Professional Documents
Culture Documents
urur Jhannsdttir, M. Ed
project manager
Iceland
280.000 people Area half the size of Minnesota Native language Icelandic Midway between Greenland and Norway
1992 creation of the Icelandic Educational Network which connected most Icelandic schools to the Internet very early compared to other countries The innovative practices of the early technology adopters were rather slow to spread However, those practices probably influenced government and policy makers 1996 a national policy was created that called for effective use of information and communication technology (ICT) at all levels of schooling.
Study
Study of professional development of teachers and their integration of ICT in education through case studies and interviews. Part of European Union funded project EUN (European Schoolnet): Research by teacher education institution in the UK, Iceland, Italy, and Portugal. Action research model adopted by Icelandic team with goal to make successful experiences more visible and promote ICT within our university through concrete examples and sharing of experiences. Technology used to strenghten teachers capacities, skills and knowledge in how to use ICT in their teaching. Stories, narratives collected on database driven web
Theoretical Background:
Constructing collaborative culture
(Michael Fullan 1999 Change Force. The Sequel)
Collaborative technology
Kock, N. F. (1999). Process Improvement and Organizational Learning: The Role of Collaboration Technologies.: Idea Group Publishing.
Why narratives ?
The Icelandic culture builds on an old heritage of sagas Norwegian settlers brought with them the Nordic mythology in form of oral stories back in the 9th century Icelanders kept them alive by storytelling until Icelandic writers wrote them down in 12th - 13th century along with the famous Icelandic sagas. We are proud of this heritage and still enjoy good narratives and storytelling.
Sagas of Eirik the red and Leif Eiriksson: Travelled West from Iceland to Vnland via Greenland at the end of the first millennium
Story-telling in KH
A narrative culture is also strong within our institution and we enjoy many good story-tellers in social and professional activities. By taking advantage of the strenght of storytelling in the Icelandic culture we tried to meet people were they were on a known and safe ground. We wanted to bring in new ideas and new technologies but at the same time respect an old tradition. New international research on language developement show that Icelanders are strong story-tellers while they are not so good in e.g. writing expository texts or ananlytical texts.
Tale of Palli Silfertail (travelled east from US to Iceland at the end of the second millenium)
How did the use of ICT affect the teaching ? The interpretation of the narratives
We were interested to see how the teachers used the affordances of the Internet in their teaching and research One way of interpretation was using this four categories or questions: How are teachers using:
Internets easy access to information and knowledge for themselves and their students ? the possibilties Internet affords to communication and connection making ? Internet as a easy and cheap way to publish their own and their students material ? taking advantage of the Internet as an international medium ?
Access to information
Lilja Jnsdttir, assistant professor, instructional methods:
I look at the Internet as an important addition to other resources which my students can use, both at the primary school level and in the teacher education program. I expect my students to look for information on the Internet as well as in books or in traditional ways.
Access to information
Another teacher stresses the advantages of diversity and multi-vocality on the Internet compared to one dominant voice of the traditional course book which seems to be on its way out. A typical development (?):
Ingvar Sigurgeirsson, professor, curriculum and instruction: When the course book we had used was sold out we decided to give up the use of course books and instead use more diverse resources, handbooks, articles, chapters of books and especially web-materials of different kinds.
Communication
The importance of human communication in learning an increased stress on learning to participate in the discourse of the subject ? The lack of discussion tradition in Iceland problematic
Gunnhildur skarsdttir, assistant professor, instructional methods: I thougt that some students were not at all taking active part in the discussion and I would like to control that part better next time, making clearer rules about how to take part in discussion. I would even like to make it part of the course assessment. Some students did only participate in social chat while others really were more professional pointing out and asking for things that matters in academic discussion.
hypothesis
important for students (teachers) to choose their own learning paths (differentiation) important to enhance a school-culture on the Internet by stressing meaningful interaction and cooperation ideology of the social constructivism applies well to the Internet See http://barnung.khi.is