Abstract:

In the contemporary education, teachers need ICT and digital skills to enhance the teaching and learning processes. This includes familiarity with the various digital tools they could use to carry out learning activities. Despite a large number of available tools for education, the new ones are constantly being developed so it can be challenging for teachers to choose the tools that best suit their needs. To support teachers in the process of planning learning activities, including the decision on which tools to use, applications for designing learning scenarios are being developed. Such specialized tools help the teachers to plan the learning process for different school subjects starting from stating the learning objectives and selecting teaching methods and strategies. Learning scenario also includes description of all planned learning activities with the list of needed learning resources, tools, and equipment.

The advantage of tools for computer-supported development of learning scenarios is that they have potential to guide teachers in the process of designing learning activities that will enable achievement of learning objectives of a particular school subject as well as development of generic skills like collaboration, creative thinking, or computational thinking skills. The analysis of existing tools showed that their interfaces and features are not always suited to teachers that have only basic ICT skills, such as primary school teachers, but require advanced knowledge and skills.

This paper presents an ongoing research with the aim to develop an easy to use digital tool for supporting junior grade primary school teachers in the process of planning learning activities. A prototype of a web application that will guide teachers in the process of creating innovative learning scenarios for different school subjects is proposed. Teachers will receive recommendations regarding certain types of activities they could include in the learning scenario like activities for motivation and reflection as well as recommendations of digital tools that could be used to perform learning activities. Using recommendations, teachers will also be encouraged to include game based learning activities in their learning scenarios, especially those for development of computational thinking skills.

To further enhance the process of learning scenarios development, the tool will include social networking features like sharing and commenting learning scenarios. During the learning scenario development, they will be able to create scenario from the scratch, to use one of the existing scenario as a template, or remix individual activities from different scenarios. In this way, teachers will have chance to get inspiration from the work of their colleagues and implement examples of good practice in their own classroom. After the implementation of the designed learning scenario, teachers will have the opportunity to write impressions and observations. This information could help other teachers who want to carry out the same or similar learning activities with their students.
It is expected that the proposed tool will help teachers to choose appropriate activities and tools for their students, and at the same time encourage them to develop their digital skills related to the use of digital tools and educational games.

Keywords:

Learning design, learning scenario, game based learning, computational thinking.