Digital games in classroom environments offer a fantastic opportunity to motivate and involve children and assist conventional teaching methods, both when it comes to the usual curriculum, as well as social and soft skills.
Category Archives: c2pitches
Mathematical Creativity Squared (MC2)
Mathematical creativity is acknowledged as a backbone lifelong competence necessary to be fostered in all students. However, this is not an easy task to accomplish, due not only to a lack of appropriate technologies enabling the creative design of digital educational resources for creative mathematical thinking (CMT), but also to the absence of insightful methodologies to support creative design processes of this kind among professionals.
Extend opportunities for ongoing professional development in early science and mathematics to foster creativity
The importance of on-going opportunities for and entitlement to teacher professional development was emphasised in Creative Little Scientists and is now realised in Creativity in Early Years Science Education (CEYS). At present access to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is very varied across Europe. Further recognition is needed of the value and importance of continued training and qualifications.
Include more explicit and detailed focus on the role of creativity in early science and mathematics
Include more explicit and detailed focus on the role of creativity in early science and mathematics. Provide explanation and illustration of the nature of creativity in learning and teaching in early years science and mathematics.
Encourage meaningful and authentic contexts for inquiry
Encourage meaningful and authentic contexts for inquiry, linked for example, to: events and experiences in everyday life; children’s interests and concerns; questions emerging from cross-curricular projects or explorations; and issues in the wider environment beyond school.
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Recognise the importance and roles of varied forms of representation
The research carried out in Creative Little Scientists indicates that the role of varied forms of representation in learning could be more widely recognised. There are important roles for expression and recording in different modes in encouraging reflection and evaluation of ideas, strategies and learning and providing a basis for discussion and dialogue with others.
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A message from UDLnet
Inclusive and quality education is a key means to achieve this goal. In many special as well as mainstream schools, however, there is still much uncertainty and a lack of knowledge. Though the policy context supports a shift to inclusion, professionals need more support to develop their practice. In order to bridge the gap between policy and practice the UDLnet network aspires to address this necessity collecting and creating best practices under the framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) on the following envisaged themes:
Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system
The high potential of games for learning and teaching is undisputed. For seizing this potential three persistent problems should be addressed.
First, the serious games industry displays many features of an emerging, immature branch of business, scattered over a large number of small independent players running their local shops and spending much of their time and resources at re-inventing the wheel.
Designing Games for Creativity: from theory to praxis
We discuss the design process followed for the games developed under the C2Learn framework, focusing on the creative path from the different theories of creativity to a playable, entertaining and educationally effective game product. The process of brainstorming, prototyping, playtesting, and iteratively refining is vital for the creation of high-quality engaging games.
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4Scribes
4Scribes, a game developed under the C2Learn framework, is a collaborative storytelling game played either digitally, on Android tablets, or as an analog game using special cards. Both the digital and the analog version of 4Scribes is played with four players, using cards which contain an evocative illustration (serving as a diagrammatic stimulus) and a caption of a few words.