ICT tools in Education
ICT tools in Education Katarína Kopajová Glyfada (Athens 09/08 - 13/08/2021)This five day course took place in Glyfada, a lovely seaside town a tram-ride away from central Athens in August. Until the last minute, I was not sure if it was safe to travel, due to the destructive fires across Greece at the start of the month. Luckily, our mentor, Petros P. Georgiakakis was fantastic in communicating and re-assuring me about the safety of the region. In truth, neither the airport, nor the region where the course took place was affected by the fires. Caution did however cause 7 participants to withdraw, so instead of a group of 9, we were only 2.
Personally, I was very pleased with this situation, as it allowed an individual and very personal approach and set the chamber tone for the entire mobility. We managed to dedicate an entire day of training to Gamification and Digital Story-telling, which could have easily been two separate topics for a week-long mobility.
We were shown a complex list, or rather catalogue of ICT tools in technology, from simple crutches like temporary emails, google alerts, I love pdf (creating interactive work-sheets from pdf), to complex padlets and website builders, programs which develop algorithmic thinking, teach students to build codes and websites. We were also introduced to content creation tools, screen capturing, interactive images, templates, creating stand-alone applications, using learning management systems and using games such as scavenger hunts and competitive quizzes as a part of syllabi.
Digital publishing and catalogue creation were touched upon, we were shown various NFC (near field communication) and VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) tools and learned how to transform 3D objects into digital models.
Overall, the course was packed with astonishing and very up-to-date information and I would recommend this mobility to everyone as it is truly eye-opening for teachers who have been „thrown“ into the world of online and digital teaching.
Besides the course content, the mentor was especially lovely, humane and helpful, full of tips and tricks and even served us specialties of Greek and Cretan cuisine each day and was always ready to help and advise us in our free time. He took us on a tour of Athens and drove us (as there were only two of us) to various interesting sites in the region. Overall, an easy 11/10 for this week. I would 100% go back to learn about a different topic in the same place.
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