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Make World: learning Science through Computational Thinking
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Despite we are living in an increasingly technological world, the decline in scientific vocations in the last decade is inexorable. The EC warned of this fact, and Fensham stated that the two main problems have to solve science education in the long term would be negative attitudes and lack of interest around it. Other reports (Rocard, PISA, ROSE) provide evidence of the loss of youth interest in courses in STEM. The situation is alarming from a gender perspective, considering women have gone from a presence of 35% in the technology sector in 1980 to a meager 15% today. Therefore, the motivation of this project is to provide teachers and students with the methodologies and tools for teaching and learning of STEM high quality. This has set the following objectives: 1) Analyze the attitudes and skills around STEM of teachers and elementary students. 2) Design and define a methodology for the teaching and learning of STEM, leveraging the engagement of social and gamified platforms, story-telling, computational thinking, social assessment and personalized learning. 3) Develop an open, free, open source and expandable platform to promote a symbiotic relationship between STEM learning and computational thinking. 4) Create initial content and activities for the platform to facilitate its use with different levels of involvement. 5) Assess the quality and impact of the project after its implementation, both in terms of attitudes and skills about STEM schools, and the quality of the methodology, platform, and initial materials developed. Teachers and students of primary school are the main target groups of the project’s activities. With the development of Make-World they will have a powerful and high-quality set of resources and tools to develop and assess STEM and ICT competencies, as well as a dashboard to monitor student's progress and behavior. Students, through their teacher, are final users of the open educational resources and platform. They will have a flexible, attractive and innovative educational tool to develop STEM and Computational competencies. Students will have resources ready to be used and learn with them, but the platform enables them to modify, even to create from scratch characters, worlds and stories. They can be authors of open educational resources, encouraging an active participation in their learning and promoting their creativity. Students, with available learning resources, will become protagonists of their learning, and will manage the resources at their disposal. The project consortium is integrated by six partners, three R&D entities: University of Deusto, Spain (coordinator of the project); the University of Lublin, Poland; and the technological institute CTI Press, Greece; and three primary schools: Fatima Educational Foundation, Spain; Szkola Podstawowa, Poland; and Doukas School, Greece. The project will carry out preliminary studies to define and establish the fundamentals of the project, e.g. STEM and ICT curriculum and legal and ethical issues will be analyzed. The new pedagogical methodology approach designed by teachers will be the base to design and develop e-learning tools and on-line collaborative platforms where students and teachers will be able to learn, teach and co-create content of courses. The Partnership composed of universities, schools and research organizations will develop together the tools that schools will use to teach and learn STEM and Computational Thinking at different levels. Research organizations will have a key role, to develop the tools or to make the content more relevant and concrete. Make-World project will have positive and long-lasting effects on participants, organisations, persons involved in the actions and target groups. New ways of collaboration beyond the local or regional sphere open to project members. Educational modernization and improvement of resources and tools to develop key competencies, will lead to more creative, innovative and competent students. Promoting STEM and Computational skills from primary school, with a motivating and attractive approach, will increase scientific and technological vocations, also among girls who at this age abandon the taste for science and technology.
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