Category Archives: DLAB

Student digital leaders in Denmark, a case study.

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What happens if the sea level rises?

Seminarieskolen, Denmark, Dlab year 3.

To begin the process, the students received a letter addressed to the whole class.

Desperate for help, people from the future had sent a letter back in time to them. The world was flooded, and they had nowhere to live, so it was up to the students to find housing solutions for them that they could use in the future.

Over the years, the European borders had blurred and new languages had been created, so the letter needed deciphering.

Til menneskene fra fortiden.

We hebben dringend jullie hulp nodig.

Vi skriver til dere fra fremtiden, hvor vi nå mister landet vårt på grunn av overforsvømmelser.

The sea levels are rising rapidly, and with every day that goes by, more and more of it goes underwater.

Snart vil hele verden være tabt ligesom Atlantis. Help ons uit te zoeken hoe we in deze waterwereld kunnen leven.

Vi trenger hjelp av dere for å finne ut hvor vi skal starte.

What would you do if you were in our place?

Hjælp!

Fremtidsbeboerne.

 

Once the code was cracked, the students had a brief understanding on the theme of the day.

“How would we live if the sea level rises?”

Development stage

After the brain storm, the students started sketching houses that could be built on or under water. The students collected resources and began building their houses.

While building, the students tested their houses in a water tank.

During the whole process, the teachers tweeted, so the students could see what the students in the other countries were doing.

We wanted the students to be innovative, but realistic. So we had to consider giving the students limited resources, or working with more unlimited resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deliverance stage

Green screening.

 

When the houses were finished, the students took photos of their houses on a green background and uploaded them to a Padlet.

As a background, they chose a video of the sea and then exported the videos to IMovie and included explanations and text.

The final results were videos showing how houses from different countries could be combined in a future world that is flooded.

The students then received another letter from the future, thanking them as they had survived the flooding thanks to the housing designs the students had produced. But the people from the future now had other problems as to their everyday lives. They now needed ideas for clothing, food, entertainment, travel and water in conjunction with their new life on water.

So the students had the task of designing and producing products to help with these problems.

Digital leadership reflections from Belgium

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DLAB: STEM to STEAM – a must for every teacher who wants to truly educate our future generation

As a teacher trainee at Howest (Belgium) I consider it to be my main task to keep innovating myself.

This is exactly what Digital Learning Across Boundaries has offered me. When my lecturer presented me with the possibility to be part of this wonderful project I didn’t hesitate.

Math is my subject and I have always felt as if it could use a new approach, one that is completely out of the box. I hoped the A in STEAM (arts) could offer me exactly that.

Digital playdate: Bruges

In October, the partners from other countries came to visit Bruges to make arrangements for the upcoming year.

During this week we interacted with a lot of different speakers and came up with the main themes of the projectdays. These were: ‘losing a sense’, ‘moving to space’ and ‘changing size’.

The days were set and an plan of approach was created. I also got familiar with eTwinning, an international, digital platform to share ideas and projects and met some wonderful people during this week.

Project days

As I am still a student and part of the younger generation, digital development comes naturally to me. Though I must say that DLAB has really taught me new ways of using digital tools in my lessons.

During the project days (where pupils interact across boundaries) we have used a variety of digital tools such as greenscreen editing, virtual reality and apps to use in the classroom. With a Tweet beam and organized skype sessions between classes, it really felt like the future was here.

The pupils were engaged and got familiar with brainstorming, designing, problem-solving thinking and much more. Furthermore, the learners had to use English to express their thoughts to classes from other countries.

The concept of STEM evolved to the next level: pupils got introduced to writers and artists and combined art with science and math. STEAM had arrived! Spaceships were being build, visual illusions were created and the pupils had a lot of fun while learning.

Exchange to Denmark

With the projectdays behind us, all students, teachers and lecturers came together in Denmark to create courses for other schools and teachers ready to use.

Our experiences and created tools were constructed into a MOOC. In this template (which can be found on www.dlaberasmus.eu) there are detailed instructions on how to set up your own project day!

I can only advise to look this up and try and set up a project day using STEAM. I feel this experience has made me a stronger teacher-of-the-future and formed new concepts in my head I didn’t know where possible before. A must for every student and teacher who wants to truly educate our future generation.

Digital leadership in action DLAB Y3 Day 1

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DLaB International Day 1

The Digital Learning across Boundaries Erasmus+ project held its first International Day of this year on the theme of sustainable cities and language learning.

The University of Northampton are working with Northampton International Academy and Castle Academy, alongside partner schools in Norway, Belgium and Denmark.

You can see a video of us designing and making sustainable cities made by ITT student Charlotte Bennett here.

Student digital leaders worked with university lecturers, teachers and pupils to explore our theme: sustainable cities. 

Digital leadership in action DLAB Y3 Day 2

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The DLaB Erasmus+ project held its second international day of this academic year, based on exploring language and communication within the sustainable cities of the future theme.

Classes at Northampton International Academy and Castle Primary worked with partner classes in Norway, Denmark and Belgium to think about the questions, ‘What if we lost our language?’ and ‘What if you were new to our city?’.

They created a range of outputs, such as phrasebooks in a hybrid language combining Flemish and English, invented sign language sentences, public poetry, migrant testimonies, city signage, city guides, and eBooks documenting their work.

Charlotte Bennett, one of our digital leaders made a film of the day which you can view here.

Brussels students present their digital leadership experiences

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On 8 May 2019, Howest student Tibo Desoete and international coordinator Frederik De Laere presented the DLAB project in the Future Classroom Lab in Brussels, on an eTwinning event for teacher trainers.

They gave an overview of the project, showed a lot of materials that have been developed and talked about the way of planning and communicating, the digital playdates and the training-learning events and about how eTwinning is integrated in DLAB.

After the presentation, the participants showed a lot of interest and all agreed that DLAB is a great example of project based and innovative teaching and learning.

A DLAB digital leader explains her role.

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In January 2017, I became a volunteer digital leader at my university for a project called DLaB (Digital Learning Across Boundaries). The purpose of this project is to promote digital learning across the boundaries of physical spaces, across curriculum subjects and across languages and cultures, to facilitate collaborative learning across national boundaries.

As part of the 3-year project, in the 2nd year of the project we focused on STEM to STEAM, adding the Arts to the integrated study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths creating challenge-based online learning resources. I wanted to be involved in this project as I wanted to encourage more girls to get involved in STEAM as well as encourage teachers, parents and children to get more involved in STEAM too.

I took an active role in helping promote new STEAM activities as well as helped run STEAM based activities. This included coming up with some new STEAM activities to be placed on the DLaB website as well as participating in some Skype calls involving those countries involved with the project to share our ideas.

As part of the England Team, I visited Bruges in October 2017, where we worked together with teachers, students and lecturers from Norway, Denmark and Belgium to help learn new ideas of STEAM based activities as well as help plan what activities we would complete on our international collaboration days at our partnership schools to help support the making of the MOOC. As part of the experiencing team, I helped plan the experiencing space lesson which we thoroughly enjoyed coming up with ideas and were looking forward to seeing them in action.

I helped with two of our international collaboration days. The first collaboration day focused on size where I helped with a Year 5 class, making large butterflies which the pupils thoroughly enjoyed doing.

In the second international collaboration day, it was based on space, which was based on my group’s planning from Bruges. The pupils focused on how they would transport items from Earth to the new planet. They then decorated their own planets and used VR headsets to feel like they were on their very own planet which the pupils thoroughly enjoyed and shared their experiences with pupils from Belgium through Skype.

 

Furthermore, I helped with a STEAM event where teachers from Northamptonshire came to the university to share their ideas based on STEM/ STEAM and learn some new activities to. I helped to teach some teachers how to use drones which was good fun.

In addition, with some teachers and students from my university course, we helped at the Big Bang Event at Silverstone. We carried out a marshmallow catapult challenge which was very popular. The children in groups constructed a small catapult using marshmallows and then tried to fire the Marshmallows from the catapult into the bucket. I also ran the activity at the Girlguiding Anglia Ready 4 Take Off STEM event on the 17th March 2018 where there were around 500 leaders trying out a range of STEM activities.

Evaluating my practical project, I now have a greater understanding of what STEAM is and what activities I could carry out. I have learnt a range of STEAM based activities from a range of people and as well collaborating with people to come up with shared ideas.

 

I have met my aims as I have been able to spread awareness about STEAM awareness especially from feedback too. For example, when carrying out marshmallow catapult at the Girl Guiding event I received comments such as that I will definitely try this with my unit and one unit leader said that this was the best activity they tried at the event which was great to hear. Furthermore, from carrying out the activity at the Big Bang event pupils were saying how much they were enjoying it. I would like to carry on learning new STEAM activities and trying them out with a range of people.

DLAB reflections from student digital leaders

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English Students’ reflection of international week at the University of Northampton as part of Digital Learning across Boundaries (DLaB) project. March 2019.

After our successful project days with lecturers, teachers and students from Denmark, Norway and Belgium we gathered together at the University of Northampton week commencing 25th March to create an online course inspired by our work on our project days. We had a jam-packed week, planning our online course looking at ‘what if the sea level rises?’ exploring language and culture in a future setting as well as exploring parts of Northamptonshire.

On Monday 25th March, we met everyone and enjoyed a meal at Waterside restaurant. It was great to see everyone again after meeting each other in our week in Denmark, October 2018.

“It was great to see so many familiar faces as well as meet new people and share our experiences of our project days.” – Charlotte.

On Tuesday 26th March, we started sorting roles and gathering information to place in our online course. We then supported some outdoor activities which emphasised team building, and many expressed their competitive spirit.

“It was brilliant to see a different side to our colleagues, as their tactics and winning strategies were on parade – the best teams won.” – Cora.

Afterwards, in teams they went around the university taking selfies in front of different landmarks across the university, it was a great way for them to explore all the amazing places we have at the university. That afternoon, we had a tour around Boughton house and had a delicious buffet and watched some beautiful ballet dancing in the grand hall. Then we ventured around the gardens with some glorious weather.

On Wednesday 27th March, we had the opportunity to spend our day at Northampton International Academy. It was great for the group to explore how the education system and setting is different to their own countries education settings. We completed more of our online course working in teams and observed a lesson at the school.

We then had a yummy roast dinner which many of the international students had not experienced before and had a tour around the school. Afterwards, we sat in the theatre where it was a great delight to hear some of students from Castle Academy and Northampton International Academy share their experiences of the project days, we even saw some of their prototype buildings. We then watched a variety of dances which was great to see and had a go at dancing which was lots of fun. Afterwards, we walked to the Albion brewery where we learnt about the history, had a tour which was fascinating and had a delicious meal.

On Thursday 28th March, we completed lots of work for our online course making it engaging and visual. We then ventured to Rushden lakes where we explored the wildlife and the lakes, it was very scenic with stunning views. We then had a look around the shops and had a delicious farewell meal. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but it has been a good week creating lots of memories.

“I’ve had the most amazing last week being a part of the project for 3 years, I have built so many skills, friendships and memories over the years. It has been a great experience which I will never forget.” – Charlotte.

“This has been such an invaluable experience as we have developed as teachers and created so many bonds with other professionals – our professional pen pals. It has been amazing to share ideas and be involved in such an awesome project.” – Cora.

It was a lovely week, making lots of friendships and creating an online course that we are proud of and can’t wait for everyone to join in. Please feel free to sign up to our free online course in May. More information on: http://dlaberasmus.eu/

By Charlotte Bennett and Cora Taylor (3rd Year Primary Education students in University of Northampton)