COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

What is collaborative learning?

Collaborative learning is based on the view that knowledge is a social construct. Collaborative activities are most often based on four principles:

• The learner or student is the primary focus of instruction.
• Interaction and "doing" are of primary importance
• Working in groups is an important mode of learning.
• Structured approaches to developing solutions to real-world problems should be incorporated into learning.

Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts, or find solutions to problems. This often occurs in a class session after students are introduced to course material through readings or videos before class, and/or through instructor lectures. Similar to the idea that two or three heads are better than one, many instructors have found that through peer instruction, students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions.

Group work or collaborative learning can take a variety of forms, such as quick, active learning activities in class or more involved group projects that span the course of a semester.

What is the impact of collaborative learning or group work?

Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative learning include:

• Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills.
• Promotion of student-faculty interaction.
• Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.
• Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.
• Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

What are some examples of collaborative learning or group work activities?

Stump your partner

• Students take a minute to create a challenging question based on the lecture content up to that point.
• Students pose the question to the person sitting next to them.
• To take this activity a step further, ask students to write down their questions and hand them in. These questions can be used to create tests or exams. They can also be reviewed to gauge student understanding.

Think-pair-share/ Write-pair-share

• The instructor poses a question that demands analysis, evaluation, or synthesis.
• Students take a few minutes to think through an appropriate response.
• Students turn to a partner (or small groups) and share their responses. Take this a step further by asking students to find someone who arrived at an answer different from their own and convince their partner to change their mind.
• Student responses are shared within larger teams or with the entire class during a follow-up discussion.

Catch-up

• Stop at a transition point in your lecture.
• Have students turn to a partner or work in small groups to compare notes and ask clarifying questions.
• After a few minutes, open the floor to a few questions.

Fishbowl debate

• Ask students to sit in groups of three.
• Assign roles. For example, the person on left takes one position on a topic for debate, the person on right takes the opposite position, and the person in the middle takes notes and decides which side is the most convincing and provides an argument for his or her choice.
• Debrief by calling on a few groups to summarize their discussions.

Case study

• Create four to five case studies of similar difficulty.
• Have students work in groups of four or five to work through and analyze their case study.
• Provide 10-15 minutes (or adequate time to work through the cases).
• Walk around and address any questions.
• Call on groups randomly and ask that students share their analysis. Continue until each case study has been addressed.

Team-based learning (adapted from L.K. Michaelsen in Davis, 2009. p.215)

• Start a course unit by giving students some tasks to complete, such as reading or lab assignments. Consider assigning these to be completed before class.
• Check students' comprehension of the material with a quick multiple-choice quiz. Have students submit their answers.
• Assign students to groups and have them review their answers with group members to reach consensus. Have each group submit one answered quiz.
• Record both the individual student assessment scores and the final group assessment score (both of which are used toward each student's course grade).
• Deliver a lecture that specially targets any misconceptions or gaps in knowledge the assessments reveal.
• Give groups a challenging assignment, such as solving a problem or applying a theory to a real world situation.

Group problem solving

There are many instructional strategies that involve students working together to solve a problem, including inquiry based learning, authentic learning, and discovery learning. While they each have their own unique characteristics, they all fundamentally involve:

• Presenting students with a problem.
• Providing some structure or guidance toward solving the problem. Note, however, that they are all student-centered activities in which the instructor may have a very minimal role.
• Reaching a final outcome or solution.

Problem-Based Learning is a collaborative, student-centered approach to learning in which students learn about a subject by working in groups to solve an open-ended problem. 

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN:

Cooperative Learning is an instructional strategy that simultaneously addresses academic and social skill learning by students. It is an instructional strategy and has been reported to be highly successful in the classroom because of its increasing need for interdependence in all levels, providing students with the tools to effectively learn from each other. Students work towards fulfilling academic and social skill goals that are clearly stated. It is a team approach where the success of the group depends upon everyone pulling his or her weight.

Collaborative learning is commonly illustrated when groups of students work together to search for understanding, meaning, or solutions or to create an artifact or product of their learning. Further, collaborative learning redefines traditional student-teacher relationship in the classroom because activities can include collaborative writing, group projects, joint problem solving, debates, study teams, and other activities in which students team together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project.

CHACHA KIDZ-QUIZ COMPETITION CONDUCTED ON 14/11/2017

GEOGEBRA

GeoGebra

It is an interactive geometry, algebra, statistics and calculus application, intended for learning and teaching mathematics and science from primary school to university level. GeoGebra is available on multiple platforms with its desktop applications for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, with its tablet apps for Android, iPad and Windows, and with its web application based on HTML5 technology.

Its creator, Markus Hohen warter, started the project in 2001 at the University of Salzburg, continuing it at Florida Atlantic University (2006–2008), Florida State University (2008–2009), and now at the University of Linz together with the help of open-source developers and translators all over the world.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, GeoGebra expanded their offerings to include an iPad, an Android and a Windows Store appversion. In 2013, Bernard Parisse's Giac was integrated into GeoGebra's CAS view.

GeoGebra continues to expand its efforts to deliver the best possible dynamic mathematics software and services to students and teachers worldwide, with a community of users that extends to all but a few countries. GeoGebra includes both a commercial and not-for-profit entity, working closely together from the head office in Linz, Austria to continue to expand the software and cloud services available to its user community of students, teachers, and growing network of government partners.

Interactive geometry, algebra, statistics and calculus

GeoGebra is interactive mathematics software for learning and teaching mathematics and science from primary school up to university level. Constructions can be made with points, vectors, segments, lines, polygons, conic sections, inequalities, implicit polynomials and functions. All of them can be changed dynamically afterwards. Elements can be entered and modified directly via mouse and touch, or through the Input Bar. GeoGebra has the ability to use variables for numbers, vectors and points, find derivatives and integrals of functions and has a full complement of commands like Root or Extremum. Teachers and students can use GeoGebra to make conjectures and to understand how to prove geometric theorems.

Its main features are:

·         Interactive geometry environment (2D and 3D)

·         Built-in spreadsheet

·         Built-in CAS

·         Built-in statistics and calculus tools

·         Allows scripting

·  Large number of interactive learning and teaching resources at GeoGebra Materials

GeoGebra Materials Platform

Dynamic GeoGebra applets can be directly uploaded to the GeoGebra Materials platform, the official cloud service and repository of GeoGebra related and interactive learning and teaching resources. GeoGebra Materials was initially launched under the name GeoGebraTube in June 2011 and renamed in 2016. With recent improvement and extended functionality the service now hosts more than 1 million resources (April 2016), 400,000+ of which are shared publicly as searchable materials - such as interactive worksheets, simulations, games, and e-books created using the GeoGebraBook feature.

GeoGebra materials can be also exported in several formats, including as static images or as Animated GIF. SVG vector images can be further edited using third party software, e.g. Inkscape. EMF vector formats can be directly imported in several Office applications. There are also options for exporting to the system clipboard, PNG, PDF, EPS. GeoGebra can also create code that can be used inside LaTeX files through its PSTricks, PGF/TikZ and Asymptote export options.

Licensing

GeoGebra's source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and all other non-software components are under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Thus, commercial use is subject to a special license and collaboration agreement.

Community

The International GeoGebra Institute (IGI) is the not-for-profit entity of The GeoGebra Group, coordinating deployment and research efforts across a global network of user groups at universities and non-profit organizations. IGI joins teachers, students, software developers and researchers to support, develop, translate and organise the GeoGebra related tasks and projects. The local user groups support students and teachers in their region. As part of the International GeoGebra Institute network they share free educational materials via the GeoGebra Materials platform, organize workshops, and work on projects related to GeoGebra. The International GeoGebra Institute may certify local GeoGebra users, experts, and trainers according to certain guidelines.

Awards

·      Archimedes 2016: MNU Award in category Mathematics (Hamburg, Germany)

·  Microsoft Partner of the Year Award 2015: Finalist, Public Sector: Education (Redmond, WA, USA)

· MERLOT Award for Exemplary Online Learning Resources – MERLOT Classics 2013 (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA)

·  NTLC Award 2010: National Technology Leadership Award 2010 (Washington D.C., USA)

·  Tech Award 2009: Laureate in the Education Category (San Jose, California, USA)

· BETT Award 2009: Finalist in London for British Educational Technology Award

· SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards 2008: Finalist, Best Project for Educators

· AECT Distinguished Development Award 2008: Association for Educational Communications and Technology (Orlando, USA)

· Learnie Award 2006: Austrian Educational Software Award for "Wurfbewegungen mit GeoGebra" (Vienna, Austria)

· eTwinning Award 2006: 1st prize for "Crop Circles Challenge" with GeoGebra (Linz, Austria)

· Les Trophées du Libre 2005: International Free Software Award, category Education (Soisson, France)

· Comenius 2004: German Educational Media Award (Berlin, Germany)

·  Learnie Award 2005: Austrian Educational Software Award for "Spezielle Relativitätstheorie mit GeoGebra" (Vienna, Austria)

· digita 2004: German Educational Software Award (Cologne, Germany)

·    Learnie Award 2003: Austrian Educational Software Award (Vienna, Austria)

· EASA 2002: European Academic Software Award (Ronneby, Sweden)

G COMPRIS

G Compris

Description

G Compris is a cross-platform complete educational suite for children from 2 to 10 years old, and it is part of the GNU project. It includes more than 140 entertaining activities that help little kids learn skills such as the recognition of letters and numbers, the use of the mouse and keyboard, basic algebra training, reading time on an analog clock, vector drawing, language learning through games, and much more. The program includes a simple text processor to produce documents with basic text style. Another feature is the animation tool, which can be employed as a simple and effective method to support story telling, thus improving communication with children and helping them to express themselves.

G Compris includes several activities grouped on a yellow bar to the left of the screen, from which the child can choose as soon as the program is started. Such a design makes it easy to add new activities or to adapt the program to specific needs. The program itself and all the activities are available in many different languages.

Who's Using It and How

G compris activity-based design makes it highly and easily adaptable to particular environments. One example of innovative use of the program is in the work done by the Insight Project of Kerala, in India. The project aims to bring the benefits of Free Software to differently abled people in the State. They found that G Compris is a powerful tool to improve the communicative and motor skills of mentally challenged persons like children with autism. The project is using and adapting the program for the particular needs of its target community.

The Insight team implemented a training module for teachers that provides instructions on how to use the different activities of GCompris when working with children with special needs, to help these children acquire abilities such as eye-hand coordination, memory, listening, and improving the child's attention span. The module addresses different levels of education, from pre-school to the primary level. A small handbook was also distributed to parents and special educators to help them understand how to use the software to improve children's skills.

GCompris is also used to help older children understand the relationship between numbers, learn basic arithmetic operations, train them in analytical reasoning, and to improve communicative skills as well as spelling, reading and writing.

Why

Teachers report that it is extremely easy for them to implement GCompris in their curriculum since children find it intuitive and fun to use. The program is also an excellent resource for mentally challenged children and adults.

GCompris has become an important resource to speed up the child's learning process in the context of developing countries like India, where the only chance for a child of getting accustomed with computers is during school time. At school, the computers are often shared and children have limited time to access them individually. GCompris is easy to use and intuitive, so it is particularly useful in this environment because there is practically no time spent on getting to understand how the program works. With GCompris children develop quickly the motor skills required to use a computer.

Results

GCompris respects the users' fundamental freedoms and this permitted the Insight developers and specialists to adapt the software to the children's needs, creating new activities, and proposing the innovative use of the program to help autistic children and their parents. The Insight team is also free to distribute copies of the modified version to teachers and parents, who can use the program at home without restrictions. The modified version has proved effective in improving the academic and functional flair of intellectually challenged children.

RESOURCE CENTRES & SERVICES IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

The Central Institute of Educational Technology (CIET):

An autonomous organization, formed as a nodal agency under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for promoting the use of mass media technology for expanding and improving the quality of education at the school level. The Institute is funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India.The Central Institute of Educational Technology(CIET) was established in 1984 by the Ministry of Human Resources Development of Government of India, under the umbrella of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).The Institute is located at NIE Campus, NCERT in New Delhi, the capital of India.

The origin of the Institute was effected by merging two departments of NCERT, Center for Educational Technology and Department of Teaching Aids, with an aim to make the new age technologies in mass media available at the school level. The activities of the Institute are centered on the branches of media such as radio, television, movies, satellite communications and cyber media.

CIET is involved in various activities such as design, development and dissemination of alternative learning systems, promotion of Educational Technology, training of personnel in Educational Technology, coordination of activities of its subsidiaries like the State Institutes of Education Technology (SIET) and consultancy and media support to other constituents of NCERT.

The Institute is housed in a spacious building with open courtyards, amphitheater, two television studios, two sound studios, technical control rooms, workshop, seminar rooms, rehearsal areas and projection facilities, library, canteen, administrative areas and artists' studios.

The Institute also provides courses in education at bachelors, masters and doctoral levels

Satellite  Instructional Television Experiment (SITE):

The Satellite instructional Television Experiment or SITE was an experimental Satellites communications project launched in India in 1975 by National aeronautics and space administration (NASA), USA and ISRO. SITE made available informational Television to rural India by various international agencies such as UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, ITU. It plays a major role in helping develop India’s own Satellite Programe, INSAT. The programmes under the SITE  were classified into 2 categories

a)           Educational Television (ETV)

b)           Instructional Television (ITV)

ETV programs mainly focused on School Children in the age group of 5-12 years. It makes the education more interesting creative purposive and stimulating  and also create awareness in the changing society. ITV is mainly for adult Audience and cover incidents of national importance improved practices in agriculture, health, hygiene, family planning, Nutritions etc and some recreation programme.

The programmes were Telecaste for 4 hours each day in two transmitions. The programmes were produced after categorizing the target audience in to 4 groups. Such as Hindi, Oria, Telugu and Kannada. The SITE was operated for one fall year from August 1975 July 1976 and covered six states.

Objectives of SITE

1. Gain experience in the development, testing and management of Satallite based instructional TV system particularly in rural areas.

2. Demonstrate the potential value of satellite technology in the rapid development of effective communication in the developing countries

3. Democrate the value of Satallite broadcaste TV in the practical instruction of village inhabitants

4. Stimulate national development in India with managerial economics technological Social implication

    SITE was more effective than all other media. It was more attractive to female audience.

Gyan-Darsan Educational Channel:

Gyan-Darsan is launched by ministry of Human resource development, information and broadcasting, Prasar Bharti and Igno in 26^thJanuary 2000 as the exclusive educational daily test transmission channel for students of open and conventional Universities. The time was further increase due to good response up to 19 hours within 1 year it became non-stop daily 24 hours transmission channel for educational programmes. The programme constitute 23 hours indigenous programmes and 1 hour foreign programmes. Curriculam based and enrichment programmes telecasted for 24 hours. And 4 hours for 1 GNO CIET-NCERT , 3 hours for IIT 2 and half hours for CEC-UGC and 1 hour each for TTTI and adult education. It has been used extensively in conventional and distant education format.

EDUSAT (Education Satellite):

Edusat was launched by Indian space research Organization on 20^th September 204. It is a path-breaking effort in the concept of tele education. The main purpose of this is to provide education to all people primarly children from remot areas of the country who can not go to schools or colleges. The claude would be conducted by (varioue stte education board) NCERT, CBSE, Universities etc. in a studio environment using powerpoint presentation as well as the common blackboard. It is having interactive as well as non-interactive sessions offered.

Objectives of EDUSAT

1. Ensure availability of quality content online and through variety of access devices in schools.

2.  Promote a shift from current passive learning to active learning.

3. Inservice and recurrent training of School teachers continues upgradion of their knowledge and skills.

4. Enrich the curriculum and pedagogic by employing all the technologies available including virtual class room, video on demand.

Advantages of EDUSAT

1) Provide access to some of the best teachers and teaching process for a large target group of learners. This will enhance quality of education.

2) The studio environment eliminating the  needs of a large number of competent, qualified teachers.

3) The student can ask questions to the teachers through sms, e-mail or other mode of communication.

4) The CD of classes could be available on the net without the interaction section.

   CEC (Consortium for Educational Communication):

The consortium for educational communication popularly known as CEC is one of the inter University centres setup by the University Grants Commission of India. It has been established with the goal of addressing the needs of Higher education through the use of powerful medium of Television along with the appropriate use of emerging information communication Technology(ICT). Realizing the potential and power of Television to act as means of educational knowledge dissemination UGC started the country wide classroom programmes in the year 1984. For production of such programmes media senders were setup at 6 Universities. Subsequently CEC emerged in 1993 as a nodal agency to co ordinate , guide and facilitate such educational production at the national level. Today 22 media centers are working towards achieving this goal under the umbrella of CEC.

 UGC (University Grants Commission):

The UGC was formed in 1946 to  oversee   the work of 3 central Universities of Aligarh , Banaras and Delhi. In 1947 the committee was entrusted with the responsibility of dealing with all the existing Universities. UGC was formally inaugurated by Abdul Kalam Azad, the minister of Education. The motto of UGC is “Gyan-Vigyan Vimutaye”.

SIET (State Institute of Education Technology):

SIET in Kerala, the state institute of educational technology is responsible for the planning,  research production and evaluation of educational software like video, audio programmes and computer multimedia.  SIET Kerala also aims to implement scheme to generate teaching technology and process in the modern context. SIET Kerala is the latest in the array of 7 SIET’s in the country. Department of Education , ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India sanctioned the state institute of  educational technology for  Kerala in 1998.

INFLIBNET:

Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET)

(Established in a project made in 1991 and incorporated as a Society in 1996)

INFLIBNET
Infocity Gandhinagar
Gujarat - 382 007

An Inter-University Centre of UGC the INFLIBNET serves towards modernization of Libraries, serves as Information Centre for transfer and access of information, supporting scholarships and learning and academic pursuits through a National Network of Libraries in around 264 Universities, Colleges and R&D Institutions across the country.

SIET:

SIET Kerala , the State Institute of Educational Technology is responsible for the planning, research, production and evaluation of educational softwares like video, audio programmes and computer multimedia. SIET Kerala also aims to implement schemes to generate teaching technologies and learning process in the modern context.

SIET Kerala is the latest in the array of 7 SIET's in the country. Department of Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India sanctioned the State Institute of Educational Technology for Kerala in 1998.

NME-ICT:

The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) has been envisaged as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to leverage the potential of ICT, in teaching and learning process for the benefit of all the learners in Higher Education Institutions in any time any where mode. This was expected to be a major intervention in enhancing the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in Higher Education by 5 percentage points during the XI Five Year Plan period.

The three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality could be served well by providing connectivity to all colleges and universities, providing low cost and affordable access-cum-computing devices to students and teachers and providing high quality e-content free of cost to all learners in the country. NME-ICT encompasses all the three elements. The Mission has two major components:

• A) providing connectivity, along with provision for access devices, to institutions and learners;
• B) Content generation.

It seeks to bridge the digital divide, i.e. the gap in the skills to use computing devices for the purpose of teaching and learning among urban and rural teachers/learners in Higher Education domain and empower those, who have hitherto remained untouched by the digital revolution and have not been able to join the mainstream of the knowledge economy. It plans to focus on appropriate pedagogy for e-learning, providing facility of performing experiments through virtual laboratories, on-line testing and certification, on-line availability of teachers to guide and mentor learners, utilization of available Education Satellite (EduSAT) and Direct to Home platforms, training and empowerment of teachers to effectively use the new method of teaching learning etc.

   AVRC (Audio Visual Resource Centre):

The Audio-Visual Resource centre for the school for studies in art and culture (SSAC) in the faculty of arts and social sciences (FASS) at Carleton university (CU) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  The AVRC serves the combined faculties of Art, History ,Music and Film at CU.

Services

The audio-visual resource centre provides the following services.

·        Circulation of reserve material for courses at the second-year level and above students may consult these materials on two-hour loan arrangement.

·        Online searching of the school’s teaching and reference collections, including a digital image collection.  

 C-DIT ( Centre for development of imaging Technology):

 C-Dit is a unique institution with diverse skill sets and achievements in the areas of information and communication Technologies and their applications.  Founded in December 1988 as an offshoot of Kerala state film development corporation, C-Dit started its operations with two projects founded by the government of India-one in the field of research and development in film and electronics technology and another in the area of science and development communication using video.

AKSHAYA:

Akshaya is a ICT project by the Kerala state information Technology mission (KSITM) To bridge the digital divide and to bring the benefits of ICT to the inter population.  In the initial phase it the focus was placed on educating one person in each family to be e-literate.  Malappuram a backward district Kerala was selected for piloting e-literacy.  Now akshya is emerged as one of the finest common service centre networks in the nation.

IT@ school:

It @school is a project of department of general education.  Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in school and which on a longer term would facilitate ICT enabled education in the state.  The project is now been implemented from5^th to 12 ^th standards in the state covering as many as 8000 schools.  An estimated 50 lakhs students and 2 lakhs teachers are now part of this project who have benefited from ICT enabled education.  Today the project is one the verge of completing its 10 ^th year of operation and it has a strong network of 160 mater trainers  and 5600 school IT co-coordinators’ statewide, who are school teachers themselves.  The project functions on free software platform since it provides the freedom to an individual to study, copy, modify and re-distribute any content, a process which would ultimately benefit the whole society.

VICTERS CHANNEL:

            12 hours educational channel for school education was officially inaugurated by Hon. Cheif Minister of Kerala Sri. V.S. Achuthananthan on 3^rdAugust 2006.  The channel is unique in the sense that it caters to students and teachers on a need based manner.  The programmes are aired on demand, sensitive to school curriculum and even time-table.

            The ISRO has augmented the unlinking station in time for another channel a non interactive one. The technology deployed is similar to the direct to home (DTH) technology used in other T V channels.  Education videos, as per the Kerala syllabus and curriculm, are primarily aired during school timings.