Innovation Profile 098

Real-world examples work

"The pupils were fascinated by the fact that results of their own experiment were travelling from a sensor to their screen and were displayed in real time. Every pupil said that they wished they had been able to use such software earlier in their education."

To know that the information and analysis you are looking at is about real events, that are happening now, is very engaging. This might be information about an experiment the pupils are performing themselves, but it could also be information put on the Web a few minutes or hours ago, half way across the world.

When the real world comes into classrooms in this way. It appears to enable young people to focus more strongly on the work and to make much better links and connections to aid their understanding. Many teachers are discovering this and the ICT infrastructure and tools are available to allow all teachers to consider using real-world examples and information.

The quote above is from an independent evaluation of the use of Logotron's DataLogging Insight package (http://www.logo.com/cat/view/datalogging.html) - a 30 day full demo version is available in the downloads/demos section of their website. This package can record and graph signals from analogue sensors, measuring physical quantities, timing events and capturing details of the motion of moving objects.

In this development of pedagogy and learning, teachers are leading the way. The effect is deeper than just the novelty of new tools and new approaches to learning; the conversations and discussions stimulated by use of real-world examples and information are of significantly higher quality. The concentration and engagement is also much better, with the majority of pupils.

And this is true for teachers as well. Reading about this kind of teaching and learning has nothing like the impact of trying it, and seeing in real-life the reactions of your pupils. Then teachers will learn the value of changing their pedagogy in this way.

The Logotron Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with it.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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