6th ESTEAM meeting in Norway
The 6th partner meeting of the ESTEAM project took place in Magma Geopark, Norway, from January 27th to February 2nd. This was a two part meeting, where the first part was dedicated to management of the project and the second part was dedicated to LTT.
Magma Geopark had prepared a trail for pupils and guests in Vannbassengan, a local recreational area. Tuesday 29th all participants of the meeting joined 20 boys from secondary school, Husabø Ungdomsskole, in the woods. They were divided into groups, each group consisting of both local pupils and project participants. Downloading the app and heading for the tasks was all done with big smiles. The forest was beautifully covered in thick, fresh snow. Though that added a thrilling and exotic element for the hike, it also made the tasks difficult to fulfill when all rocks were covered in snow.
This field trip provided valuable input for the team to work with the following days. Many hours were spent at the Magma office in Egersund, working on developing trails and to get familiar with the TeachOut application and its CMS. There were also fruitful discussions about both features and how to develop the app further in the future. Locatify provided new step-by-step guide, presented new features and helped the participants in developing new trails for testing.
The schools in the project presented challenges in their respective countries when it comes to Natural Science education, taking the pupils to field work and the diversity and change in curricula. The University of Ljubljana presented an overview and summary of the pupils’ answers to questionnaires after pilot testing. It seems to be different opinions and experiences between the pupils in the three involved countries, but in general the kids prefer learning outdoors.
Friday 1st of February the team took a new field trip. This time to Hellvik. This is a beautiful area with several beaches, and some participants decided to take a bath. The North Sea held a temperature of 0 degrees, and they got a taste of the real Norwegian Viking spirit! At Hellvik the team tested a new trail and some new features, before they ended up back at the beach grilling sausages on the open fire for lunch.
The last day of the meeting was spent to make decisions about the future of the TeachOut application. Plans for dissemination were also discussed.
TeachOut is now ready for downloading on smartphones, and teachers can start using them in their teaching as soon as they have their own login and license.
Next, and the last, ESTEAM project meeting will take place in Slovenia 12th and 13th of June 2019.