills to use ICT; and d) there is available suitable educational soft-

ware. Yet Vosniadou's (1997) assessment of EU schools is unsettling: "schools in Europe are poorly

and unequally equipped with computers. Few primary schools have access to wide-area networks,

which when they exist are hampered by the unavailability or high cost of telephone services, and by

the poor quantity and quality of the available information. In addition, there is only a small number of

good quality software for the education of young children. Last and most important, teachers are in-

adequately trained to use the technology. As a result they either avoid using computers or assimilate

the technology to current, mastery oriented educational practices with the result that much of the inno-

vation is lost." Although the situation may have somewhat improved in two years since Vosniadou's

study, many European countries do not meet the basic conditions of educationally meaningful use of

ICT.

The use of new medium and pedagogical tools creates enormous challenges in respect to

teachers' and students' expertise in using ICT as well as finding productive ways of learning through

using the on-line media. As Vosniadou (1997) argued, teachers have to change their instructional prac-


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tices significantly and become facilitators of students' learning activities rather than dispensers of in-

formation. In order to pedagogically utilise the new possibilities of ICT, the teachers need to know

how to guide students' active learning. Yet it is unlikely that an individual teacher can make much pro-

gress in his or her pedagogical practice without support of the whole pedagogical community of school

as well as national and European authorities (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997).

Surviving in the emerging knowledge society requires that each citizen be able to produc-

tively function in a high-tech environment. International reviews, however, indicate that there is a sig-

nificant gender difference in relation to the new technology; male students have frequently better ac-

cess to the new technology as well as more positive attitudes towards ICT. Nonetheless, recent studies

carried out in Finland indicate that this gender difference might be changing among younger genera-

tions of students (Hakkarainen, Ilomäki, Lipponen, Muukkonen, Rahikainen, Tuominen, & Lehtinen,

submitted a). The study indicates that female students were also frequently developing pre-requisites

for using ICT as a tool of learning, in particular, a positive disposition toward collaboration in thinking

and working. It was very encouraging that female students, especially younger ones, appeared to have

rather positive attitudes towards ICT in general and the use of ICT as a tool for learning in particular.

In establishing new resources for learning and development to support the female students' learning, it

is very important to integrate educational use of ICT with various subject domains and subsume the

use of ICT under overall pedagogical goals (Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 1997, Hakkarainen & Lippo-

nen, 1998). Thus far, however, ICT is mainly studied as a separate subject instead of used as tools for

solving subject-domain problems.

1.2 Pedagogical Challenges of Using ICT in Education

The introduction of new information and communication technologies in schools and other

educational levels promises to offer new opportunities to facilitate meaningful and in-depth learning.

Students using ICT develop their technical ICT skills, learn to search information and use extended

sources of information, and become very motivated. These general positive effects, of course, may be

pedagogically very valuable achievements and represent a significant improvement over traditional

practices of learning and instruction. Yet these effects do not, as such, facilitate advancement of the

students' deeper, principled and conceptual understanding. It is important to notice that ICT can be

used also as a new means towards traditional ends (see Salomon, 1997). Several cognitive researchers

(e.g., de Corte, 1993; Salomon, 1997; Salomon & Perkins, 1996) have pointed out that many current

applications of educational technology support only lower-level processing of knowledge, such as di-

rect transmission or copying of knowledge. For example, Salomon (1997) has commented on the point

of the opportunities afforded by the Internet:


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“At first glance it appears to afford everything a constructivist approach would wish to have: Multiple sources of information to draw from, a whole informa-tion world to explore, and an invitation to become an active, fully participating member of the larger, virtual, and diverse information society. The problem, though, is that it is too much of a good thing. Too many sources, too much in-formation, too many communication links, and too much excitement relative to the meager pedagogical rationale to justify the process of surfing this abun-dance for the purposes of learning.” (pp. 17-18)

It is possible, for instance, that students use the Internet only for the passive downloading of

information rather than doing in-depth processing of knowledge. Studies indicate that "surfing" the

Internet frequently encourages a student to bounce from link to another without any specific learning

goal. Sometimes free exploration of the Internet may be educationally useful and help a student to be-

come familiar with the virtual world. However, it should not be the only or most important activity.

Our experiences from Finnish schools suggest, for instance, that sometimes students engage in surfing

the Internet in order to avoid pursuit of cognitively more demanding learning tasks.

This may lead to what Salomon calls the butterfly Defect. The Butterfly Defect means that

students may learn to construct webs of knowledge in terms of the on-line media they use, e.g., casual,

associative, fragile webs. Furthermore, they are disposed to mentally "hop around" as they do with

multimedia. The problem is that the flood of randomly obtained information does not support devel-

opment of a coherent conceptual understanding. In order for ICT to have a real educational benefit, a

student should not only be a passive consumer of information while working on the Internet, but also

engage in critical thinking and gradually adopt a role of an active, as well as reflective, producer of

knowledge.

An important condition for productive educational use of ICT is to subsume the use of new

technology under pedagogical and cognitive goals rather than use ICT only for its own sake. In ad-

vanced pedagogical practices, the use of ICT and the Internet becomes an integrated part of the whole

curriculum, learning environment and the culture of learning. As such, technology is used for building

up social structures that encourage learning, for supporting reflective discourse, and for helping stu-

dents and teachers build knowledge as well as to deepen their understanding of the basic principles of

different domains. Cognitive research on technology-supported learning indicates that the following

principles and practices facilitate in-depth learning.

(A) Facilitation of Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning

Vosniadou (1997) argued that ICT can be used to create a learning environment rich in intel-

lectual activities that are enjoyable but also cognitively challenging, socially meaningful and culturally

relevant. New pedagogical models of using ICT in education promise to facilitate learning for under-


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standing through problem-based and inquiry learning. In such learning students are guided to ask and

answer questions, design and conduct investigations, search and explore information and data, generate

and evaluate explanations or interpretations, and report findings (Hakkarainen & Lipponen, 1998).

These kinds of activities encourage students to take responsibility of directing their own learning. In

that way, the students may not only improve their conceptual understanding of domain knowledge but

develop their skills of regulating their own processes of thinking and problem solving (metacognition)

as well. The emerging new models of technology-supported inquiry learning promise, with appropriate

institutional support and teacher facilitation, to elicit development of higher-level skills of knowledge

processing needed in the present, knowledge society.

(B) Facilitation of Social Collaboration

Cognitive research on educational practices strongly emphasises the significance of collabora-

tive learning in human cognitive and social development (see, for example, Brown, Ash, Ruherford,

Nakagawa, Gordon, & Campione, 1993; Norman 1993; Perkins 1993; Pea 1993). The emerging re-

search on collaborative learning involves the mutual engagement of participants in co-ordinated efforts

to build new knowledge and to solve problems together (Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O'Malley,

1996). Many cognitive problems that cannot be solved individually, can be addressed by combining

limited knowledge and skills of several students (Hatano & Inagaki, 1992; Miyake, 1986; Norman,

1993; Oatley, 1990; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). In a shared problem-solving process, students who

have partial but different information about the problem in question appear to improve their under-

standing through social interaction. Further, through social interaction, weaknesses and limitations of a

student's ideas are likely to be identified because such contact forces him or her to manipulate the ideas

from different points of view. From the standpoint of collaborative learning, diversity of cognitive

styles, heterogeneity of developing competencies, differences in experiences and knowledge, and mul-

tiplicity of interests are strengths rather than weaknesses; advancement of the whole learning commu-

nity may be fostered by capitalising on cognitive diversity through joint problem solving. A fundamen-

tal aspect of using ICT in education is to give users tools (e.g., groupware systems or distributed data-

bases) for sharing their process of solving problems and the knowledge they produce; as well, educa-

tional ICT should provide them with network tools for communication between themselves.

Although the scientific community has considered the principles of Computer-supported col-

laborative learning highly promising for the development of future learning environments, practising

teachers are often less informed about basic changes in how learning is conceptualised. In many cases,

the educators are still relying on the so-called solo-learning model and focus more on individual high-

achieving students than on facilitating the advancement of a whole learning community. For example,

in recent large survey studies, Finnish teachers did not, they reported, regard collaborative learning as

an important application of computers (Hakkarainen, Muukkonen, Lipponen, Ilomäki, Rahikainen, &

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234636337_Culture_of_Collaboration_in_Computer-Supported_Learning_A_Finnish_Perspective?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-0737ccd6-20f6-4174-91b3-b2fb240d11f0&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIyODk3ODI2MTtBUzoxMDE5MzYyODQwNDUzMTlAMTQwMTMxNDkxMjU1OQ==


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Lehtinen, submitted b).

(C) Participation in Expert Cultures

Managing complex and ill-defined problems and dealing with rapid change are becoming

more and more important in "survival" strategies for the future. Citizens, at present, are exposed to a

vastly increasing amount of information. Thus the traditional practices of learning and instruction,

based on routines and absorption of transmitted information, have become more and more problematic.

Traditional schools that focus on well-defined and partitioned problems do not appear to be able to

provide students the higher-level cognitive skills needed. Optimally, ICT will help students participate

in solving authentic, complex "real-life" problems. Students find such problems and activities both

intriguing and meaningful.

Solving of these kinds of problems with the help of teacher or adult experts, students develop

flexible mental processes, improve their ability to deal with uncertainty, and learn to adopt practices of

expert-like working with knowledge (see, for example, Vosniadou, 1997; Scardamalia, Bereiter, &

Lamon, 1994). Through ICT, the problems addressed at school may be better "anchored" to the mean-

ingful, complex problems outside school (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1997), in-

cluding those certainly to be encountered in a future workplace.

From cognitive research on educational practices have arisen various forms of student-expert

partnership for building connections between schools and varied kinds of expert cultures and commu-

nities. This kind of partnership is critical because higher-level cognitive competencies are developing

in a close interaction with expert cultures and through participating in "communities of practice" (Lave

& Wanger, 1991). A connection with an expert culture may help to understand the experts' ways of

solving problems and to approach tasks in their domain, adopt their tacit knowledge, and, generally,

learn to understand how experts think. Information networks and networked learning environments

allow one to bring various kinds of authentic expert knowledge to schools as well as mediate direct

student-expert communication. For example, such networks open classrooms to many kinds of ex-

tended sources of information in databases. Creating virtual communities of distributed expertise (stu-

dents-experts, teachers-experts, students-teacher-parents) enables multiple forms of engagement within

projects. A promising approach is to facilitate local community building, i.e., break the common place

boundaries of school through involving parents, local organisations, and associations into an extended

learning community.


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(D) Building Networks of Student Experts

Recently, there has emerged an approach to education that emphasises the importance of a

child's learning to adopt an expert-like role, and engage in a process of progressive problem solving in

a particular domain of knowledge. The metaphor of student-as-expert assumes that an ordinary student

can, to a significant extent, adopt some essential features of an expert role; specifically, he or she can

take on challenging problems and engage collaboratively, in extended processes of question-driven

inquiry. Indeed, many children may be regarded as "experts" insofar they have a rich body of accessi-

ble and usable domain knowledge. For example, Hakkarainen et al.'s (submitted a) study indicated that

a large number of the students, most of them males, mastered ICT and were able to take responsibility

for many kinds of expert tasks, such as maintenance of ICT at school or coaching their fellow students

or teachers. Adoption of an expert's role was closely connected with networking – being in contact

with other persons interested in the domain or with professionals. Considering the pedagogical goals of

the school, this expert functioning is very positive, and may also significantly facilitate development of

other academic skills. The fact that many students who are not experts in ICT were reportedly ready to

take on challenging problems indicates that educational use of ICT may encourage a larger number of

students to set themselves more ambitious learning goals.

The internet-based networked learning environments appear to facilitate students' forming

their own networks whenever there are common interests, similar problems to solve or shared interest

in a some domain of knowledge. These environments provide tools for interacting and collaborating

with other schools or public or private organisations nationally or across Europe. Direct international

interaction also provides new authentic means for multicultural education. This may help a student to

learn to understand cultural differences and facilitate emergence of a truly European identity. Although

network-mediated interaction between students is a valuable experience as such, from a pedagogical

perspective it is important to guide these networked activities to facilitate pursuit of learning goals

rather than just social correspondence. This may be conducted by supporting emergence of a network

of students interested in same subject domains or other areas of interests.

(E) Facilitation of In-Depth Learning Through Production of Knowledge

ICT provides teacher and students with very effective tools for working with knowledge and

making their productions accessible to a large audience through Internet publishing. These new oppor-

tunities to engage in active production of knowledge and make a real contribution to cultural knowl-

edge are pedagogically most valuable. Firstly, engagement in production of knowledge through writing

and visualisation, facilitates in-depth learning. Writing can be seen as the most important tool of think-

ing, and it has a crucial significance in explication and articulation of one's conceptions. It facilitates


14

transformation of knowledge and pushes a student to articulate his or her ideas more thoroughly. Vis-

ual presentation of one's thought and ideas has a corresponding effect on learning (Edelson, Pea, &

Gomez, 1996). By externalising one's thoughts and ideas through writing and visualisation, learners are

able to reduce the cognitive processing load and thus to solve problems that were otherwise completely

unattainable.

Practices of reading and writing determine, to a great extent, how effectively cognitive re-

sources provided by externalisation are used in education. However, according to Geisler's (1994)

analysis of recent studies on school writing, students are not usually required to write extensively at

school. The audience of writing is almost always the teacher, and the function of writing is most often

to demonstrate that students have understood texts in question and acquired desired knowledge. Stu-

dents are not encouraged to use writing for articulating their ideas in an extended way. Extensive think-

ing is not facilitated through writing assignments; such assignments do not usually require production

of more than one or two paragraphs. Presumably as a consequence of practices of writing at school,

students are generally not able to use knowledge in a reflective way in texts they produce.

On the basis of these considerations, it is very important to guide students to use ICT for pro-

duction of knowledge. In order to facilitate extensive and deep thought, writing, visualisation, and

other forms of knowledge production should be integrated with inquiry learning (see Bereiter & Scar-

damalia, 1991; Brown & Campione, 1996). Further, publishing of one's production on the Internet ap-

pears to change the psychological nature of knowledge productions; it may push a student to carry out

deeper investigations and achieve better results through forcing one to consider his or her productions

from the viewpoint of the possible audience. Producing of knowledge for a real audience is often also

a very motivating and rewarding experience.

The present report emphasises the importance of using ICT for facilitating collaborative in-

quiry learning. This may require a deep change in teachers' and students' conceptions of knowledge

and the pedagogical practices of school. In order to facilitate higher-level practices of inquiry in edu-

cation by the means of ICT, a substantial change in pedagogical practices and in the wider culture of

schooling is needed. This is, of course, a very difficult task. The culture of school learning cannot be

expected to change immediately; basic changes presuppose a long process of exploring and testing

varied cognitive and pedagogical practices, as well an invigorated, informed 'public will', embodied in

educational policy, to seek and foster change. On the basis of the above discussion, we suggest that

NetD@ys Europe has a strategic importance in development of the educational use of ICT. Through

awareness-raising activities, promoting national and European ICT projects as well as emergence of

many kinds of partnerships that facilitate advancement of European education with new technology,

NetD@ys promises to help to answer the future challenges of European education. In the following

sections of this intermediate evaluation, early results are set out based on evidence presently in hand;


15

these constitute a pedagogical assessment, in process, of NetD@ys Europe 1998 activities.


16

2 METHODS AND RESEARCH MATERIAL

We evaluated NetD@ys 1998 by analysing the nature of its events and projects. The evalua-

tion includes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the NetD@ys projects, participants, connections

between educational, cultural and business organisations, and public authorities. The present, interme-

diate, evaluation was carried out under severe time limitations; there was not enough time to gather

sufficient information about all projects. The material analysed in this evaluation consisted of the fol-

lowing sets of data:

• Project descriptions of 121 projects (these had been called 'sample projects' but will simply be referred to as 'projects,' below) funded by the EC. Some of the sample projects were so-called umbrella projects. At this point of time, however, we were not able to analyse the individual (sub)projects carried out within the umbrella projects.

• Project reports sent by the projects to the EC. Only 41.3% (f=50) of the funded projects re-turned the project reports early enough to be included in the present evaluation process.

• Questionnaires sent to the project co-ordinators (see Appendix 1). About 32% of projects an-swered the questionnaire in time to be included into the present, intermediate report (March 1999). The rest of the projects have received a letter encouraging them to answer the ques-tionnaire as soon as possible. The questionnaire was written in English, and some project co-ordinators asked to have the questionnaire also in French. We are currently working to pro-duce a French version of the questionnaire.

• A search of NetD@ys website through the Internet revealed approximately 250 associated projects that are going to be analysed in details for the final report. This material includes also information about approximately 50 Finnish NetD@ys projects obtained from the (Finnish) National Board of Education and Helsinki City Department of Education. However, several links are not active any more because preparation of NetD@ys 1999 started later than nor-mally. This material has been analysed qualitatively, and descriptions of some exceptional school projects are included into this report.

The present analysis was based on all material presently available from projects (March,

1999). Altogether, there was either the project report or questionnaire available in 57% (69) of the

cases. Only in a few cases did we have to change our initial interpretation of the nature of a project

deriving on the project description on the basis of project reports or questionnaire (although it was,

naturally, enriched). Thus, we have evidence that the material likely provided sufficient information

for purposes of the present evaluation task.

A forthcoming component of the evaluation is an analysis of the pedagogical value of the

Internet in education through an international review of research articles. The NetD@ys evaluation

group has searched databases of international research articles concerning the Internet and education

and found about 1149 articles. Of these articles, 100-200 will be selected for closer analysis. The re-

sults of the international literature research will be available in the fall of 1999 and included into the

final NetD@ys evaluation report.


17

A methodological limitation of the evaluation process was that detailed information was not

available concerning a) the actual learning processes which took place during NetD@ys activities, or

b) pedagogical effects of participation in NetD@ys. As a consequence, it was very difficult, for exam-

ple, to assess whether active or deep learning (e.g., problem-based, inquiry learning or other forms of

in-depth learning) was facilitated. Therefore, this report represents mainly an analysis of the distribu-

tion of various readily identifiable, pedagogical events involved in NetD@ys activities. Another prob-

lem is that there was no standardised format for submitting a project proposal or project report. As a

consequence, project descriptions and project reports vary a great deal; they do not always give consis-

tent information. Some reports focused exclusively on quantitative issues, such as the number of

schools and students involved in NetD@ys activities and did not provide sufficient pedagogical infor-

mation about actual events organised.


18

3 RESULTS: NETD@YS 1998 EXPERIENCES

3.1 Participation in NetD@ys Activities

NetD@ys Europe 1998 was presumably the largest educational technology event in Europe.

Approximately 35.000 schools participated in the project through organising various of activities. Ap-

proximately 500.000 connections were taken to the Internet site of NetD@ys 1988 (www.netdays.org).

Approximately 1000 projects and 4000 events were organised across Europe; this is five times more

than in 1997.

A summary of the frequency of NetD@ys projects in each European country is presented in

Table 1. As mentioned above, the evaluation of NetD@ys 1998 focused on an intensive analysis of

NetD@ys projects funded by the EC. It is noticeable that there were significant differences between

different countries for participation in NetD@ys activities. Austria (which was organising the

NetD@ys Europe 1998 event), was very active as well as France, Spain, and United Kingdom. Sweden

and Denmark, for example, were relatively more passive, although these countries have relatively well-

developed network infrastructure and ICT resources at school.

However, it should be noticed that in some countries, such as Finland, there were about 100

NetD@ys projects that functioned under two umbrella projects; these projects were not registered as

official NetD@ys projects. Similar practices was followed in some other countries so that the numbers

presented in Table 1 do not necessarily provide complete information about the intensity of national

NetD@ys activities.


19

Table 1. Number of NetD@ys 1998 Projects in European Countries

Sample projects Registered projects COUNTRY f % f % Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom

18 12 3 3 18 11 3 1 3 7 2 2 1 4 14 2 16

15.0 10.0 2.5 2.5 15.0 9.2 2.5 0.8 2.5 5.8 1.7 1.7 0.8 3.3 11.7 1.7 13.3

92 74 8 7 204 42 12 1 8 140 4 6 3 14 78 23 67

11.7 9.5 1.0 0.9 26.1 5.4 1.5 0.01 1.0 17.9 0.5 0.8 0.4 1.8 10.0 2.9 8.6

TOTAL 120 100.0 783 100.0

In Table 2 we present the types of organisations that were involved in organising NetD@ys

projects. From the table, one can infer that although educational institutions and school administration

had a dominant role in organising NetD@ys events, there were a large number of other kinds of or-

ganisations involved as well, such as cultural organisations (theatres, museums), scientific organisation

(research institutions, universities) or business organisations (firms usually working in the area of edu-

cational multimedia or network services).


20

Table 2. Types of Organisations Setting up NetD@ys Projects

EC funded Type of organisation f % Educational institution School administration Cultural organisation Scientific organisation Business organisation School network Other organisation

39 28 23 8 9 4 9

32.5 23.3 19.2 6.7 7.5 3.3 7.5

TOTAL 120 100.0

In this classification, municipal departments of education are considered to represent school

administration. Local authorities, such as the cities of Bologna, Helsinki, Milan, Vienna, Leeds, Stras-

bourg, Berlin, were particularly active in organising and promoting high-quality NetD@ys projects.

Other kinds of organisations included, for instance, hospitals.

3.2 Awareness Raising Activities

According to the analysis, approximately 77% (f=93) of the sample projects focused on facili-

tating awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities offered by ICT in general and the Internet in par-

ticular. Many of these projects simultaneously were designed to facilitate students’ and teachers’ ICT

literacy, national and international networking or acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. The follow-

ing categories of activities were organised:

In interpreting the above presented results, one should take into consideration that several

types of activities were frequently organised within a given project (up to four different activities were

taken into consideration in the analysis). As a consequence, the frequencies do not represent numbers

of projects but numbers of these events. In some cases, however, a much larger number of activities

was organised (up to 50), so that the table provides information about the general frequency distribu-

tion of types of activities (events).

Table 3. Typology of NetD@ys Events

TYPE OF EVENT f % Open doors (Media) Campaign Conference

24 14 19

11.1 6.5 8.8


21

Virtual visit or meeting Videoconference Workshop for teachers Exhibition Competition Other event

54 21 38 9

31 7

24.8 9.7

17.5 4.1

14.3 3.2

TOTAL 217 100.0

Note: the frequencies presented in the table do not correspond to actual numbers of projects because one and the same project may consist of several activities.

A majority of NetD@ys projects focused on activities that aimed at raising awareness of the

possibilities of ICT in education. Some of the projects were large-scale "ICT-promoting campaigns"

for the greater number of people. For example, the German city and district of Rosenheim was building

a Citizen network, which aimed to bring the Internet to people in all areas and from all sectors of soci-

ety. It launched a large-scale, well-attended information day on 17 October, which included a presen-

tation of the Rosenheim school server to the public and a showcasing of the schools' online projects.

There were 100 schools with, in all, about 70,000 students who had been invited to contribute to this

event.

An Italian project, "Scuola di libera navigazione", aimed to promote and encourage learning

throughout the population ranging from primary schools to senior citizens. The purpose was to learn

about the use of the Internet as an educational, information, professional, communication and cultural

tool, through a network of public and school libraries in Mugello Alto Mugello Val di Sieve. The net-

work consisted of the Interlibrary System, co-ordinated by Comunit Montana (16 town councils), in-

cluding 15 municipal libraries and 18 school libraries.

3.3 Facilitation of ICT Literacy

The questionnaire study indicated that according to the project co-ordinators' assessment, the

development of students' ICT literacy was facilitated in practically every NetD@ys project. An analy-

sis of projects that returned the questionnaire indicated that approximately 65% of projects helped stu-

dents to learn to use email or search the Internet. A slightly smaller number of projects assisted stu-

dents in learning to make a web page. The percentage of projects in which students built software, such

as a multimedia presentation, was only about 10%. Further, some projects trained students to partici-

pate in on-line chat as well as videoconferences.

Learning to use ICT was not always the main focus of these projects but was often a by-

product of participation in NetD@ys projects. In some of the projects, however, training of students'


22

and teachers' ICT skills, as such, appeared to be an important goal. In the case of 40% (f=48) of the

projects, intensive training sessions for teachers were organised. These training sessions focused on

helping teachers to develop their ICT expertise and to learn to use the Internet in their teaching. About

the same proportion of projects focused on fostering students' ICT skills (36%, f=44). Teacher educa-

tion was a special focus of NetD@ys 1998 event, and helped to create a basis for increasing the use of

ICT in European education as well as developing NetD@ys activities in the future.

The analysis indicated that the use of ICT was very motivating for the students. Practically all

project co-ordinators, that answered the questionnaire, reported that NetD@ys activities facilitated the

students’ motivation for learning. The following transcription illustrates the motivational effect of ICT:

“The students were highly motivated and felt that their contribution was important. In a cer-tain way they were more advanced that the teachers and archaeologists. Some of them sup-ported the technical training of the teachers. They liked to obtain full responsibility for the documentation of the workshop and to learn how handle cameras and how to make inter-views…”

Several projects (f= 44, 37%) focused on creating a technical infrastructure for using ICT and

the Internet in education. Approximately a half of these projects (f=25, 21%) aimed at creating a web

site. Some focused on building network infrastructure (9); others involved producing digital study ma-

terial (4), setting up a database for subject-domain knowledge (2), or creating new tools for helping

students and teachers to publish their productions on the Internet (4).

3.4 Facilitation of Social Collaboration

One of the most promising approaches to ICT in education is computer-supported collabora-

tive learning that guides students to work together to solve complex open-ended problems with the

help of new technology. Use of computers at school facilitates naturally collaborative activity; usually

there are only a few computers, and students and teachers have to use them together.

Simultaneously, the very nature of NetD@ys activities fosters collaboration between students.

Practically all schools engaged in collaborative preparation of NetD@ys activities within school facili-

ties. Approximately a quarter of the sample projects (f=30) mentioned importance of within-school

collaboration between students and teachers as a part of NetD@ys activities.

Further, almost 60% of the projects (f=71) mentioned national, European or international col-

laboration as an important aspect of their projects. Moreover, it should noted that the schools partici-

pating in NetD@ys activities have quite intensive European and international collaboration through

Comenius and other EC projects; thus many other projects are probably engaged in collaboration na-


23

tionally or internationally though it was not specifically reported.

Only a few NetD@ys 1998 projects, however, were explicitly designed to facilitate collabora-

tive learning between students, such as engagement in joint problem solving or inquiry. Many projects

mentioned different kinds of learning projects that were going to be organised, but, as yet, one cannot

determine whether these projects facilitate pedagogically valuable, social collaboration that would

elicit in-depth learning. Even in the case of the above mentioned 30 projects that engaged in within-

school collaboration, it is difficult to estimate to what extent collaborative learning was facilitated, in

contrast to mere social interaction or joint activity. It is remarkable that there was an equal larger num-

ber of projects (f=30) focused on organising competitions (such as, what is the best web page) than

collaboration between students (f=30). Of course, collaboration and competition are not mutually ex-

clusive activities; students frequently prepared, as a team, for competition. In any case, it might be

profitable to try to facilitate development of genuinely collaborative learning projects in the context of

NetD@ys.

It is noticeable that only 15.7% (n=19) of the participating projects were designed to facilitate

teacher networking. Nevertheless, there were excellent examples of teacher networking that facilitate,

for example, professional development in teachers' particular subject domains recognised in a school.

The Finnish TIETOBOXI network connects all teacher of handicraft in Finnish schools by the means

of the Internet and shared databases. That allows them to share new innovations and practices in an

exceptionally effective way. Presumably, the fact that teacher networking was not much emphasised in

NetD@ys may be due to the fact that many projects were initial attempts to introduce the Internet at

school, and practices of teacher networking have not had yet emerged. On the other hand, there are

other European initiatives (e.g., Comenius) that are more strongly focused on teacher networking. It

might be very productive to try to facilitate more intensive teacher networking through NetD@ys and

other corresponding activities in Europe.

In modern schools, the teachers' pedagogical community has a very significant role; a teacher

is a team worker, not an independent practitioner. Frequently, the most innovative pedagogical ideas

and best solutions emerge from the common visions, discussions and efforts of the whole teaching

community rather than from one individual's creativity. A good example of this team approach was

found in Vesala lower secondary school, Helsinki. Their NetD@ys project aimed to help all teachers

get a first experience of using the Internet with students. The teachers organised workshops for all

students. In every workshop, an experienced teacher worked together with a less experienced one, and

they were jointly responsible for their workshop.

3.5 Connecting School with the Outside Community


24

An examination of the material revealed that there were a substantial number of projects that

focused on facilitating interaction between schools and the outside community. The analysis indicated

that as many as 47 (38%) projects engaged in local community- building, i.e., focused on engaging

parents and local organisations in an interactive process of discussing and developing the school(s).

Engagement of parents with introduction of ICT at school is very important condition for successful

school development. The following transcription of a project co-ordinator’s response illustrates impor-

tance of local community building:

"It is sometimes observed that parents exert pressure against the introduction of the Internet into the classroom because of prejudices and misconceptions or treat efforts in this direction with indifference. This is especially problematic, since parents and the wider public are typi-cally called on, financially and politically, to support innovations which are vital to the reali-sation of school projects involving the Internet. Our project, by extending the target group to the wider public, can play a significant role in the realization of innovative initiatives, [and] provides a basis for a future activities in the field."

A part of community building is to break the traditional boundaries of educational institutions

and create connections between schools and the local community. A good example of this kind of ac-

tivity was "Public Lessons" project organised by HTBLuVA St. Pölten. Sectors involved in the project

were schools, firms, banks, shops and public in general. Lessons, which are normally held in class-

rooms, were presented to the public, and companies offered their rooms, which made teaching outside

the schools possible. The main aim was to inform public (and pupils) about the Internet. Also partici-

pating pupils got acquainted with the Internet as a modern teaching method; they learned its limits as

they observed the difficulties in using the Internet experienced by the public and gave advice about the

Internet's educational possibilities. In every school day, 8 lessons took place in different business firms

in St. Pölten and Krems. Different subjects (Geography, English) were taught by using the Internet, to

enable interested people to watch the forms of modern teaching practice. In addition to the normal

teacher, a specially trained teacher answered questions and presented material without interfering with

the normal lesson. The firms also showed a great deal of interest.

Further, 41 projects focused on creating connections between schools and different kinds of

expert communities. The projects promoted partnership between students and local enterprises, re-

search institutions and cultural organisation with approximately same intensity. Some projects had

simultaneous connections with all of the mentioned, expert cultures (business, research, and arts). Ta-

ble 4 presents a frequency distribution, by project, of different types of student-expert activities in-

volved in NetD@ys 1998 events.

Table 4. Networking with Expert Cultures

Type of networking f %


25

Local community building Networking with business communities Networking with research communities Networking with cultural community Other kind of networking (e.g., politicians)

47 24 21 21 2

40.9 20.9 18.3 18.3 1.6

TOTAL 115 100.0

Note: one project may simultaneously engage in all of these forms of networking; hence these frequen-cies do not represent the frequency of individual projects.

A significant percentage of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating collaboration between

schools and business enterprises (firms) and cultural organisations. An example of this kind of pro-

jects is the HauD@ys 98 project of the Haukkala Secondary School, Finland. During the project week,

pupils of the Haukkala School trained in practical skills needed in using the Internet (paying bills etc.,

bank services) and learned to search information on web shops, consumer's rights and bank services.

The school had many visitors from co-operating organisations (Finnish business banks, the telecom-

munication company, local newspapers) and educational institutions (vocational schools) during the

week. Courses and workshops with these partners were arranged. Responses from the students were

positive; they thought that it was useful and fascinating to network with business communities.

An internet-based co-operation between schools of different types and museums, archaeolo-

gists and other cultural organisations was facilitated in the German project: "The Heuneburg − a Celtic

hillfort on the upper Danube". All participating groups of students were introduced to the history of the

Heuneburg, one of the best excavated and most extensively studied late Hallstatt period hill forts in

western Europe, situated on the upper Danube. Each group worked on specific subjects. For example,

some students wrote about an invented journey from the Heuneburg to Athens around 500 BC. Others

experimented in Celtic religion, and so on. All of the student groups were supported by experts via the

Internet. Project planners arranged a workshop and the Internet chat with teachers, people from the

Heuneburg museum and the interested public.

Another type of collaboration between the school and the outside community was organised

in the project: "Superhighway Patrol Europe" (UK). Police officers and school advisers jointly organ-

ised a one-day crime-solving event for school on the Internet. Schools registered in advance and re-

ceived a pack of classroom materials; students became "detectives" for a day. They received a stream

of information about a crime by e-mail and sent back questions to real police officers. After the event

an Internet forum will be set up for discussion of attitudes to the crime and how different countries

treat offenders.

Out of 21 projects in which research communities were reported to have been somehow in-

volved, 16 focused on facilitating learning of subject-domain knowledge (e.g., science, history). This


26

kind of approach is pedagogically very valuable. International cognitive research on ICT in education

strongly emphasises the importance of connecting scientific experts representing different domains of

knowledge with learning communities; it is spoken of as "student-scientist partnership".

An excellent example of networking between schools and research communities is Net-

Science 98 project initiated by Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Vienna. Through

NetD@ys activities the project aimed to bridge the traditional gap which separates girls from physics

and technology. Online chats, video-conferencing and distance learning were used to bring together

female scientists and students, discussing themes in physics and technology. Activities undertaken

included

• A chat-line for discussing the role of female scientists;

• Videoconferencing that allowed a virtual visit to a research laboratory;

• A pilot project on distance learning that connects schools and universities;

• A presentation of students' achievements through a competition organised by the Austrian Physical Society.

• A one-day workshop to explore the possibilities of using the Internet in science teaching.

The NetScience 98 project appears to improve the quality of science teaching; it addressed

equality in education through encouraging female students' to participate in studying science and to

engage in ICT-related activities; it helped to build a basis for genuine student-scientist partnership.

Another excellent example of projects focused on learning science was Softciências project

organised by Centro de Competência Nónio, Portugal. The objective of the project was to make public

and private institutions, parents, pupils, and teachers aware of the pedagogical value of the use of the

Internet in the learning of science. The project included a contest, the "Internet Scavenger Hunt" de-

signed to facilitate learning in children of all ages. The students had to search information about sci-

ence and scientists from the Internet either individually or as a team, and answer a set of questions.

Participating in this activity, nation-wide, were 37 schools and 504 students with the support of 73

teachers. The project also included an opportunity for students to follow and participate in real-time

debates of scientists about the theme "The Internet and Science" (mathematics, physics and chemistry).


27

Further, practically all project co-ordinators that answered the questionnaire indicated that the

collaboration between the school and the outside community provides a basis for joint activities in the

future. When asked whether NetD@ys collaboration would lead to joint activities in the future, one

project co-ordinator responded,

"It does, for sure. The NetD@ys is more than a week for us. The computer firms have seen their sales increased since that week, and they are looking forward to co-operating with us in new projects. We also have the support of these experts in our daily activities. Cultural asso-ciations have seen in our pages to show their activities to the world. Our students have had the opportunity of joining different projects to increase their knowledge of new technologies. And our partners in other countries know much better our activities and interests."

3.6 Acquisition of Subject-Matter Knowledge

Many of the NetD@ys projects (f=58) appeared to facilitate acquisition of subject-matter

knowledge. In many of these projects, ICT was a tool of learning some subject-domain knowledge

rather than a focus in itself. The NetD@ys activities appeared to facilitate students' learning and under-

standing of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in various processes: carrying out projects,

participating in discussions and contests, searching information from the Internet and so on. Projects

focused on various subject-matter areas including

• Philosophy (1 project) (Hôtel Philosophique was organised for the second time through col-laboration between a selected group of forty children, four famous philosophers--from Bel-gium, United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Austria--and business partners from Belgium. One afternoon of NetD@ys took place at The Cybertheater in Brussels. The topics of the dis-cussions were prepared beforehand and included overpopulation of the world, the most diffi-cult question anyone can ask, and the kinds of questions that philosophers had pondered when they themselves were young. The discussion was presented live at the www-site for this occa-sion (http://www.kidcity.be/hotel) and translation for the audience was provided. Any other pre-registered classes from Europe could also participate in the discussion at the web-site. More than 140 written comments were registered.

• History (6) (for example, in an Internet-based co-operation project between German schools and museums, the students were introduced to the history of the Heuneburg, the most exten-sively studied of the late Hallstatt period (~600-400 BC) hill forts in Western Europe.)

• Media education (4) (for example, the European Television Centre (ECTC) invited young-sters from all over Europe to discuss television programs with representatives from audio-visual industry. They had the chance to use innovative multimedia applications and work on the development of the "Audio-visual Forum For Youth" network.)

• Physics (7) (for example, in an international "Space-visual observation"-project the objective was to learn more about space and science through unique experiences observing the night sky (iridium satellites) and reporting the observations on the Internet.)

• Biology (9) (for example, an Irish wildlife competition-project invited primary school stu-dents to enter up to three competitions based on Irish wild mammals and birds; also environ-mental issues were studied in several projects.)


28

• Language studies (2) (for example, the Europe Speaks Latin project, organised by Bundes-gymnasium (Wien) aimed to get acquainted with other European Latin schools' ways of learn-ing the Latin language, and //create// post common learning material to the Internet.)

• Arts (7) (for example, an Italian I.C.S. contest invited participants to look for texts taken from Italian and European literature or to work out new scientific or science fiction texts; a French project "L´Art moderne sur le net" aimed to introduce young people to modern art; it invited them to actively create, in order to show them the place of modern art in today’s society.)

• Social Sciences (16) A school in Iceland (and its partner school in USA) worked to create a drug-prevention web site. The pupils published articles on the web site and also the results of e-mail interviews with people who had specialist knowledge of drug problems and of drug-use prevention.

Several other topics were also investigated in the NetD@ys 98 projects. There were several projects

dealing with specific issues relevant for multicultural education (e.g., human rights, racism, peace, re-

ligion, European identity, see section 3.9). Some of the projects specifically addressed the students'

writing and reading skills and literacy (see, for example, the Fahrenheit 451 project, below). Some pro-

jects focused, simultaneously, on several subject domains.

It is difficult to assess these projects from a pedagogical viewpoint because not enough infor-

mation was provided in the project descriptions. Yet it appears that NetD@ys activities facilitated stu-

dents' learning and understanding of subject-matter knowledge by engaging them in processes in which

they had to carry out projects, participate in discussions, search information from the Internet and pro-

duce a research report or some other kind of written document.

3.7 Publishing Students' Own Productions

As mentioned in the introduction of this report, it is psychologically and pedagogically very

important to provide students opportunities to publish their own productions by using the new means

provided by ICT and the Internet. Examination of the study material indicated that publishing of the

students' work in the Internet was involved in 45% (f=54) of the examined NetD@ys projects. Some of

the projects provided technical education for assisting students and teachers in publishing of their

work, such as learning to make a web page. Some other projects focused on creating tools that would

make it easier to publish one's productions on the Internet.

In the most of the projects, publication in certain formats occurred; pupils prepared web pages

describing, for instance, their school projects, communicative activities (correspondence with other

schools) and various NetD@ys events. In some of the projects, however, much more attention was paid

to the publication. For example, in the ELETA (European Legends and Tales) project of the Laukaa

Comprehensive School, Finland, publishing the Web magazine ELETA was the major objective. Pu-

pils wrote articles about the tales and traditions in Finland; the aim was to exchange collected and


29

translated tales with other countries so that pupils could consider the differences and similarities in the

folklore. A www-magazine was also published by the Koli Primary School, Finland, with the topic

"our local area". All the articles designed and written by the pupils were made with a "professional

attitude" and in co-operation with pupils' parents. The issue to follow would cover history, science and

everyday subjects with a European perspective.

An excellent example of a project that guided students to use writing as a tool of thinking is

the Fahrenheit 451 project organised by the Municipality of Bologna (co-ordination, financial monitor-

ing) together with the secondary school "Il Guercino"(implementation of the project's activities) and

the N. Ginzburg public library (publishing). The main aims of the project were to demonstrate the

pedagogical value of the Internet and to emphasise the European dimension. Launched by the Guercino

school in June ´98, the telematic competition consisted in having schoolchildren read and write a re-

view on a story book chosen from a list of titles selected by an important children's literature professor,

in order to stimulate their reading, writing, synthesis and literary criticism skills. A total number of 180

students, from 14 schools, joined the initiative by sending their reviews to designated e-mail addresses.

The reviews were collected in a publication "Collection of reviews elaborated by young readers". Dur-

ing the NetD@ys-week, a multi-point videoconference took place between the schools in Italy, UK and

Sweden. A topic of discussion was violence within towns and schools (bullying). During the NetD@ys

week, the Guercino School was open to students, parents and operators who were invited to visit the

school and its PC lab. Direct communications were promoted between students and teachers participat-

ing in the project. The work of the project also elicited new instructional innovations, which provide a

good basis for, continued development of practices of learning and instruction. Traditional cultural

activities, such as reading and the development of human relationships, were stimulated by the

NetD@ys 98 project. These goals were satisfactorily reached according to the report of the school

principal, Mrs. Elviana Amati:

"The initiatives provoked great interest, and many of the students and teachers from the coun-tries involved took an active part. Direct communications between school-aged contemporar-ies and school staff were created, and the participants became united in a European dimen-sion by the new technologies. The work of the projects also activated new teaching ideas which have great potential for development in the coming years. One of the positive results of the experience has been the way it has brought together the professional commitment of peo-ple working in different fields towards a common objective, thus enriching the educational possibilities proposed, and at the same time raising the standards"

Pictorial material also was published in the Internet. The East Pori Middle School, Finland,

posted a Human Rights Mini Gallery site in the web, and encouraged students world-wide to create

120 x 120 pixel gifs or jpqs to illustrate solidarity and concern for one's fellow human beings. Next

year the students of the East Pori are going to create an animation by using all the Mini Gallery mate-

rial acquired. In Germany, a game with pictures, ideas and clichés around the figure of the social

worker/social educator was in turn launched by the project, "What kind of social worker am I?" The

project co-ordinators invited people to send scanned pictures of their images of "social workers", and


30

promised to publish all original, funny pictures and texts in their gallery of Types of Social Workers.

The material examined does not allow precise determination as to whether all students or only

a sample of high-achieving students got an opportunity to publish their productions. Such opportunity

varied from one project to another due to practical constraints, limitations of writing and computer

skills and so on. From a pedagogical viewpoint it is, in any case, very important to guide all students,

regardless of their educational achievement, to use writing and visualisation as tools of thinking, and

engage in the process of knowledge production (active, reflective pursuit of knowledge) with the help

of new technology. Correspondingly, it is very important to help each student to contribute to publish-

ing knowledge produced by the learning community, perhaps with the help of his or her more skilful

peers. Although publishing selections of the best productions might encourage some students to pro-

duce higher quality of work, it does not sufficiently support the learning for all persons in the commu-

nity.

3.8 Facilitation of Equality in Education

NetD@ys activities appeared to foster equality in education through offering young students

from all of Europe an access to the new information and communication technology as well as engag-

ing them in many kinds of activities that fostered not only development of ICT skills but also their own

understanding of subject-matter knowledge, as explained above. Beyond this general support for equal-

ity in education, approximately 28% (f=34) of the sample projects addressed one or another special

issue concerning equality in education:

• Some of the projects focused on facilitating equality in education through supporting equal participation of female and male students in ICT related activities. (For example, in order to counteract the gender gap in the use of new information and communication technology, a GirlsNet-project (Germany) was launched for girls aged 12-16. The project supported ICT training for girls and the creation of special information and communication awards for them; girls were invited to create websites, pictures, and essays about the Internet and how girls can use it. Selected presentations were awarded a prize).

• Several projects helped students from socio-economically-disadvantaged homes to get access to ICT. (For example, the aim of the WIPE-Project (Widening Participation in Education, UK) was to train economically and socially excluded young people in the use of the Internet. Training sessions in accessing the Internet, creating web pages and using e-mail were held for youth workers and young people, and communication by e-mail with other youth centres and EU partners was encouraged. In the Metro Project (Making Employment The Real Objective, Germany) young socially disadvantaged people were helped to gain skills in ICT in order to improve their chances of getting jobs and to enhance their social lives. Discussion forums on particular themes were set up, and electronic newspapers were produced.

• Some awareness-raising projects that concerned whole socially disadvantaged areas were also designed. A large awareness-raising project "What can the Internet do for us?" (UK) was ar-ranged for citizens of the former mining-town of Barnsley, which is considered an economi-cally disadvantaged area. A key issue was that of fostering in the children of Barnsley, and the


31

wider public, a desire to use the new technologies. The objective of the project was to give people reason for using the Internet and to identify, in relevant local terms, the possible bene-fits. Awareness-raising events and family workshops were also set up in 20 schools in disad-vantaged areas (Norfolk Family learning programme, UK) to raise families' awareness of edu-cational opportunities offered by the Internet.

• The functional and vocational training centre of Nanteau-sur-Lunain (CRPF), France, offered workshops (conducted by educators and trainees) for disabled young workers and long-term unemployed persons engaged in a return-to-work process. The workshops provided an intro-duction to the Internet and its major applications and demonstrations of the potential use and educational applications related to guidance, training and vocational integration. A conference on "The Internet and professional training" invited also other professionals and partners of the CRPF to the training centre.

• Some of the projects sought to facilitate equality through promoting participation of disabled people. (For example, pupils with physical disabilities were encouraged to connect to each other through a telematic network [the SOLAS project, Ireland]. The project aimed to reduce isolation and address educational needs specific to this group. In the NetdaysVOICE-project (Italy), in turn, voice-to-text recognition systems for automatic subtitling of school lessons for the deaf was demonstrated. Handicap International's L’Enfants À L’Enfant L'Hôpital project fostered engagement of hospitalised children, who are excluded from the school environment and normal life, as well as of disabled people. The aim of this project was to offer, via the Internet and access to the world network, new prospects for the delivery of text and audio-visual information to hospitalised children and disabled persons. This comprises offering sick children, who are excluded from the school environment and normal life, a window to the world. It also permits disabled persons to benefit from new training opportunities via the Internet.

The innovative projects mentioned here represent, of course, only a small sample of projects

that fostered equality in education in various ways. The ingenious projects that emerged through

NetD@ys Europe promise to break many traditional boundaries between socially, culturally or physi-

cally disadvantaged persons and the rest of the population, provide new perspectives for economically

disadvantaged areas, and truly democratise access of all Europeans to resources for intellectual growth.

3.9 Knowledge of Other Cultures and Facilitation of European Identity

Approximately a half of NetD@ys projects focused on facilitating networking between

schools either only nationally (27), nationally and at the European level (25) or only internationally

(24). The result analysis indicated that 45 projects did not include neither national nor international

networking. Those projects in which networking activities were not involved differed in nature from

the networking projects: Many of the former projects focused on awareness-raising and concerned

promoting educational use ICT in one school or other educational institution. However, it is likely that

some of these projects also included networking activities even if it was not particularly emphasised in

their project description or NetD@ys activities.

One third of the networking projects elicited national connections between schools, and two-

thirds involved European or international networking. It is plausible to assume that the latter projects,


32

in which the participating students got an opportunity to communicate with their peers from different

countries, facilitated understanding of cultural differences and provided knowledge of the other cul-

tures. The interaction between students and teachers representing different countries frequently focused

on exchanging information about different ways of living and varied cultural traditions and, therefore,

facilitated students' knowledge of other cultures, differing values, and languages.

Some of the NetD@ys 1998 projects aimed to provide multicultural education through net-

worked activities. There were 36 projects (30%) that were more or less explicitly focused on facilitat-

ing multicultural education or European identity. In many cases the projects had a more concrete

theme or topic, and European identity was facilitated through working with that topic. Some of the

projects focused on European languages (e.g., English as a second language) or some specific histori-

cal issue (e.g., the holocaust). The European community, its history, heritage, environment ("Euro-

green project") and the unity of European children were topics addressed in projects.

Although European identity was the main topic only in a few projects, communication be-

tween students and teachers representing various European countries, presumably also facilitated the

development of European identity. It is plausible that the networking activities, in addition, fostered

sensitivity towards other cultures. Some of the projects focused on facilitating the knowledge of other

cultures/European identity through providing knowledge of traditions, values and ways of thinking of

other cultures. Several projects addressed problems of racism and helped students to understand cul-

tural differences and respect the multiplicity of the European cultural heritage and environment.

"Youth online - teleschool" project (Germany) was a media project in Berlin offering Internet

courses to young people. One of the primary objectives of such a course was to use new media to con-

nect young people representing different cultures and nationalities, especially German and Turkish

young persons from the district of Kreutzberg. The intention was to help them learn about the Internet

and, simultaneously, to improve cross-cultural understanding. Turkish associations were actively in-

volved in organising the courses, which included lessons in multimedia and ICT.


33

3.10 Categorisation of NetD@ys Project

A hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted in order to examine whether the projects could

be so classified into categories. The variables used in the analysis and results of the cluster analysis are

presented in Table 5. The analysis served mainly exploratory purposes and should not be taken as, in

any way, definitive. The present results should be taken with caution because we did not get detailed

enough information about each project. Nevertheless, the categorization appears to provide a rough

estimation of types of projects carried out during NetD@ys 1998.

Table 5. Categories of NetD@ys Projects

Variable Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Awareness raising Networking with enterprises Networking with research communities Networking with cultural communities Publishing students’ work Acquiring subject-matter knowledge Social collaboration Teacher training (ICT) Students’ ICT literacy

1.97 1.08 1.05 1.21 1.06 1.20 1.12 1.61 1.55

1,44 1.03 1.18 1.15 1.64 1.82 1.23 1.08 1.10

1.75 1.81 1.56 1.75 1.94 1.88 1.81 1.34 1.25

Number of projects 66 39 16

Cluster 1 (Awareness raising activities): The analysis indicated that there were 66 projects

focused mainly on activities that facilitated awareness of the new educational possibilities provided by

ICT as well as supported learning of ICT skills by teachers and the students. In some cases, these pro-

jects included local community building as well as networking with business communities. Many of

these projects represented initial attempts at starting to use ICT in a specific educational environment.

The most important activities included demonstrations concerning applications of ICT and workshops

for teachers concerning possibilities of ICT.

In many cases, the focus was clearly on teachers' professional development rather than stu-

dents' learning. As a consequence, these networking activities did not yet appear to affect the content

of curriculum or provide authentic problems to solve; such activities helped the school community to

get access to advanced technological resources, such as video links and to obtain support for the devel-

opment of schools' network infrastructure linking them to various technological resources. These pro-

jects did not usually focus on publishing of students' work or learning of subject-matter knowledge.

Nevertheless, various NetD@ys activities undertaken probably also facilitated learning of content

knowledge (the topics being pursued) as well as provided skills needed in publishing one's productions


34

on the Internet.

Cluster 2 (Facilitation of subject-matter learning): Further, the analysis indicated that there

were 40 projects that focused on facilitating acquisition of subject-matter knowledge. In these projects

ICT was clearly used as a tool of learning specific domains of knowledge rather that being the main

focus of activities. An important aim of all of these projects was to publish student's own productions

on the web. Although these projects were frequently involved with community building, they did not,

however, emphasise networking with expert cultures. Thus, it appears that, in many cases, studying of

different domains of knowledge, and networking with expert communities were not integrated.

Cluster 3 (Participation in Expert Communities): Some projects (f=16) focused very

strongly on creating connections with expert cultures, whether it was business, research or cultural

community. These projects aimed at arising awareness about the possibilities for student-expert part-

nership through organizing exemplary videoconferences and other events in which students were able

to interact with experts. In these cases, interaction with experts was usually connected with acquisition

of subject-matter knowledge. Typical for these projects was also to foster in-depth learning through

guiding the students to publish their productions in the Internet. Interestingly, also social collaboration

was more typical for these projects than for the other groups of projects.

From the pedagogical perspective, this variability of NetD@ys projects is a strength rather

than weakness. Through organising a large variety of projects, NetD@ys Europe may support educa-

tionally meaningful use of ICT in a manner congruent with varied technological resources, network

infrastructure and teacher training; such use may also support culturally specific approaches to learning

and instruction. However, in order to effectively utilise European-wide pedagogical resources,

NetD@ys activities should help projects to develop from initial awareness-raising activities to more

focused undertakings that help students to adopt advanced skills of knowledge production needed in

the future.

4 RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1 Data collection procedure

NetD@ys is the most important European-wide educational event, to date, concerning ICT in

education. The scope of the NetD@ys initiative has been growing rapidly from one year to the next.

From a research perspective, it would be of utmost importance to develop a structured data- collection

procedure that would support a longitudinal analysis of technology-supported learning in Europe. The

NetD@ys event provides a good opportunity to follow up the development of educational use of ICT


35

in European schools and other educational institutions.

The existing NetD@ys tradition could be used to gather more systematic information

concerning how the educational use of ICT develops from one year to another. There should be an

explicit, official requests for detailed descriptions of activities undertaken by students and teachers

consequent upon their experiences on NetD@ys and other exposure to ICT. On the basis of these kinds

of considerations, we recommend that procedures for data collection on NetD@ys events be explicitly

developed in a way that would allow scientific assessment of the NetD@ys experience. Components

and phases of a procedure for developing a more rigorous assessment and evaluation process for

NetD@ys are as follows:

• Creating a questionnaire or a standard form that projects applying for EC funding would have to fill in when submitting their proposal and again at the time of reporting their re-sults. This questionnaire would address the nature of the project in question, the underly-ing pedagogical and practical goals, and activities to be organised for attaining these goals. If properly constructed, this kind of data collection procedure would also provide more detailed information about actual pedagogical processes going on during NetD@ys. There should be a follow-up form for activities continuing in the months after NetD@ys. The mere existence of the form could facilitate pedagogically meaningful use of ICT though guiding the participants to think of their projects from pedagogical viewpoint. This data collection procedure would provide information about development of goals and practices of using ICT in learning and instruction process as well as emerging net-works of schools and extended learning communities supported by enterprises, research institutions or cultural organisations.

• Optionally, it would be advisable to start collecting data during NetD@ys about students' and teachers' skills and practices of using ICT, their practices of learning and instruction as well as the educational and pedagogical impact of NetD@ys events. This kind of background information would help to properly assess the genuine pedagogical advan-tages of ICT in general and NetD@ys in particular. One is concerned with the acquisition of in depth, principled knowledge; thus, in addition to inferential evidence gathered in macrostudies of activities, considered generically, there is a crucial need, in NetD@ys re-search in selected locations, for microstudies of students thinking, discussing, and col-laboratively using ICT.

4.2 Challenges in the Pedagogical Development of NetD@ys Activities

The analysis revealed that there were substantial differences between NetD@ys projects in the

use of ICT. Some projects aimed clearly at using ICT for attaining pedagogical goals while the others

focused on raising initial awareness of the new pedagogical possibilities of ICT. While developing

NetD@ys practices, it is essential to take the varying stages of ICT projects in European countries into

consideration. In order to be successful, NetD@ys activities need to adequately facilitate development

of each type of project. In order to facilitate equality in education we have to ensure equal opportunity

of access to ICT for all children in Europe. Therefore, it is important to disseminate NetD@ys experi-

ences about the educational benefits of ICT, initiate new NetD@ys projects and encourage new

schools and educational institutions to start using ICT for educational purposes. The current NetD@ys


36

practices appear to function very well in this area; from one year to another the quantity and quality of

NetD@ys projects have been increasing.

Students find the use of ICT very motivating. However, the degree to which initial interest

will be maintained depends on the nature of the educational experiences that children receive within

the new ICT environment (Vosniadou, 1997). As a consequence, it is very important not only to focus

on improving students' and teachers' technical skills but also to guide them to productively use ICT as

a tool of learning and teaching. The integration of ICT use with different domains of knowledge is es-

pecially important in the context of female students, who may not appear very interested in technology

as such (Hakkarainen et al., 1998). Thus, it appears to be necessary to help to transform the aware-

ness-raising projects towards the pursuit, through ICT, of subject-matter studies.

Teachers have a very important role in guiding students to use ICT as a tool of learning and

thinking. They should be guided toward developing and testing new instructional practices that help to

utilise ICT in fostering active, thoughtful, and self-regulated learning. In order to "survive" in the

emerging knowledge society, the students should be encouraged to take responsibility of and control

over their own learning process. From a pedagogical viewpoint, it is important to design NetD@ys

projects that facilitate active learning through encouraging students to ask questions, carry out investi-

gations as well as take control of their own learning. The ICT provides new tools for school children

functioning as active builders of knowledge and engaging in expert-like processing of knowledge.

Adoption of these kinds of higher-level skills appears to be even more important for the future infor-

mation society than mastery of subject-matter knowledge as such.

Experiences of networking of teachers indicate that networking with other schools and teach-

ers is much easier if there are continuous connections between the participants. This is also likely to

produce more stable positive pedagogical effects. Therefore, it is very important to support continuous

or permanent collaboration between schools, teachers, and students through NetD@ys activities na-

tionally and at the European level. Teacher networking is very important because only a teacher who

has learned to extend his or her pedagogical and intellectual resources though networked activities is

able to understand the value of a networked student. A good example of a working teacher network can

be found from Espoo (Finland). A group of 12 elementary schools worked several years developing

new ways of using ICT in education and relied on intensive mutual networking. The schools built a

www-based journal and formed discussion groups. As a product of the collaboration, there emerged a

new virtual learning environment, MATILDA, for teaching literature. This environment supports both

students’ discussions and publication of their literature reviews that can be searched on the system's

database. In the course of the projects, the teachers have been developing their expertise through net-

working with experts, such as writers or researchers. MATILDA facilitates teacher collaboration by

providing a communal calendar of joint activities and helping participants them to share good instruc-


37

tional practices.

A further question is how one could help European communities of learning to transform and

restructure the current practices of learning and instruction in a way that elicits development of higher-

level cognitive competencies needed in the emerging knowledge society. Toward this end, it is impor-

tant to facilitate emergence of good practices of using ICT in education through disseminating the best

NetD@ys practices. NetD@ys is, of course, only one activity among many kinds of other initiatives

that are designed to increase competitiveness of European education. Further, NetD@ys concerns only

one week's intensive activity in a year (although it may include supporting activities that extend across

several weeks or months). Even if NetD@ys, therefore, represents very limited resources, it is impor-

tant to use those resources as wisely as possible. From this viewpoint it is crucial to support pedagogi-

cally well-grounded NetD@ys projects that facilitate development of students' cognitive and collabora-

tive skills.

The preliminary examination of NetD@ys project indicates that while several projects fos-

tered student-expert interaction, there were only a few projects that emphasised the pedagogical impor-

tance of computer-supported collaborative learning. Even if networking with experts and networking

between students and teachers was frequently involved, only a few NetD@ys projects acknowledged

the pedagogical value of social collaboration. Although many projects included national or interna-

tional collaboration, there were only a few projects fostering collaborative solving of problems. In

many cases, collaboration appeared to support social corresponding more than joint problem solving.

Although international or cross- cultural social interaction is very important for its own sake

and provides invaluable information about ways of living and thinking in different cultures, it would be

profitable to guide international school networking towards teamwork and distributed problem-solving

that characterise practices of modern work. This approach does not necessarily eliminate the current

social interaction or correspondence but may enrich it by engaging participants in working jointly for

attaining common cognitively-valuable learning goals.

An important educational task is to build an extended community that brings together teach-

ers, students, parents, local authorities, software developers, and universities. From this kind of net-

worked community may emerge new cultures of working for transforming current educational prac-

tices and developing new applications of ICT that facilitate students' cognitive and social development

(Vosniadou, 1997). Especially, various kinds of student-experts partnerships promise to provide new

intellectual resources for human development. The competitiveness of European education appears to

require that spontaneous and accidental student-expert connections be replaced by permanent struc-

tures that help students to authentically participate in expert cultures and corresponding practices of

working with knowledge (see Lave & Wanger, 1991). The material analysed did not always allow


38

specific determination of the actual pedagogical value of student-expert connections. In many cases,

these connections appeared merely to represent first attempts to connect expert cultures with schools

using the new technology. The following questions emerged from our analysis:

• How could student-business partnerships be used to facilitate solving of authentic, meaningful real-world problems in their actual context?

• How may student-scientist partnerships be transformed into permanent research pro-jects in which students set up and solve problems, and collect and analyse data with the help of scientific experts?

• How we could help schools to find mentors (experts who are willing to work with school children) to help them solve the authentic, complex problems really being investi-gated?

Most of the reported NetD@ys projects used on-line chat, videoconferences or virtual meet-

ings to organise their collaboration. However, only a few projects used the new collaborative technol-

ogy (e.g., computer-supported collaborative learning environments, groupware systems designed for

educational use) that allows students and collaborating experts jointly to construct and share knowl-

edge. Through disseminating the new collaborative technology and corresponding pedagogical prac-

tices, the organisers of NetD@ys would be able to promote new and fruitful practices of using the

Internet in education. Facilitation of the educational use of collaborative technology would foster joint

problem-solving and research projects with students and experts. Videoconferences, however, require

extensive co-ordinating efforts and do not necessarily facilitate in-depth pursuit of inquiry.

An asynchronous interaction mediated by distributed databases, in contrast, may facilitate

more reflective and active communication on the part of the students, and also help them to get expert

support not only in a short period of time (1-2 hours) but during a whole study project. One possibility

would be to work to create a NetD@ys mentor database from which one could find an astronomer,

molecular biologist, historian, sociologist or a philosopher willing to help students to solve problems

that cannot be solved by using local intellectual and knowledge resources. European network structures

that would support student-expert partnerships in different domains of knowledge would significantly

facilitate pedagogically productive connections between schools and expert cultures. Further, new

European projects should be initiated in which students and scientists collect data and solve problems

together.

Although we would like to emphasise the pedagogical significance of student-scientist part-

nership, facilitation of the development of students’ moral, aesthetic or artistic, and social development

is equally important. Therefore, the proposed student-expert partnership should also concern students

and writers, painters, musicians and so on. From psychological perspective, an actual contact with a

working expert may significantly affect on a student’s thinking and practices, helping him or her to

commit on a more progressive problem solving or other kind of in-depth learning.


39

Good experiences have been obtained from telementoring, i.e., expert mentoring of school

children's study projects that relies on asynchronous e-mail connections (Lento, O'Neill, & Gomez,

1998). An interesting aspect of practices of telementoring developed in the context of the CoVis pro-

ject (Edelson, Pea, & Gomez, 1996), is creation of a mentor database that helps a project to find a suit-

able mentor for them. A well-matched telementor could help students to focus their study projects by

using his or her professional knowledge. In many cases the mentor could help students to obtain and

process data that would not otherwise be available. Telementors have been successfully recruited from

local companies and government agencies. In this, one could capitalise on existing relations between

the school and community. Telementors do not need to be professors; masters' or doctoral students

may do well enough. Further, the database contains a routing mechanism that allows the telementors

to send their e-mail directly to the whole group of students. It would be profitable to examine possi-

bilities of constructing corresponding mentor databases in national and European NetD@ys projects in

order to facilitate in-depth learning.

In order to facilitate pedagogical development of NetD@ys projects, it would be profitable to

set up a European award for innovative ICT-in-education project. The award could have several series

focused on different type of project, such innovative a) awareness rising activities, b) European educa-

tional networking initiatives, and c) practices of student-expert partnership.

Simultaneously with acknowledging the results of mainstream psychological and educational

research regarding technology-supported learning, it is important to be sensitive to cultural differences

in practices or in learning and teaching that may affect how the new technology is used at schools in

particular countries or regions thereof. Some of the culturally specific factors may, for instance, sup-

port adoption of collaborative learning or more active, inquiring learning; some of these factors may

necessitate considerable modification of new pedagogical models to national or other specific circum-

stances (Hakkarainen, Järvelä, Lipponen, & Lehtinen, 1998). As a consequence, it is vital to initiate

national and European research and development projects in which the emerging new models of teach-

ing and learning are carefully examined, and new forms of learning and instructing developed and

tested.


40

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APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE USED TO EVALUATE NETD@YS 1998 PROJECTS

Dear Sir or Madam,

The University of Helsinki is currently preparing a profound evaluation of the NetD@ys Europe 1998 in collaboration with the Helsinki City Department of Education (the coordinator of NetD@ys 1999). The purpose of this questionnaire is to obtain information on your Netd@ys project. This information is valuable for the evaluation of Netd@ys '98 experience as well as for the planning of Netd@ys Europe 1999. We kindly ask you to return the questionnaire no latter that 11th of March 1999 by using electronic mail (email: [email protected] or [email protected]).

In the case that your project consisted of several clearly independent projects (and your project was so call “umbrella” project), we would like to ask you to forward this questionnaire to the project coordina-tors, and ask them to fill in the questionnaire, and return it to the NetD@ys evaluation group at the University of Helsinki (email: [email protected]). In addition, we would be very happy if you could send us the list of project coordinators in question so that we could directly correspond with them.

Further, we would like to ask you to send us all information that you have about your project in the electronic form. We are particularly interested in material that would provide us information about the nature of pedagogical activities carried out during NetD@ys Europe 1998.

You can fill in the questionnaire either by using the enclosed “text-only” version of the questionnaire or the attached form (in rich text format).

We are looking forward to receive your response, and we hope that this evaluation process would help us to organise very successful NetD@ys event during 1999.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Kai Hakkarainen, Ph.D.

Information Technology Center for Schools & Department of Psychology University of Helsinki P.O. Box 13 SF-00014 University of Helsinki Email: [email protected] Tel (mobile): +358-50-5634248 Tel: +358-9-19123772 Fax: +358-9-19123443


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INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR ORGANISATION

Name of organisation _____________________________________________

Country _______________________________________________________

Please, indicate what kind of organisation you represent

a) Educational institution b) School administration c) Cultural organisation (e.g. opera, museum) d) Research organisation (e.g. university, research institution)) e) Business organisation (e.g. industry, company) f) Other, please, specify ____________________________

Please indicate what is the main purpose of your organisation a) providing basic education b) providing vocational education c) providing higher education d) promoting cultural activities e) publishing digital information f) providing Internet services g) administering schools and educational system h) providing teacher training and education i) building school networks j) providing continuing education (informal education, lifelong learning) k) other, please, specify ___________________________

A) DID YOUR PROJECT SUPPORT ICT LITERACY? Yes No

How was ICT literacy facilitated during the project? - a) Learning to communicate through email - b) Learning to search/use the Internet - c) Learning to make a webpage - d) Learning to build software - e) Other, please specify __________________________


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B) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE STUDENTS’ ACTIVE LEARNING?

Yes No

Please, indicate/explain how students’ active learning was facilitated through your project

C) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE SOCIAL COLLABORATION?

Yes No

Please, indicate whether 1) the collaboration was facilitated between - a) students and students; - b) students and teachers; - c) teachers and teachers

Please, indicate whether 2) collaboration was facilitated - a) within school or - b) between schools nationally, - c) between schools at the European level, - d) between schools internationally

Please, explain how your project facilitated collaboration

D) DID YOUR PROJECT HELP THE SCHOOL TO CONNECT WITH THE OUTSIDE COMMUNITY Yes No

Please, specify what kind of connection were involved - a) schools and parents, - b) schools and enterprises, - c) schools and scientific communities, - d) schools and cultural organisations

- Please, explain what kind of activities were organised

- Please, indicate how these activities facilitate students’ learning and motivation.

- Do you think that this collaboration between the school and the outside community provides a basis for joint activities in the future?


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D) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE ACQUIRING OF SUBJECT-MATTER KNOWLEDGE Yes No What kind of themes or topics your project focused on?

Please, indicate how the NetD@ys activities facilitated students’ learning and understanding of subject matter knowledge

F) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE EQUALITY IN EDUCATION? Yes No Please, explain how your project supported equality in education (e.g., an equal participation of female and male students or high and low achieving students)

G) DID YOUR PROJECT FACILITATE STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION FOR LEARNING? Yes No

Please, indicate how your project facilitated students’ motivation for learning.


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H) DID YOUR PROJECT PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLISHING STUDENTS’ OWN PRODUCTIONS? Yes No

Please, specify what kinds of productions were published and how many students got an opportunity to publish their work.

I) DID YOUR PROJECT FOSTERED KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER CULTURES AND/OR EUROPEAN IDENTITY? Yes No

Please indicate how knowledge of other cultures/European identity was facilitated (for example, did it provide knowledge of other cultures, values, languages, or cultivated sensitivity towards other cul-tures?)

Documents

An Intermediate Evaluation Report of Netd@ Ys 1998 Experience