Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2011 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MoTiVaTE – Visibility Through
Invisible Growing
By Miguela Fernandes
Miguela Fernandes is an ICT teacher in
Agrupamento de Escolas da Batalha in Batalha,
Portugal and a Portuguese eTwinning ambassador.
MoTiVaTE - Mobile Technologies in Vocational
Teaching and Education started in 2009, with 5
countries involved: Germany, Poland, Portugal,
Romania and Scotland. The project has been an
eTwinning project since 2008 and a Leonardo da
Vinci partnership since 2009. Each country has a
team working in school in the project and also
registered on the eTwinning portal.
These learning objects cover a wide range of
vocational topics according to the profile and
curriculum of particular schools. Consequently, the
subjects included in the project work are: Tourism,
Informatics, Landscape Designing, Art and
Architecture, Building Engineering, Biology,
Economics, English, IT, Math and Business
Education.
We first undertook some research to explore how
learners use this technology. During the visits to
each country we provide very specific training for
teachers in creating these learning objects, as well
as evaluating a suitable distribution method
(portal) for delivery. The second phase of the
project involves students from all of the partner
institutions working together to produce learning
materials on a single project with the opportunity to
concentrate on specific areas that interest them.
The project had such impact that we were asked to
collaborate with the Edinburgh Castel to produce
MP4s, in each countries language.
Two of the portals used during the project and
where the educational resources are stored are
http://motivate.ccems.pt/ and
http://www.youtube.com/lvmotivate. Everything
will be turned public at the end of the project.
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The aim was to exploit the use of new mobile
device technology for vocational training. The
teachers from all partner schools, together with
their students collaborate in creating learning
objects for distribution onto mobile devices
(specifically mp4 players).
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