Browsing by Subject "Edmodo"

In the past few decades, Western countries have evolved from industrial societies to information societies. Skills that are useful in life and work are not the same as before. Schools as an institution have been criticized for lagging behind in change. For this reason,21st Century Skills have been developed to work as a model of skills useful in the future. The aim of this study is to observe the ICT projects of some first-graders in one school through the lens of 21st Century Skills. My goal is to study which 21st Century Skills were learned in the projects and how. iPads were used in the projects; two classes made multimedia books of themselves and one made video interviews about different professions. The pupils also used Edmodo, which is a social media and learning environment aimed at schools. Their activity in Edmodo is also studied from the viewpoint of 21st Century Skills. Social media has changed the way people live and work in a global level, but it has not been used or studied much in elementary schools. My study is a case study whose subjects were pupils from three 1st grade classes (age ~7) in an elementary school in Helsinki metropolitan area. The school has a pedagogical ICT support person who planned and carried out the projects together with the class teachers. The projects took place in April-May 2013 and I was present at the school to observe the lessons. The data of my study comprises of my own observation notes, the video material I filmed and the content the pupils produced in Edmodo. The data is analyzed with theorybased themes as per a model of 21st Century Skills. All three classes were analyzed together. The data reflects the future challenges of teaching. Many contents of 21st Century Skills were learned in the projects. Especially, skills related to social interaction, technology, creativity and problem solving were learned. The pupils shared ideas and solved problems together. Their actions were creative and target-oriented. By using iPads the pupils worked on their ICT skills and learned to use new apps and services quickly. Edmodo supported social and technological learning goals. Some pupils uploaded a lot of content to Edmodo, some only a little. Although social media was used only briefly by the students, they learned vital skills for upcoming years in school.