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Ensemble project.
The document summarizes a project that used podcasts and multimedia messages (MMS) to provide learning opportunities for immigrant citizens in Italy and France. The project aimed to promote cultural and social integration using widely available technologies like mobile phones, MP3 players, and netbooks. Podcasts containing micro-lessons were created for students on topics like European citizenship, while parents received MMS messages. The goals were to design easy to use and familiar formats based on principles of cognitive learning theory. An experiment involved students and parents from China and North Africa in Italy and France.
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Ensemble project.
- 1. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Using podcasting and MMS to provide learning opportunities for immigrant citizens Giovanni Bonaiuti, Maria Ranieri Università di Firenze Media & Learning Bruxelles, 25/11/2010 www.ensemble-project.org
- 2. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) The project Ensemble project is funded by the European Union within the LLL Programme (2008-2010). Italy France United Kingdom Partner: • Università di Firenze • Comune di Prato • Department of Yvelines • Centre Regional de Documentation Pedagogique de l'Academie de Versailles • GiuntiLabs (UK).
- 3. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) The overall background of the ENSEMBLE project is provided by the European policies about the immigrants’ integration and by the recent communication “European i2010 initiative on e-Inclusion - to be part of the information society”. In this communication the Commission underlines the role of ICTs to enabling the conditions for everyone to take part in the information society by • bridging the “accessibility – broadband and competences” gaps; • accelerating effective participation of groups at risk of exclusion, and • improving the quality of life. Background and Aims of the Project Inclusion and Inclusion and social integration social integration
- 4. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Ensemble aims to develop a strategy for the use of communication technologies to encourage the cultural and social integration of citizens, relying on widely available tools such as mobile phones, mp3 players and netbooks. The general idea
- 5. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) «m-Learning» for all! • The Ensemble project is based on the idea that technologies can fully deploy their potentials only when they are easy to use and well integrated in the (existing) habits of their users. • Imposing unnatural practices never produces great results...
- 6. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) The experimentation has been carried out in two European municipalities: - Versailles (France) - Prato (Italy) on groups of people of different ethnic group: mainly Chinese in Italy and North african in France Experimentation
- 7. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Two types of target groups were identified: • adults, first generation migrants, • young people, second generation migrants. Target group
- 8. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) In line with the overall premise of the project, it were adopted technological devices widely distributed in both groups. In our vision, the adoption of tools already known (by the users) would have facilitated the training session. The training activities addressed to the students were supported by MP3 players. The work with parents was enhanced by the use of mobile phones. The project’s tools
- 9. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) For the students: - 64 podcast - 16 learning object (in Moodle LMS) For their parents: - 160 MMS The teaching process was carried out by using “easy to use” formats: podcasts for students, and MMS for parents. At this purpose we produced and used a series of micro-lesson content in different formats: The communicative formats
- 10. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Podcast LO/Web forum Tracking data (eg SCORM) Learning guide LMS Moodle StudentsStudents TeachersTeachers User-produced podcast Student’s setting
- 11. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Users data (tracking of SMS/MMS) Learning guide ParentsParents Parent’s setting
- 12. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Work Plan 4 Modules on the following topics: – European Citizenship – Intercultural education – To be parent, to be children/student – Old and new addiction Every week: – Students listened to 4 episodes – Parents received 8 MMS Every month: Meeting in the school (beetween teachers, students and parents) One month for each topic = Four months
- 13. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Contents ModuleModule UnitUnit 1 European citizenship European Union: An Introduction The European Citizenship: rights and obligations Work in the EU The Euro and financial affairs 2 Intercultural Education One country, many cultures Sport Body language and cultures Internet as a tool for intercultural dialogue 3 To be parent, to be student Convention on the Rights of Child The European Programme for the Mobility of Students The French School System/The Italian School System Rules and community school life 4 Old and new addictions Health food and nutrition Videogames: addiction or creative game? Alcool and Teenagers Drugs and Teenagers
- 14. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) • Repetition and variation: short messages present information about the same subject in a cyclical pattern, but from different perspectives and integrating contents. • Openness and interaction: each cycle ends with open questions for users, who can ask for further information or discussion on the topic (in class, but also at home). • Context and control: users may choose when, where and how to use - during the day - the learning materials according to the context. Learning Design Principles
- 15. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) • The length of each episode does not exceed the attention span (3-6 minutes); • The language must be simple and clear (short sentences); • Respect of rules and principles derived from the cognitive load theory (eg don’t use information not strictly related to content, avoid of inessential music, etc); • Use of prosodic emphasis and sound strategies (bullets sound, effects, etc.); • Create a “sense of conversation” with the user; • Adoption of a similar pedagogical structure also to promote the development of a "ritual of listening” • Activation: use of strategy (“ironic situations”, curious questions, etc.) to endorse active personal response. Podcasts’ Features Oral communication. Spoken language is a natural way to learn (we experience from birth) but in terms of teaching it must be made appropriate choices.
- 16. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Information Integration SynthesisIntroduction Answer (podcast produced by the student) Learning process (students) Question
- 17. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Podcast example Clic here for some examples: http://www.ensembleproject.org/modules/wfdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=33
- 18. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) • Using visual that can be correctly interpreted by people from different countries and cultures; • Pursuit of self-consistent picture and reduction of the written text; • Respecting the rules of visual design and principles of Mayer’s multimedia learning (eg principles of proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast); • Attention to the device: the small screen size limits the amount of viewable content and timing of use • Respect of the rules of the theory of cognitive load (eg, attention to the target, consistent with the messages, reducing extraneous components, reduction of intrinsic load: chunking, sequencing, pacing). MMSs’ Features Visual communication. We are daily immersed in the images, but for teaching with images we need to do appropriate choices.
- 19. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Learning process (parents) InformationInformation QuestionQuestion AnswerAnswer IntroductionIntroduction IntegrationIntegration
- 20. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) A single MMS content
- 21. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) A single MMS content (2)
- 22. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Let see an example Clic here to see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml9sSMSQEB4
- 23. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Where are project’s resources?
- 24. Faculty of Education,University of Florence (Italy) Thank you! [email protected] www.ensemble-project.org
Editor's Notes
- #3 The ENSEMBLE project, European citizeNShip lifElong MoBile Learning, is a two-year project (December 2008 – November 2010) funded by the European Union within the Lifelong Learning Programme. The project was developed by a partnership that included three countries - Italy, France and the UK - and organizations having different characteristics and specializations: • The Department of Education of the University of Florence (promoter), • the Comune di Prato, near Florence (which included the teachers of the “Ser Lapo Mazzei” middle school) • the Conseil Général des Yvelines, close to Paris (CG78), • the C.R.D.P. (Regional Centre of Pedagogical Documentation) of the Versailles Accademy, in the Yvelines department (which included the Collège “Gassicourt” and the Collège “Paul Verlain”) • GiuntiLabs UK, a company specialized in designing and developing advanced technological solutions for e-learning and knowledge management,
- #4 Background and Aims of the Project The Ensemble Project set out to develop a strategy for the use of ICTs aimed at fostering cultural and social integration of immigrant citizens. In other words, it aimed at working to achieve social inclusion and social cohesion goals, so often expressed by the European Union, and it responded to the suggestion regarding the “potential of new technologies to enable innovative services and empower people in particular young people at risk of exclusion, migrants and cultural minorities, notably through multilingual and adapted content” [European i2010 initiative on e-inclusion – To be part of the information society, Commission of the European Communities, 2007].
- #5 The general idea Ensemble aims to develop a strategy for the use of communication technologies to encourage the cultural and social integration of citizens, relying on widely available tools such as mobile phones, mp3 players and netbooks. The Ensemble Project, therefore, intended to test how ICTs can enhance the opportunities of participation and integration of disadvantaged citizens. The idea was to take advantage of widely used technologies, like MP3 players and mobile phones, and test out teaching methods and communication formats suitable for these instruments and for the addressed target: students from classes with a high percentage of immigrants and their parents. In France during the project it was also decided to test the use of netbooks because of their potential in fostering ubiquitous and inclusive learning.
- #7 The experimentation has been carried out in two European municipalities: - Versailles (France) Prato (Italy) on groups of people of different ethnic group: mainly Chinese in Italy and North african in France The experimentation in Prato was carried out between January and May 2010, with students from three third-year classes of the “Ser Lapo Mazzei” Middle School and their parents. In all three classes there was a majority of teenagers of non-Italian origin, mostly Chinese. Experimentation in the district of Yvelines was made by the Collège “Gassicourt”, in Mantes-la-Jolie, and by the Collège “Paul-Verlaine”, in Les Mureaux, Priority Education Zone (ZEP in french). The Collège Gassincourt was involved in two classes for a total of 37 students, 15 of which were not French speakers, and 12 teachers. The Collège Verlaine was involved in 3 classes for a total of 43 students and 10 teachers.
- #8 The target group of the educational initiative Two types of target groups were identified: • adults, first generation migrants, • young people, second generation migrants. Subsequently, as it is easier to work with young people within the school, the young target group chosen were students between the age of 13 and 15 in classes of only migrants (Yvelines) or a majority of migrants (Prato). It was considered appropriate to have their parents as the adult target group, because this could: - promote interactions between young people and adults, - enhance relationships between migrant parents and the school, with an immediate integration effect
- #9 The availability of different types of mobile tools provides the opportunity to develop many different teaching experiences. The relationship which, particularly, young generations have with technological devices like MP3 players, smartphones, netbooks and game consoles offers possibilities of various modes of intervention. During the project, the adolescents in Prato used MP3 players to listen to the educational podcasts. In Yvelines they used netbooks. Mobile phones instead are the devices used to contact the group of adults involved in the project and the chosen format is MMS (multimedia messaging system).
- #10 The communicative formats. The teaching process was carried out by using “easy to use” formats: podcasts for students, and MMS for parents. At this purpose we produced and used a series of micro-lesson content in different formats. By podcasts we mean a recording (audio or audio-video) which a user can download from the Internet and listen to at any time (offline) both on his computer and on other mobile devices (MP3 players, mobile phones, PDAs, etc.). The term "learning object" has a variety of definitions. We mean a small multimedia element of meaningful information correlated with the same learning objective of podcasts. The students use Moodle learning management system both to download podcast and use LO. MMS is a messaging system created to send and receive multimedia messages. In our case messages contain text, pictures and audio.
- #11 From a technological point of view the project decided to aim at maximum compatibility. For this reason the podcasts were created using the MP3 format which, up until today, is the only format supported by all the devices available on the market. As you can see in this slide students downloaded the podcasts they had to listen to individually from the Moodle LMS. Moodle was also used to view some learning objects, to do the relevant tests, and to upload and share the various products of work groups.
- #12 The slide shows the adult technological infrastructure used in the project. The parents received an MMS message at predetermined intervals, usually once a week, from the dedicated platform realized and managed by the Comune di Prato. In Yvelines the technological framework was pretty different. The students were each given a netbook on which they download both the podcasts and videos (based on the MMS images) for their parents. The parents received on their mobile phone a text message asking them to watch the videos.
- #13 The training activities were carried out from March 2010 to June 2010, that is for four moths. The focus was on four topics related to: • citizenship education in an intercultural and European perspective, • life and problems of preadolescents in school and outside school, both from the students’ and the parents’ points of view. Each module was developed in two versions: • one for the parents, based on a total of 160 MMSs, transformed also in fl ash video fi les, with audio, to be watched on netbooks; • one for the students, based on a website, 16 learning objects and 64 podcasts. Students were asked to listen to four episodes out of school and then to discuss with pair at school on the key issues of the module. The discussion was stimulated by the teacher who also planned for learning activities to be carried out during the week. Adults received 8 MMS every week and interact, via SMS, to his/her tutors
- #14 In this slide you can see the whole syllabus.
- #15 In the Ensemble project we try to designing teaching material in the respect of the characteristics of the human cognitive system. This coincided with finding a balancing point between the characteristics of the medium (affordance) and the potentials of the human mind. The general framework focused on some basic elements which recur in the various instructional design theories: capturing the learners’ interest in the new contents through questions, triggering and bringing out their previous knowledge, developing the contents gradually (from simple to more complex issues), consolidating knowledge through questions that can verify the transferability of the new knowledge to the learners’ lives and actions. By the way some instructional assumption we used was: Repetition and variation: short messages present information about the same subject in a cyclical pattern, but from different perspectives and integrating contents. Each unit start by creating interest (curiosity, wonder, fun) and procede by augmenting new insights in the learner. Openness and interactivity: each cycle ends with an open question so the students can reflect on and discuss (in class, but also at home). Context and control: users may choose when, where and how to use - during the day - the materials received.
- #16 Learning through spoken language is a very natural way of learning: everybody experiences it from birth onwards. Speech influences knowledge because intonation makes comprehension easier, apart from favoring motivation. Speech can convey emotions and create an intimate atmosphere. To take advantage of oral communication we followed this criteria while creating the single episodes: The length of each episode does not exceed the attention span (3-6 minutes); The language must be simple and clear (short sentences); Respect of rules and principles derived from the cognitive load theory (eg don’t use information not strictly related to content, avoid of inessential music, etc); Use of prosodic emphasis and sound strategies (bullets sound, effects, etc.); Create a “sense of conversation” with the user; Adoption of a similar pedagogical structure also to promote the development of a "ritual of listening” Activation: use of strategy (“ironic situations”, curious questions, etc.) to endorse active personal response.
- #17 The standard order of the podcasts during the week was the following: On Sunday a first “introductory” episode was released. It presents the topic and evoke interest. The second day an “informative” episode has the task of presenting the key problems of the unit with basic information about the topic. A third “additional” episode follows, giving additional, more specific information and eliciting questions, which students could later discuss in class or on the web forum. The fourth episode - “synthesis” - summarized the previously given concepts and information, which allowed the students to focus their attention on the main problems of the unit. The last episode of the week, the fifth one, is the one produced by the students themselves inspired by the input given in the episodes and after discussing and working in small groups.
- #18 Let me show you a typical podcast. As I told the first “introductory” episode has the purpose to present the topic and evoke interest. This result was modelled on the typical short Radio Drama “format”: dramatization of situations (at home, at the station, at the gym, etc.) where some characters talk and present the topics. The pedagogical-didactic function is setting into motion pre-existing knowledge.
- #19 MMS: educational rationale. Visual communication. We are daily immersed in the images, but for teaching with images it’s necessary to do appropriate choices. Using visual that can be correctly interpreted by people from different countries and cultures; Pursuit of self-consistent picture and reduction of the written text; Respecting the rules of visual design and principles of Mayer’s multimedia learning (eg principles of proximity, alignment, repetition and contrast); Attention to the device: the small screen size limits the amount of viewable content and timing of use Compliance with the rules of the theory of cognitive load (eg, attention to the target, consistent with the messages, reducing extraneous components, reduction of intrinsic load: chunking, sequencing, pacing). Some implications for designing multimedia content for m-learning: Create content using smaller chunks of text; Limit scrolling to the very minimum; Do not duplicate information; Do not use any type of information that is not related to content and context. Do not add illustrations, music, or environmental noises. Use the first or second person in your narration or text.
- #20 The transmission of messages at weekly intervals is based on these concepts and develops the principles of instructional design which inspired the whole project. Two sets of multiple messages were sent every week on the same subject, each set containing four MMSs, plus a reply SMS text message from the user. The aim of the first MMS was to evoke the user’s interest for an unusual and strange topic, which is however linked to his everyday life. The second message had the task of giving initial information, which was integrated and expanded by the third message. The last message in the set, after going over the discussed topics, had the task of fostering reflection and personal questions and answers. The table below illustrates the sequence of activities.
- #24 All the digital resources produced by the project (podcasts, MMSs and LOs), in an “Open Educational Resources” perspective, are released under a CreativeCommons Attribution, Non Commercial, Share alike license that means anyone is free to use, change and distribute them, only for non-commercial purposes, provided that authorship is attributed to the Ensemble project and an identical license is maintained on any derivative works. The products are available: • on the project’s Moodle platform within the two online courses, one in Italian and one in French: http//moodle.ensembleproject.org/. The courses are open to whoever logs in on the platform, but also to “guests”. • in the “Ensemble products” section on the project’s website: http://www.ensembleproject.eu
- #25 Many thanks for your attention and sorry again for may awful english.