COLLAGE: Collaborative Learning Platform Using Game-like Enhancements
Project description
The COLLAGE project brings to secondary school students and their teachers a mobile learning platform for context-dependent games. Fun, interdisciplinary, collaboration, and challenge beyond the four walls of the classroom create new learning opportunities. The COLLAGE platform supports the authoring and playing of a board-like game on a site of educational interest. The game is played with the aid of mobile learning technology (mainly mobile phones and PDA’s, and GPS technology) with direct communication with players situated on site or in the classroom.
Why does it matter
The project is directed secondary school students (12- 16 years old) and teachers. Indirectly, parents, education policy makers, technology developers, and the general public are also involved. The COLLAGE consortium aspires to support the development of a new ˜everywhere-learning" & “lifelong-learning” culture among secondary school students, who will realise that the walls of their classroom do not exist as a barrier between school activities and everyday life, and that learning is related to life in general rather only to schooling.
Partners and funding sources
Funding Source:
The COLLAGE project is supported by the eLearning initiative of the European Commission; it started on February 1st 2006 and will be completed by January 31st 2008.
Partners:
Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Greece
Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Austia
Bundesgymnasium and Bundesrealgymnasium Schwechat, Austria
Vejle Business College, Denmark
MIKSIKE LearningFolders, Estonia
FORTHnet, Greece
University of Barcelona, Spain
Nesta FutureLab, UK
Results
The realization of the COLLAGE project encompasses the following processes:
-Identification of existing examples and development of the COLLAGE pedagogical framework.
-Integration of technologies into the COLLAGE platform
-Implementation and test of COLLAGE
-Pedagogical evaluation of the COLLAGE application
-Validation of the COLLAGE case studies
-Dissemination and exploitation activities
An efficient monitoring of these processes is maintained with regular reporting, project meetings and delivery of the results in written document throughout the two years of project duration (1 January 2006 -1 January 2008).
Methodology
The COLLAGE consortium will concentrate its efforts on studying carefully the COLLAGE case studies, their parameters and outcomes, in order to single out best practices of mobile learning, and present them to larger audiences of students and teachers in at least three countries with a view to validating it at the European level. These best cases will form the content of a major publication titled ˜COLLAGE Guide of Best Practice".
Next steps
Current and near future opportunities for presenting the work currently undertaken within the COLLAGE consortium are:
Twinning Professional Development Workshop, 6-8 April 2006, Athens Greece (presentation)
EDEN 2006 Annual Conference: 14-17 June, 2006 Vienna, Austria
EU eLearning Conference 2006, 4-5 July, Helsinki, Finland
Embedding eLearning, Critical Success Factors for Institutional Change (CSFIC ’06) an one day workshop to be held on Friday 22nd September in Alicante, Spain, in collaboration with ECDL 2006 (submission for papers open until June 16, 2006)
The 4th IEEE International Workshop on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education, November 16-17, 2006, Athens, Greece (submission for papers open until June 20, 2006)
Online Educa Berlin 2006, November 29 – December 1, 2006 (abstract submitted)
Publications
