Workshop organisation and contents

The workshop consisted of four meetings done in person. Each meeting consisted in group work and exercitations aimed at introducing several geomedia and different teaching strategies. Most of the contents were presented as if participants were their own students, with several moments dedicated to discussion. Each meeting lasted 2 and a half hours and was divided in two periods by an important moment of the workshop: the break. Those 15 minutes offered the participants time to socialize, relax and have a look at the books and materials presented during the first part of the workshop. The break served also as time for moving the activities from one room to another. Three different locations (Figure 24) were employed for ‘Geografi@Scuola’:

● the assembly room, where the workshop would start and where all participants had the chance meet each other the first time;

● the computer lab, where the participant would have the opportunity to experiment by themselves different topics, sharing a computer in pairs;

● the classroom, where working groups could be done easily thanks to the bigger space and the data projector which allowed all resources to be introduced without big problems.

At the end of each meeting, participants received the complete list of all resources (books, articles, web sites, materials, etc.) introduced during the activities (Appendix I) and a short individual evaluation questionnaire to fill in (Appendix G).

Figure 24 – The assembly room, the computer laboratory and the classroom where ‘Geografi@Scuola’ took place.

All activities proposed during the four meetings were thought of while considering learning a social and active process; and teachers were addressed as students and guided through student-centred teaching strategies

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(Prosser, Trigwell, 1999) which made them real protagonists of their own learning. The facilitator/moderator engaged with them during the activities as a support figure, as student-centred teaching and constructivist and sociocultural theories request (Kolb, 1984; Rogoff, 1994). Each activity sought to engage multiple interests by stimulating different intelligences (Gardner, 1993) and aimed at offering strategies and activities that would help teachers to support ‘deep and not surface approaches’ to geography education (Higgs, McCarthy, 2005). In all four meetings, the facilitator was invited to gradually talk less and teach more (Biggs, 2003), therefore enabling the participants to learn by doing and by imitation. As teaching geography using technology was one of the main workshop’s aims, an element of ICT skills training needed to be included (Preston et al., 2000), given that no particular computer skills were among the requirements for attending the workshop.

Aware of the low level of penetration of ICT at primary school level (European Commission, 2013), ‘Geografi@Scuola’ preferred not to present software demanding high-performance devices to run. The workshop plan took into consideration that very often schools have obsolete computers in their computer lab, no IWB in their classes and lack of experience in teaching with ICT. In order to make it easier for teachers to put into action what they would learn during the training in class, the workshop mainly promoted simple online freeware and “flexible” resources.

All geomedia presented had been collected throughout the two years before the implementation of the workshop, from professional associations, websites and journals, educational journals and blogs, forums and books, meetings and conferences. Every resource had been tested in primary school classes by the author or by other teachers, members of the Italian Association of Geography Teachers (AIIG). Furthermore, their implementation strategies and their efficacy were discussed with Dr. Lorena Rocca (University of Padua) and other colleagues from both university and school.

All activities and teaching strategies included in the workshop ‘Geografi@Scuola’ refer at least to one geomedia (Table 29). During the four meetings, a wide vision on the use of geomedia in primary geography education was also provided. In particular, teachers were guided through carefully chosen geo-resources and geo-application, which were selected by their feasibility in geography class.

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Table 29 - Media and Geomedia presented during the four meetings of Geografi@Scuola.

Meeting Media and geomedia presented

(links are available on the Appendix A)

I

 Off/on-line presentation (MS PowerPoint™, Impress™, Prezi™)  Mind maps and words maps applications (Tagxedo™, Wordle™,

Bubbl.us™, CMaps™)

 Shared documents and files on-line (Google Drive™, Dropbox™, SugarSync™)

 Social networks (Facebook™, LinkedIn™, Twitter™)  On-line research engines (Google™, Yahoo™, Bing™)

II

 On-line maps (Bing Maps™, Google Maps™, Yahoo! Maps™, ViaMichelin™, OpenStreetMaps™, MapMachine™)

 Maps as presentations (GapMinder™, Wordlmapper™, Target Map™)

 Digital globes (Google Earth™, Nasa World Wind™, Earth Atlas™)  Digital cartography editors (MapMaker™, Open MapQuest™,

Target Map™, MapBox™, Google Maps™, OpenStreetMaps™, ArcGis Online™)

III

 On-line research of images and pictures (Google Images™, Microsoft Images™, Classroom Clipart™, Cepolina™, Flickr™, Panoramio™)

 Pictures collections and database (National Geographic™, Flickr™, Google Images™, The Big Picture™, News in pictures™, Reuters™, FreePixels, Image After™, Panoramio™, Gigapan™, Windows On Our World™)

 Off/on-line pictures editing software (Gimp™, Photo Filter™, Picasa™, Pixir™, BeFunky™, Photo505™)

 On-line translators (Word Reference™, Google Translator™)  Wiki and on-line encyclopaedias (Wikipedia™, Encyclopedia

Britannica™, Treccani™)

 Off/on-line geographical games (Agenzia viaggi Italia, Italia Politica, Salva il bosco, Seterra™, Mr. Green and Friends™, GranPremio™, Geographical Games™, Didattica.org, Quia, The geography QUIZ)

IV

 On-line research of video (YouTube™, Vimeo™, TED™, KahnAcademy™, National Geographic™)

 Off/on-line audio and video editing software (Windows Movie Maker™, Virtualdub™, VideoSpin™, YouTube Video Editor™, Loopster™, Magisto™, Audacity™)

 Sounds and video downloading applications (KeepVid™, Deturl™, SaveVideo.me™, VidToMp3™)

 Instant messaging (Skype™, Facebook™, Hang-out™, Whats’app™, Viber™)

 Instant video communication (Skype™, Hang-out™)

 On-line research of sounds and music (Aporee™, GrooveShark™, Spotify™, Stereomood™, Freesound, Grsites™)

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