Motivating students to learn the sciences, including biology, is a priority of the EU and the OECD (2016) as it directly impacts on the future development of our societies and provides an innovative advantage. vidubiology will motivate students and improve learning and take-up of the sciences by providing new video tools for investigation and reporting. Video is the media tool that inspires and engages young people and education must utilise the learning potential. Today, the active use of media still plays a minor role in the biology classroom in comparison to the classic textbook and blackboard. Teachers need more support with ideas and guidance how to implement media into the classroom. vidubiology addresses this need by providing relevant pedagogical materials of how active video can be included in the biology classroom for students aged ten to fourteen. The innovative project is about supporting biology learning, motivating students, supporting visual language and fostering media competence. It is transferring ideas from successful video education projects such as the recent vidumath but also the European network for media education viducate. A team of European video and biology experts will develop three modules which will build on each other – starting from simple photo exercises ending up with full video production. They will include photo exercises, photo stories, time lapse and stop motion and video reports. With themes such as “Can plants sweat?”, “Who eats who, in the ecosystem lake?” or “Seasonal changes in the life of plants and animals” students explore through a camera, biological content. Using a playful approach they will learn about visual media production but also strengthen biology fundamentals of; observing, measuring, comparing, classifying and mapping. vidubiology focuses on capacity building of teachers. With seven outputs the project will develop didactic task sheets, example videos, a 24 page pedagogical handbook and video tutorials, to guide teachers. All the resulting resources will be available online and with enhanced with teacher training workshops. Included will be the basics and advanced video production and what hardware/software is required so that videos can be produced in a classroom. The project will provide guidance in the areas of privacy and copyright. All project materials will be tested in during an extensive piloting phase and improved throughout the projects duration. A promotion expert will coordinate the team to make sure that the maximum audience is reached through online and offline channels. This will include three multiplier events, teacher training workshops with the full team, conference presentations and contributions to European teacher training courses. The Project web site, a Facebook page and YouTube channels will promote the project online through project outcomes and news. A project wiki will give schools the opportunity to connect with each other and work together in a protected environment.
Almost every student uses digital media every day outside of school. Our society has evolved into a digital society where information and communication technology devices (mobile phones, tablets etc.) are used and digitized content (including photos and videos) is produced and consumed. In particular, video is used by the younger generation for self-expression and communication, on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc. Although videos play a major role in young people’s lives they only play a minor role in school as a tool to support learning. The learning potential has hardly been explored or applied in schooling. Video technologies offer a variety of possibilities for use, in the methodological integration in the classroom, and as a technical design tool itself. Video as an audio-visual medium that appeals both aurally and visually - information recording and processing takes place through combined sensory perception, thus a higher learning success can be expected and learners can be specifically addressed in their learning preferences. Since students are the actual creators of the videos, digital and subject-related competencies can be specifically promoted. Using vidubiology, students develop digital skills for communication and collaboration, as well as designing digital content, as the European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens, proposes. The vidubiology team developed OER learning and teaching materials to support these skills. Materials include background information, task sheets for students and teachers, technicards for technical support and video tutorials to support photo and video production within three modules. The modules are designed to take teachers gradually from very basic to advanced media production: > Module 1 > Taking photos > “Plants and animals in the seasons” > Module 2 > Photo stories / time-lapse / slow motion > “Organisms in Action” > Module 3 > Full video production > “Creative Video!” Forty teachers with 800 students from ten schools from three countries have been involved in piloting all the materials produced by the project and have been instrumental in improving the final resources. The final materials have been put together and expanded within a 40 page professionally-designed vidubiology handbook that is available in Bulgarian, English, German and Icelandic. Over 800 photos and 75 videos were collected in the vidubiology Flickr channel and YouTube playlists, from teachers and students; these have been viewed close to 25.000 times. 25 videos were produced to disseminate and guide teachers including project highlights, pilot videos and interviews with teachers and students who worked on vidubiology. The team from Bulgaria, Germany, Iceland and the United Kingdom has made great efforts to disseminate the vidubiology ideas, invitation to events, documents and videos within their local and regional networks. Five European teacher training workshops addressed teachers directly, including an event at one of the largest zoo in the UK, Chester Zoo. An audience across all of Europe was reached with through eleven large scale online campaigns. The team organised two webinars in partnership with the European Scientix project. In addition the resources have been uploaded on to the Scientix platform and are available in all the project languages and in some cases additional languages. The project came at the right time for national digital initiatives such as the DigitalPakt in Germany that is designed to support hardware but where more ideas are needed on how they can be used to motivate and stimulate learning in school subjects such as biology. Find out more at: www.vidubiology,eu Or watch a first impression of what vidubiology looks like: https://youtu.be/elxeJrpO8aY