The Role of e-Labs in Promoting Conceptual Understanding of Science Students (Reflection in ICT for 1ST Project Resource Pack)
Abstract
The paper presents activities and hands-on experience of the teacher training materials developed by the ICT for IST Project. The project involves a partnership of six universities in the EU and is funded within the Leonardo da Vinci programme of the Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission.
The project builds upon and expands the resources previously developed by the Information Technology for Understanding Science (IT for US) Project. The newly developed resource pack for teachers and teacher trainers includes a series of modules and streaming videos, containing classroom activities illustrating how on site data-logging, remote laboratory data-logging, modelling and video measurement in science teaching facilitate the type of thinking and discussion which leads to better understanding.
Each module/video focuses on a single science topic and includes teachers' notes that support the implementation of the activities. They also include commentaries intended to develop teachers' pedagogical understanding of the new methods using ICT to investigate phenomena.
The project resource pack is now evaluated (using multicriterial evaluation/SIM method) by teacher trainers and teachers in the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Cyprus, UK and Netherlands. The first results (Czech Republic) are mentioned at the end of presented paper.