Teacher Coaching Program – the Idea Linea B3 Project

IDEA Line B3 is a two-year coaching program for teachers who wish to be updated on how to enhance their capacity to effectively implement specific technologies in their teaching practice. The project is a natural extension of a previous three-year project aiming at fighting students’ disengagement through the implementation of extracurricular technological activities. Activities resulted attractive to students and participating school teachers expressed the need to be coached and supported in using critically technologies in educational contexts, with special attention to their implementation to didactics. Technology is not only useful in delivering lessons, but it also is useful for course preparation. In this paper we shall illustrate the project organization, its objectives, the target group, the training activities. We shall also describe the platform developed to store and share educational material and scenarios produced during the training period, the communication activities carried out, the methodology adopted, the organizational procedures as well as the monitoring activities. We shall illustrate the 3 themes object of this year’s program and their related technologies: School Without Walls (with the use of Augmented Reality – AR); Computational Thinking (with coding, educational robotics, and Internet of Things – IoT); Interdisciplinarity (with Artificial Intelligence – AI).

Qigong Therapy and Low Back Pain Syndrome in Adults a Narrative Review

Low back pain (LBP) is a common disorder bothering many people in daily life. Qigong as a part of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), is considered to be an effective therapy method in promoting health and reduce back pain in adults. Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to review and analyze the existing data about Qigong exercise and its possible effects as alternative medicine on pain and back problems in individuals with low back pain. Methods: Potentially related articles were narratively retrieved from the electronic databases PubMed and Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDRO). The search period was from January 2015 to August 2019 (01.01.2015 to 31.08.2019) and the keywords included the terms “Low back pain “and “Qigong”. Results: The main results of this study suggest the potential use of Qigong as a meditative easy movement may improve back function, range of motion and core muscle strength, it may also reduce the pain intensity and considered as a good strategy for pain management. This review might lend insight into more future studies on Qigong and its application in the treatment and prevention of low back pain. However, further experimental research is still needed.

Response and Non-response to Intervention for Reading Difficulties: What Role do Cognitive Correlates Play?

Grade 1 responders and non-responders to an iPad-based reading intervention were evaluated on their cognitive attributes. Cognitive measures included phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal memory and statistical learning, which were correlated with a lack of response to reading interventions in previous studies (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2006). The overall research question was whether and which of the cognitive variables could differentiate treatment responders versus non-responders, since this would provide valuable information in predicting which children may be better served by different types of intervention. The intervention study was conducted as a randomized controlled design, wherein 147 children (Mage = 6.75) who were identified as at risk for reading difficulties at primary school entry were allocated to either phonics or word reading based interventions. Responders included children who attained criterion-referenced word reading and fluency and decoding accuracy and fluency scores (e.g., above grade equivalent scores or above a mean of typically developing peers), whereas nonresponders did not attain age-based scores at post-intervention compared with their preintervention scores. Four separate MANCOVA analyses were conducted to determine if nonresponders differed from their peers on any of the cognitive measures. The two groups differed only on the fluency outcomes. On the reading fluency task, non-responders varied from the other groups on their phonological awareness and verbal memory scores. For decoding fluency outcomes, responders and non-responders differed only on rapid automatized naming. Altogether, these findings do suggest differences between the groups, suggesting implications of building on cognitive skills together with language skills for children with reading difficulties.

E- Learning Experiences from the Arab World

Although most Arab countries offer free public education, the majority of their educational systems do not prepare students for the labour market or equip them with the skills needed to compete in today’s global society. Teaching methods and techniques do not encourage critical and analytical thinking, and are still teacher-centred instead of being designed with intentional focus on students and learners. E-learning technologies have the potential to address most of these challenges. For example, digital technologies can make education more efficient, scalable and accessible. And with the wide spread of the internet in the region, an increased adoption of e-learning has been witnessed among Arab students and life-long learners. To assess the current state of the e-learning sphere in the Arab world, we conducted a survey to learn more about the digital learning experiences of Arab students. In this paper, we report our findings. Most of the 200 participants who responded to our survey hold a bachelor degree and higher, and claimed to spend more than 4 hours online. However, only 19.5% of all participants have enrolled in an Arabic e-learning program or MOOC, and 70% still prefer to take their courses in English. We also assess the different factors Arab learners take into consideration when joining an online course, and also explore the reasons that lead 80% of participants not to join any online courses. Our observations show that adoption of digital learning in the Arab world is very low but has significant potential for growth. The paper concludes with recommendations on how to spread digital learning in the region.

Effectiveness of The Feedback-Dialogue in Hybrid University Courses

Feedback is one of the key factors in students’ success (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). It is essential in order for them to maintain or increase their level of competence (Brookhart, 2010). But do students understand the feedback provided by their teachers? Does feedback allow students to learn and to improve their work? For the purpose of augmenting feedback effectiveness in our hybrid writing courses at the university, we created the feedback-dialogue, a method consisting in interacting with the student within its text, using the comment function of the word processor. Unlike traditional feedback, the feedback-dialogue is bi-directional, i.e. the student must not only revise its text but also respond to the teacher’s comments. To measure the effectiveness of the feedback-dialogue, we designed a two-step methodology. First, students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of feedback-dialogue were collected in a self-reported questionnaire. The items in the questionnaire were formulated from an analysis of different typologies in relevant studies (Anson, 2015; Grigoryan, 2017; Mauri et al., 2016). Second, the students’ responses to their teacher’s comments were analyzed, as well as the modifications they made during the revision of their texts.

School Principals as Jugglers

At daily basis school principals need to balance between needs and wishes of different stakeholders. As the most important stakeholder stands out pupils from which is expected to perform at high level all the time. Another very important stakeholders are teachers which (often) are not motivated enough (financially, emotionally, socially) to give the best in the classrooms. Also, there are parents which expect that their children are exposed to best knowledge; government who expect that school system in general is at internationally competitive level; and also, companies who wishes to have people / labor force who know what to do when faced with problems. To be able to satisfied all parties involved, school principals need to juggle between them and at the same time ensure that school, as an organization, is function immaculately. Our paper focus on school principals and how marketing and management knowledge can help in juggling between the stakeholders. Context of our paper is Croatia – country that had good primary and secondary school systems but by entering EU and exposing to different kind of practice and demands, needed to adopt them. In that new environment business, and especially marketing and management knowledge, become crucial for school principals.

Second Language Education in the Early Years:Implications on Literacy Learning

Learning a foreign language is not merely about learning its words and its grammar but is also learning about concepts, intellectual skills and such (Cummins, 2000: 18-19) that l that are usable skills in the first language. Many authors seem to think that this is mostly related to metalinguistic abilities (Bialystok, 2001; Garfinkel et Tabor, 1991; and others, see Gaonac’h: 2006). These skills, during early childhood, seem to be closely linked to later literacy competences, including reading and writing. Indeed, Cummins explains through his CUP theory that these skills are “linked and interdependent” (2001: 18) for additive bilingual subjects, who have a high proficiency in both of their languages. As these researchers worked mostly on balanced bilingualism in children, we are wondering if these advantages could also be seen on monolingual children who learn a second language at school in the pre-literacy years. If this was the case, how would the second-language learning influence and help develop first-language abilities and literacy? Would it be possible to easily develop a method for children in all types of schools, without the g generally high costs (financial and human) of a bilingual education? The aim of this presentation is to explore how this could be effective and if it is, how we could apply this easily in any setting. It uses a c ase-study currently taking place in Paris, France, following 38 French-speaking children during two years from age 5 to age 7.

A computer mediated training program to reduce children’s math anxiety

Mathematics anxiety is widespread among children, interfering with their ability to solve math problems in academic and every-day situations. This has detrimental, long term effects on academic achievement, engagement in STEM-related careers and employability. While a number of apps and programs have been created to improve children’s mathematical competence, they were mostly created for commercial purposes, lacking scientific validity and being prone to inaccuracies. Therefore, we designed an evidence-based, adaptive training program (Math-trolls) in order to investigate how computer mediated tutoring might reduce math anxiety. Math-trolls is an interactive online computer game designed so that children successively discover 7 planets following an intense cognitive tutoring program. With the help of a tutor, the game helps children make meaning in math, improving number sense. The space exploration theme is engaging and child-friendly, employed to reduce children’s anxiety. We conducted a pilot study on 60 primary-school children, who completed the Math-trolls game in 8 sessions. We also measured children’s math anxiety and math performance pre- and post- computerized tutoring. Preliminary results of this pilot study suggest that Math-trolls, a computer mediated training program, is efficient in decreasing young children’s math anxiety, also improving number sense and math performance. This offers valuable insights regarding the natural progression of the interrelationships between math anxiety and math performance. The program has the potential to become a valuable tool to be used within the classroom by educators, within the family by parents or by children themselves.

Gesture Recognition & Chanting Assessment For Byzantine Music Learning

Recent works related to digital self-instruction environments, present scarce efforts to provide combined instruction for gestural and vocal skills. Based upon a recently introduced learning and teaching method of vocal music, this research utilizes existing technologies to achieve the development of such a learning environment. The presented system administers the learning experience in order to improve the motion, sound and rhythm related skills of the student. Student performance is compared with a pre-recorded instructor performance in order to provide customized feedback that bespeaks the flaws of the former performance. Motion and sound-capturing technologies are combined, and related feature extraction algorithms are applied. The gestural and vocal features of the instructor performance are compared off-line to those of the student performance, in order to detect the differences, while the tempo is indicated through gestures. The system evaluates constantly the performances in order to provide visual feedback based on their differences. The aim is for the student to reproduce the instructor performance in an approximate manner. An assessment formula for the student performance is proposed and tested for its validity and accuracy. The selected musical genre on which this system was applied is Byzantine music, since its complexity and variety tests the existing sound recognition algorithms.