ECB | Shaping the future of maths and science education |
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AMBASSADORS DATABASE
In the inGenious Ambassadors Database you will find interviews and videos where people explain more about their jobs, their previous studies and their career.
How do teachers combine Ambassadors within the curriculum.
Many teachers got their first information about the database from the CoP.
Teachers found this database really interesting, but there are some difficulties when combining it with the curriculum:
teachers have to follow the curriculum and they don't have time for ambassadors; language problem, especially with younger pupils. Suggestion: add subtitles to ambassador videos.
Teachers found many ways how to include ambassadors in their lessons:
some teachers have the freedom to teach using whatever resources they choose as long as they meet the Learning Objective; you can work on the official curriculum without course books and it is quite flexible; you can share the chance of the online chat or the video watching with other teachers (English teachers, to help with the language or other STEM teachers); you can use this resource with optional subjects where you don't have a strict curriculum; every teacher in every subject has to introduce future choices and careers in their lessons and here the ambassadors can be helpful; use ambassadors in a bilingual project that includes science, technology and IT for older students and where foreign language is an advantage; use ambassadors in extracurricular activities; ambassador videos can be used in career guidance and counselling, for finding a job. talk about careers outside curricula, when I talk to my students about choosing their next level of education. Meeting the ambassadors in video doesn't take much time because they are quite short.
Teachers have various experience and in working with ambassadors. These ambassadors are not from the inGenious
database.
There is a voluntary association at one university and it has a connection to ambassadors in every field of science & technology subjects. Teachers can invite the ambassadors to school through this association. In the UK there is a national organisation of STEM AMBASSADORS with a database. You fill in an online form to request an ambassador for a particular purpose or event. An engineer came to the technology lesson and explained his profession. In ICT and Maths classed the inGenious ambassador videos have been used. During the topic of cells and organs, the teacher invited an ambassador who had had a kidney transplant to come to school. Teachers themselves are also ambassadors. Many of them have worked in companies before they started teaching and they know what students will need to do. Former students and students' relatives come to explain a job and students can ask questions. Schools work together with STEM ambassadors in job application training and in career information sessions. At annual STEM careers events.
The added value of STEM ambassadors.
A way to increase interest in STEM's subjects and in foreing languages.
The ambassadors act as connectors between learning subjects at school and real life.
Students become more realistic, responsible towards reality. They see what the realities are in the world of work.
During lessons to enhance the curriculum and also for enrichment purposes eg Science and Ethics. To show how STEM overlaps many areas.
How to engage more Ambassadors in inGenious?
There should be at least one or two ambassadors from each European country, so teachers can find experts who speak their own language but can also choose others. To prepare an "Ambassador's Code", a document with the aim of the project, a description of the role of these Ambassadors, the different ways of participation. This document could work as an introduction and presentation of the project and we could send it to colleagues, who could share it too and try to find interested people and get that people engaged. To set some kind of easy procedure, that allows inGenious teachers who have contact with professionals to invite them to be Ingenious ambassadors. Social networks! There are many big companies which have branches in many countries, first it would be good to ask these companies to help find new ambassadors. National web pages or portals containing career videos which can be linked with the inGenious web.
inGENIOUS – NEW PRACTICES
The inGenious practices database is a searchable living repository of practices on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Open to all teachers, industrial partners and policy makers, this repository is a reference and source of inspiration that contributes to the sustainability of inGenious.
Teachers think that the new practices bring variety to the old practices. Also, the teacher may get new ideas for teaching. There has not been enough time to test the new practices yet. The comments from the teachers who have tested them are as following.
Technology scouts it is a perfect practice for Technology in the bilingual program for 12-year-old students. It is a hands-on practice with all the material developed and just ready to use in the classroom.
MoMaths is very well done! There are maths terms which can make it difficult to use it in no- English speaking countries. On the other hand it is very helpful for teachers using CLIL approach in Maths. There are explanations of the solutions.
Meet the boss. This activity can help students to develop the skills of critical thinking and making decisions. Also, this practice contributes to students' verbal expression skill. Teacher can choose a controversial topic.
Adaptations teachers have made in practices.
Street lighting practice is for secondary schools. A teacher missed a good worksheet for primary pupils so she prepared an online quiz and SMART Notebook activity for white board. In the next lesson they measured the distances between lamp posts and their height. Finally theydrew plans of a street and calculated the expenditures for lighting it. You can find worksheets here: www.ingenious-science.eu/web/guest/gallery-of-entries?p_p_id=contentGallery_WAR_euncontentportlet_INSTANCE_TEx4&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-1&p_p_col_count=1&_contentGallery_WAR_euncontentportlet_INSTANCE_TEx4_action=detail&_contentGallery_WAR_euncontentportlet_INSTANCE_TEx4_contentId=168473
A suggestion: at the end of each practice there could be a mutltiple choice quiz to consolidate students' knowledge and if possible find interactive links on the internet to facilitate students'understanding. The students are more attracted to interactive practices with flash animations. How to make STEM more interesting for both boys and girls? All teachers shared the same concern about the increasing lack of interest to study STEM among both boys and girls. But should there be different methods for boys and girls to engage them? A few teachers suggested that the most important thing is to pay attention to gender prejudices and stereotypes, especially on hidden ones. When realizing those, teachers should then just focus on individuals, not the gender in their teaching. It was also said that differences between individuals are much bigger than differences between boys and girls. Some good examples about teachers’ stereotypic thinking were also given. For example, teachers may speak “Scientist, his newest project...” or “Today we learn about nail polishing… girls, come over here...”. When speaking about cars: “Boys, do you have any example?” Some teachers agreed that there are really differences between boys and girls’ learning. During group work girls want usually discuss things longer and they are more careful to start with experiments. Boys would like to start doing things almost at once. Girls seem to be more interested in biology and heath subjects, and boys find technology and physics more interesting, especially when they are allowed to make hands-on experiments. One teacher had noticed differences between boys and girls’ knowledge. Suggested reason for this was that girls and boys usually have different kind of hobbies and thus gain different knowledge. Even if teachers had different opinions about differences between boys and girls’ learning, the suggested solutions to make STEM interesting for both of them were quite similar. On suggestion was to show students that nowadays STEM subjects are really interrelated. We can talk about biophysics, applications of nanotechnology in medicine and in computing and also applications of new materials in different industrials areas. Many teachers had very good experiences on inviting role models (both genders) to visit their classes to talk about their work and attract students to science. As a good example was an environmental specialist who got both girls and boys interested in her profession. Also telling students about famous scientists (men and female) were suggested. One teacher suggested that in curriculum there should be some flexibility to change into another topic when teacher notices problems in motivation. Some inGenious practices were noticed to be useful to attract girls. One teacher told that girl students were really motivated to try Deforest Action. Some serious doubts about special programs directed just to girls or just to boys in STEM were mentioned. One teacher had feeling that they are only useful to make larger differences. They tend to emphasize the stereotypes. Pretending to attract girls they include cooking and personal aesthetic issues in the lessons. They may motivate that part of students who care about these topics (girls or boys), but induce the idea that girls who don't care about them are just weird or "not girls enough". Even if boys and girls were seen different or not, it was widely suggested that by using different teaching methods both girls and boys and also different kind of learners will be given the best opportunity to learn better. By doing this, also individual differences will be taken into account. As one teacher pointed out, methodology preferences are mainly related to personal abilities, habits and personality, not to gender. Are some teaching methods more interesting than others? In general many teachers agreed that the most important thing is to use many different teaching methods to make studying as interesting as possible for all. Here are some methods which teachers have found useful to make their teaching more fascinating to their students: - Learning by doing. - More cooperation among students. - Discussions: changing information and ideas, impressions and opinions, criticisms and proposals around a theme. - Projects, problem solving studying. - Connection between industry and schools, which also allows connection between theory and practical experience. - Brainstorming because it engages all participants. - The Cube is a method that involves the exploration of a topic, a situation of multiple perspectives, allowing complex and integrative approach. - The Mosaic is cooperative learning, which involves acquisition. - Hands-on activities during STEM lessons, including labs activities and model building. How to make teaching more interesting in a class room? Teachers shared some very useful tips about how to make teaching more interesting in general in a class room: - Using games. - Teachers need to go more and more closer to students’ age and thoughts to be able to understand what is interesting for them. - Create learning environments where students are actively participating. - Including activities where students can explore applications. - STEM lesson could be opened with an article from the news (digital or printed) or a short video showing new discoveries or new invention that can show the students the relevance of science lessons. - Using mathematical models. - Using tablets because students like to work with them. It creates better atmosphere in a class room and thus increases learning outcomes. - Asking a role model to come to visit at school. - Organizing small competitions with prizes. Visiting museums and science centers Almost all teachers said that visiting museums and science centers is very useful and effective method and it also motivates their students a lot. Some teachers have difficulties to get finance for their school trips. Sometimes parents paid some part of the costs. Many teachers stressed that it's very important to prepare properly before the visit to really get good learning outcomes. One way to do that is to tell students before what they are expected to focus on and afterwards ask them to write report about the visit. It's also important that visits are related to the topics, which are being studied at school at the moment. A good idea was also to let students use their smartphones during the visit to get context-aware learning material into their phones. Does curriculum make it easy to get students fascinated about STEM? Teachers shared the same problem related to their STEM curriculum. It was said to be very tough, loaded and detailed, which makes it difficult to include engaging teaching methods in teaching. National exams were also said to have the same effect. In one country they are solving this problem by decreasing the amount of compulsory content and making room for more meaningful learning. Teachers will be then able to concentrate more on interesting topics, PBL approach and field trips. Fruitful inGenious activities to continue with in the future Teachers shared very widely their opinions about activities they wanted to continue in the future. Workshops, Academies and Summer Schools were said to be the only way for teachers to really share ideas and learn new things from each other. CoPs were mentioned to be very helpful for teachers’ professional development. Some teachers wanted to extend the practices database to have more diverse range of practices and also to extend workshops (either on-site or virtual) to give more teachers the opportunity to participate. Students liked chats a lot. Chats were also said to be very interesting. Other new activities for the future Teachers suggested the following new activities: - Ideas how to teach Nanotechnologies (simple experiments). - More simple experiments from industry for chemistry and physics lessons. - Activities in energy and sustainability. - Practices about genetics industry, space and astronomy. - Big event where students could exchange their experiences on STEM face to face. This would take inGenious to next level, making the students true ambassadors of STEM. It was also suggested that the practices, which will be submitted to inGenious competition, could be also shared to other teachers for their use. Teachers’ ideas about how to keep in touch after inGenious Teachers agreed that it has been very useful and interesting for them to be able to meet colleagues from all over the Europe. Teachers also thought that it would be very important to organize a way to keep in touch after the project. To do that in practice Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were suggested. Some teachers didn’t like the idea of choosing Facebook because they weren’t using it. It was suggested that European Schoolnet would start an independent networking site where any one participating in the project could connect with other participants. Scientix was also recommended to be the site where inGenious teachers could keep in touch in the future.
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More exciting activities
Time to wrap up
