Staff development: Integrating ICT effectively in ..
Staff development: Integrating ICT effectively in teaching
Start date: Jul 1, 2015,
End date: Jun 30, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
A΄ Engomis’ Primary school in Nicosia, Cyprus, has developed a strategic plan on the development of teaching tools for all subject areas, in relation to ICT and interactive boards in particular. The effective integration of ICT in teaching and learning has been one of our school's main objectives. Last year 3 classroom teachers and 2 deputy head teachers had the opportunity to attend courses in Europe using the Erasmus Plus fund. The knowledge and experiences gained, added a great deal to the implementation of our strategic plan. Nevertheless the introduction of innovations as part of quality development is always a challenge within an institution. Last year’s experience taught us that change is not an easy task. Although our project was embraced with enthusiasm among all stakeholders, we still have a long way to go in order for all of them to accept change and maintain it. This year we received more funding in order to give more teachers the opportunity to gain new knowledge concerning ICT integration in teaching and to become more confident and positive towards change. Three more teachers (the headteacher and two classroom teachers) had the opportunity to participate in seminars in Brussels and Prague.
Our projects main objectives were:
For the teachers to:
1. Learn new and stimulating teaching methods using ICT which will enable all of them to prepare better lessons.
2. Learn new web tools that will help them integrate ICT effectively in teaching in higher frequency.
3. Learn ways to motivate students and ascertain practical methods to integrate ICT effectively in teaching.
4. Broaden their horizons as members of the European Teachers' Community and learn from other countries' experience as well.
5. Disseminate new knowledge gained to other teachers in Cyprus and in Europe.
For the management team to:
1. Learn how to inspire teachers so to acquire the necessary competences and narrow the skill gap among teachers.
2. Be equipped with the skills of planning and facilitating a successful change process.
3. Develop competences to follow-up and ensure that new innovations are embedded in the daily practice.
All the staff educated formed the school's team/working group which has developed a scheme of work for the development of teaching material using ICT and interactive boards. It has also developed a five year plan on how to disseminate the knowledge gained and the material produced. The plan has provided dissemination of results in both local and international level.
At school level, through staff meetings or via peer coaching, those educated presented the knowledge gained to other teachers who did not participate in it. In addition they produced a school database of tools useful for teaching which will be shared through Dropbox. They also participated in a Facebook discussion group concerning web tools and implemented learning scenarios.
At a national level, teachers and the management team disseminated the gained knowledge to other schools through the annual ICT conference which was organised in cooperation with the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, the Cyprus Ministry of Education, local universities as well as local NGO interested in the use of ICT in the learning procedure. Also the school inspector as the connecting agent of schools and our Ministry of Education has been a key player in the dissemination of the project results through his networking. It must also be noted that this year we participated in a pilot program about Professional Development (concerning ICT) and our activities and results were presented at a Pancyprian Conference. Also our school participated in a Pancyprian Contest about innovative scenarios with the use of ICT and has been awarded with 2 prizes! The winning scenarios were published on the Pedagogical Institute's official site. Our school has also participated and won in a Pancyprian Contest for learning scenarios about reducing school delinquency. Our scenario, which involved an effective integration of ICT, was presented in another pancyprian conference organised by the Cyprus Ministry of Education.
At a European and international level, our school has its own community at the ODS portal (Open Discovery Space) through which we shared our knowledge, teaching material, web tools, ideas, good practices etc. We also participated in the European Code Week and received the European Certificate of Excellence in Coding Literacy by uploading on the official site many of the activities we did with our students on Coding. Furthermore we participated in four e-twinning projects through which we exchange ideas and good practices using ICT and collaborated in producing teaching lessons with other educators across Europe . We also received a European Quality Label for one of them. Finally we uploaded useful material on our school's website and on our facebook group.
Get Access to the 1st Network for European Cooperation
Log In