Anna Trifonova

Followers

Following

Public Views

Interests

Uploads

Papers by Anna Trifonova

Training for digital creative teaching: outcomes of the spanish DoCENT scenarios creation workshops

For many years teaching creatively has been considered as an important factor for enhancing stude... more For many years teaching creatively has been considered as an important factor for enhancing students' creativity. Nowadays, the potential of digital tools to stimulate and exercise creativity is recognised, but the use of such tools is not sufficiently explored in today's classrooms. It has been acknowledged that educators are not adequately prepared to apply creative teaching strategies using digital tools that are attractive to students. Within the DoCENT project (Erasmus + Programme) a series of training workshops were organised in three European countries (Italy, Greece and Spain) with the ultimate goal of teachers being able to design their own creative scenarios using different digital technologies. This paper presents the experience gathered during a series of seminars organised in Spain, and the results from the point of view of teacher educators in terms of their capacity of designing creative learning activities using robots and digital games.

Download

El diseño de juegos educativos por el profesor: ¿mejora su creatividad?

Science Center to Go: Guide of Good practices

A Simple Web-based Adaptive Educational System (SWAES)

TECHNOLOGY INSTRUCTION COGNITION AND LEARNING, 2006

An adaptive educational system is complex to model. Such a system should allow various didactic, ... more An adaptive educational system is complex to model. Such a system should allow various didactic, educational and student styles and is traditionally divided into four modules for analysis and building: Domain Knowledge Base, Tutoring, the Student Interface, and the Student. In particular, the system should adapt to differences between students and the changes in a particular student. One of the main problems when trying to develop an adaptive educational system is that definitions used for instructional design by ...

Teachers Designing Learning Games

Video Games and Creativity, 2015

Abstract Creativity has become a key educational objective. How can game-based learning enhance c... more Abstract Creativity has become a key educational objective. How can game-based learning enhance creative pedagogies? This chapter proposes an approach in which teachers become game designers. It provides a model which analyzes creativity according to three dimensions: process, product, and teaching. We describe practical experiences in which teachers designed and applied their own learning games. Results highlight that game design promotes teaching practices that foster students’ creativity.

Ubiquitous Application for Mobile Learning Systems

Projecto De Tese De Mestrado Em Engenharia Informatica, 2009

Learning Transversal Skills with ICT-Enhanced Attribute Blocks

Enhancing Manipulative Learning with Smart Objects

ABSTRACT This paper aims to introduce the general theme of developing and using innovative teachi... more ABSTRACT This paper aims to introduce the general theme of developing and using innovative teaching/learning environments based on the harmonic integration of (a) Embodiment Cognition theoretical perspective; (b) recovering well known and traditional psycho-pedagogical practices (i.e. logical blocks, teaching tiles, handwriting); (c) using Smart Technologies (i.e. RFID/NFC sensors, augmented reality systems, intelligent interfaces, etc.); (d) developing Adaptive Tutoring Systems in order to support learners and teachers (or parents) actions. We describe our experiences in the framework of Block-Magic an EU funded international research project. In particular, we present the first prototype of Block Magic learning/teaching environment in which children and teachers interact with Logic Blocks enriched with RFID sensors and an Adaptive Tutoring System that support (enhance) learning/teaching process. Moreover, we provide a trials description which are currently performed in Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain.

Evolutionary Approach of Virtual Communities of Practice: A Reflection within a Network of Spanish Rural Schools

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2010

The isolation of rural communities creates special necessities for teachers and students in rural... more The isolation of rural communities creates special necessities for teachers and students in rural schools. The present article describes "Rural Virtual School", a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) in which Spanish teachers of rural schools share learning resources and teaching methodologies through social software applications. The article arrives to an evolutionary model, in which the use of the social software tools evolves together with the needs and the activities of the VCoP through the different stages of its lifetime. Currently, the community has reached a high level of maturity and, in order to keep its momentum, the members intentionally use appropriate technologies specially designed to enhance rich innovative educational approaches, through which they collaboratively generate creative practices.

Download

Evolving virtual communities of practice: genesis of a Spanish network of rural schools

International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 2010

The isolation of rural communities creates special needs for teachers and students in rural schoo... more The isolation of rural communities creates special needs for teachers and students in rural schools. The present paper describes "Rural Virtual School", a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) in which Spanish teachers from rural schools share learning resources and teaching methodologies through social software applications. The paper describes an evolutionary model, in which the use of the social software tools evolves together with the needs and the activities of the VCoP through the different stages of its lifetime. Currently, the community has reached a high level of maturity and, in order to keep its momentum, the members are decisively using appropriate technologies especially designed to enhance innovative educational approaches, through which they collaboratively generate creative practices.

Download

Magic Blocks to Trigger Creative, Mathematical, Logical, Language, Strategic and Social Skills in Pre-School and Primary School Children

Autonomous learning is a basic life-skill of critical importance for young learners' future devel... more Autonomous learning is a basic life-skill of critical importance for young learners' future development. The EU project Block Magic aims at introducing a new teaching methodology and technology targeting children between the ages of 2.5 and 7 who are attending pre-school or the early years of primary school. The overarching goal is to help the acquisition of life skills. Through the use of technologically enhanced attribute blocks, a wide variety of competences will be stimulated, such as creative, mathematical, logical, language, strategic and social skills -all these skills are important for lifelong learning. This paper presents the Block Magic methodology and gives examples of learning activities especially designed for the different target skills.

Download

E-learning and M-learning : Experiences , a Prototype and First Experimental Results

The importance of the utilization of modern technologies in education is continuously growing. On... more The importance of the utilization of modern technologies in education is continuously growing. One of the recently widely discussed fields is the one of mobile learning (or m-learning) where different mobile devices are used for educational purposes. This paper describes a system called Mobile ELDIT (m-ELDIT) that is under development at the University of Trento, Italy. It is a mobile version of an existing language learning platform (ELDIT), developed at the European Academy of Bolzano, Italy. While the ELDIT system can be accessed from any desktop PC having an internet connection, the mobile system can be accessed from PDAs and offers any-time anywhere access to the learning base of ELDIT. It means that both online and offline access can be provided to the users. A prototype of m-ELDIT is already being used by some learners as an additional tool for the preparation for the bilingualism exam, but also just for studying the Italian or German languages. The goal of this paper is to s...

Simple web-based adaptive learning technology

This report gives the developmental process of architectural design of a simple Web-based adaptiv... more This report gives the developmental process of architectural design of a simple Web-based adaptive learning system. The research in such systems has advanced significantly in recent years but there are few attempts to report the development process that could be useful for practitioner community. The system described in this project is divided into four modules that allow for various didactic, tutoring and student styles. In particular, the system adapts to knowledge differences between students and the changing knowledge of a particular student. The system considers cognitive traits of individuals at the heart of the adaptation process.

Download

of Software Engineering and Art SArt: Towards Innovation at the Intersection

Computer science and art have been in contact since the 1960s. Our hypothesis is that software en... more Computer science and art have been in contact since the 1960s. Our hypothesis is that software engineering can benefit from multidisciplinary research at the intersection with art for the purpose of increasing innovation and creativity. To do so, we have designed and planned a literature review in order to identify the existing knowledge base in this interdisciplinary field. A preliminary analysis of both results of our review and observations of software development projects with artist participation, reveals four main issues. These are software development issues, which include requirement management, tools, development and business models; educational issues, with focus on multidisciplinary education; aesthetics of both code and user interface, and social and cultural implications of software and art. The identified issues and associated literature should help researchers de- sign research projects at the intersection of software engineering and art. More- over, they should help ...

An international competence framework for digital creative teaching: the DoCENT model

Worldwide educational policies call for the development of creative and digital competences, as t... more Worldwide educational policies call for the development of creative and digital competences, as they are essential to reach social inclusion and employment in today society. Yet, educators are not adequately trained to apply creative teaching strategies, nor to fully exploit the educational affordances of technologies. In the context of the DoCENT project (Erasmus + programme), this paper proposes an innovative framework mapping the key-competences needed by teachers to effectively integrate digital creativity in their teaching practices. We report the methodology used to build the framework, as well as present its six areas and 19 competences. The DoCENT model provides teacher educators, educational practitioners and researchers with a tangible tool for embedding educational creativity in the digital society.

Download

SArt Project: Research in the Intersection between Software and Art

we have the vision that software engineering can benefit from multidisciplinary research at the i... more we have the vision that software engineering can benefit from multidisciplinary research at the intersection with art for the purpose of increasing innovation and creativity. The group participates in the development of several interactive art installations and studies the issues and problems in this particular domain. Our findings show several peculiarities of the software development projects which require further study from software engineering perspective. Furthermore, we observe that some important software engineering concepts, like testing and maintenance, which are recognized as important in contemporary software development, are often underestimated in interactive installation art.

Download

Where is Mobile Learning Going?

M-learning is a quite new, exciting and promising field. Papers on this domain are spread through... more M-learning is a quite new, exciting and promising field. Papers on this domain are spread through several conference and workshops proceedings, so it is rather difficult to have a complete view of the field. This paper aims at helping, by reviewing the existing work, and classifying the research directions that try to answer the questions of how m-learning will help reaching the goals of a better learning, and how it will be different from the rest of e-learning. Finally, we try to foresee some directions for successful m-learning research. Int roduction Computing technology has been applied to learning since decades, but it has really flourished with the advent of the Web. In recent years the quick growth of mobile technologies is promising a new revolution that might be comparable with the Web. The forecasts are (Steinberger 02) that by 2004 about 63 millions handhelds will be sold, and that approximately 38% of them will be smart phones, integrating PDA functionality with features for communication. And the forecasts are already getting true (Scott 02)-since according to DoCoMo more than 37% of Japanese population owns Internet-capable phones. More and more mobile devices with improved capabilities are appearing on the market. Lots of mobile clients already support Java (J2ME) making it easier and less costly to develop portable applications. Mobile learning (m-learning) is a field which combines mobile computing and e-learning. Will e-learning undergo a revolution like it happened with the Web? We do not know, but we must try to answer the question, by trying to imagine how mobile devices can enhance e-learning or modify it. Many people are working in this new field, and it is increasingly difficult to have an overview of what is going on, since most papers are dispersed in many conferences, and some reports are only available as gray literature. In the present paper, we present an overview of what is going on. By no means were we able to discover all the interesting papers that have been published in the field, but from the inevitably partial view we try to let emerge the trends that characterize the field.

Download

Design and Development Approaches for Creating a Mobile Learning System – Mobile ELDIT

The paper aims to describe in some details a system called Mobile Eldit (m-Eldit) that is under d... more The paper aims to describe in some details a system called Mobile Eldit (m-Eldit) that is under development at the University of Trento, Italy. It is a mobile version that can be accessed from mobile devices like PDAs, of an existing language learning platform, developed at the European Academy of Bolzano, Italy. The paper also gives description of the theoretical bases behind the system-a general architecture for supporting mobile learning.

Download

Determining the Readiness for Mobile Learning

The following presents the outcomes from the questionnaire given to Italian and Bulgarian univers... more

Determining Students' Readiness for Mobile Learning

Mobile Learning is rather new, but rapidly growing research domain. This paper presents part of a... more Mobile Learning is rather new, but rapidly growing research domain. This paper presents part of a study that we have performed to investigate the university students' readiness to utilize mobile learning. About 600 Italian and 200 Bulgarian students participated in an online questionnaire in June 2005. They were asked about the availability of devices, about their willingness to use m-learning, etc. We studied in depth also similar studies conducted in other countries and confronted the outcomes. The analyses show that the students are mainly positive to the prospective of accessing mobile learning. The attitude differs, depending mainly of their previous experience and current habits. Sometimes gender differences can be noticed and the availability of devices and students' income influence the student's attitude. Things like nationality or studied subject does not seem to influence the future of mobile learning.

Download

Anna Trifonova

Uploads

Papers by Anna Trifonova

Log In