Title of Initiative / Project
GeoThink
Name of Organiser
National Technical University Of Athens
Start and ending date of the Initiative
2013-2015
Was the initiative carried out in the framework of a funded project?
Yes
Funding Programme
LLP, KA3
Title of the project
GeoThink-Semantic Pathways for Building a Spatially-Thinking Society
Promoter
National Technical University Of Athens
Project number
543451-LLP-1-2013-1-GR-KA3-KA3MP
Type of deliverables
Online course, Teaching Methodology, Didactical resource
Thematic area
ICT, Science
Language of the deliverable
English
Target Group
Teachers, Students
Description of the initiative
The main aims of the project are:
1. to enhance spatial thinking through an innovative ICT-based approach and an open, collaborative educational environment. Spatial thinking will be enhanced by fostering its three fundamental components: (a) geospatial concepts, (b) representation tools, and (c) reasoning processes.
2. to offer a methodological approach which allows the interdisciplinary organization and semantic linkage of knowledge.
These aims will be achieved through the following specific objectives:
Development of a pedagogical framework that will introduce essential strategies for the development of an innovative learning approach towards effective spatial thinking.
Design of the GEOTHNK learning pathways based on the proposed framework that will focus on the organisation of a core set of learning components (concepts, representation tools, reasoning processes, and learning activities) according to the specific needs and characteristics of each target group.
Development of an open, collaborative educational environment, the GEOTHNK Platform that will enable:
a. access to various thematic resources and to learning pathways
b. creation of new learning pathways
c. semantic linkage of the learning components and relative information for the enrichment of learning pathways.
d. formulation of a rich semantic network to provide a dynamic structure facilitating knowledge visualization and exploration.
Piloting the project approach and tools with the user communities
Development of a systematic evaluation and validation approach of the proposed activities in order to identify their impact and analyse these approaches through real life pilots in various learning contexts, in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency
To ensure that the GEOTHNK products are communicated to a wide range of audiences
Teachers’ Opinion
Developing spatial thinking is a process that could improve the level of understanding and applicability of scientific knowledge students receive in schools. In my opinion it refers to functional literacy and I was very happy to see there is such an initiative. I find the resources with high pedagogical quality and their implementation in the teaching practice could be very easy.
Students’ Opinion
I do not really understand how spatial thinking is related to science education. I do not find the website interesting and the documents that are available are only written documents, there are no experiments of virtual labs.
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