Ana Iglesias Rodríguez

Case Study on Collaborative Work Experiences with Web 2.0 in Spanish Primary Schools with the Highest Institutional Accreditation Level

ICT constitutes a suitable tool for the generation of joint communicative spaces where manifold variables may converge and a wide range of methodologies and strategies can be activated, thus fostering richer levels of interaction and swift communication between its users. This case describes and analyses the collaborative work experiences with ICT that are being implemented in the third cycle of Primary Education in schools located in north-western Spain (Region of Castile and Leon). The results evince that teachers hold a positive view once they have used such technology-based approaches, although they demand a better provision of infrastructures and more institutional support, including specific aids for life-long learning schemes. Conclusions of this study have been drawn both to help and to offer some guidance to teachers engaged in innovative, collaborative, and technologically-assisted curricular processes within 2.0 school settings.

Attitude towards the use of mobile devices for the practice of oral skills in English

In this paper, we describe a project carried out to get information about the use and expectations of students towards mobile apps as educational resources. We focus our research on the leading role that Communication and Information Technologies have recently achieved as devices to assist the learning processes, and, more specifically, as elements to enhance an ubiquitous and lifelong learning of languages at tertiary level. To obtain relevant data on mobile devices as English learning resources, we have carried out a survey among university students and analyzed the results obtained, to create a realistic and updated panorama that will serve as a basis for future research.

Students' Perception of the Integration of Mobile Devices as Learning Tools in Pre-Primary and Primary Teacher Training Degrees

University education is nowadays facing the need to rethink teaching processes carried out, to accommodate them to new understandings about how the human beings learn, also transcending the use, access and appropriation of a methodology adapted to changing times where, no doubt, mobile devices have a leading role. Besides their obvious communicative and playful function, teachers and learners must be aware of the pedagogical potential of these devices that can become allies in educational processes. This study analyzes the perception of university students, enrolled in the Pre-Primary and Primary Teacher Training Degrees at the University of Salamanca Spain, about the use of mobile devices as tools to assist the learning process and as gadgets to practice and boost the learning process carried out in the classroom. Relevant outcomes have been extracted from the inspection of the data obtained through a survey to students, what has enabled us to draw interesting conclusions about the opinion of students about the inclusion of mobile devices as learning resources at tertiary level, that unravel the good disposition of the students polled towards the incorporation of these devices, both to university classes as well as to their future professional development.

Mobile apps and computational systems as learning tools

It is nowadays needless to mention the relevant position that mobile devices are gaining in our contemporary society. Technologies have experienced an exponential growth thanks to the popularization of gadgets, which, besides their former communicative function, also show a noteworthy didactic application. Smartphones, tablets and notebooks shave become common elements in our daily lives with which users, and specially youngsters, normally keep updated with the latest events and contact their friends and family in time periods between labor or teaching times. In these time spaces, on their way back home or in between classes, users can benefit from the use of apps and other resources available in their devices to improve their competence in specific fields (such as foreign languages, just to mention one) and get a more rooted and comfortably-acquired knowledge of what has been dealt with in class, thus joining the trend of ubiquitous learning, but the classroom has also became a gadget-territory, as more and more teachers take the initiative of including mobile devices as tools to learn or practice skills within the classroom and as part of subject materials. In this track, we welcome presentations about ongoing researches in which new technologies, and mobile devices in particular, play a major role to enhance knowledge practice and acquisition, and especially when they tackle either with the autonomous use of apps and devices to boost competences, or as tools to practice or acquire skills in the classroom.

Educational innovation

Educational innovation involves focusing classroom dynamics towards new trends. For this purpose it is necessary to make effective changes in teaching practices and to adapt them to the specific contexts of their creation. The inclusion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has led to most of the advances in the field of education over the last three decades. This is due to the fact that the role of ICT is not only reduced to the provision of new teaching tools, but has also led to the continuous introduction of new approaches to essential elements of education: (1) teaching programs; (2) learning; (3) teaching; and (4) work relationships among teachers, students and other actors. The works that make up this track deal with certain of these aspects through the contribution of results obtained from research proving that innovation processes developed from emerging technologies are changing school dynamics, which could ultimately involve major changes in educational processes, schools, classrooms and teacher training.

Educational experience of collaborative work with mobile devices in primary education

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate models of collaborative work using ICT by an experience carried out in a public school with a long history of integrating ICT, and which has the highest recognition (Level 5) from the Education Counsel in Castile and Leon (Spain). Under the principles of mixed approaches, predominantly based on qualitative methodology (CUAL-cuan), and using the case study method, two types of qualitative (participant observation and multimedia material analysis) and quantitative (Likert scale) information have been collected. The project was carried out in 5th year of Primary Education, with the participation of teachers, tutors, ICT support teacher and students of two classes of 5th grade. The activity takes place in a long time sequence during the academic year 2013--2014. The results confirm that ICT provide with tools and channels that have multiplied the possibilities of making cooperative and collaborative projects, as well as that its use guarantees quality in sharing and communicating processes. The experience presented provides evidence to confirm this. However, its implementation in classrooms collides with the dominant methodology based more on individual learning where the teacher continues to exercise the role of sole transmitter of knowledge.