IT Training Course

Aims at

1. Changing teachers' mentality through a modern approach starting from the requirements of the Educational Reform promoted by the Ministry of National Education.
2. Developing project management skills with a view to offering the teachers efficiency and flexibility in their educational activities.

UNITS:

• Initiation in Using the PC
• Using Multimedia Devices as Teaching Aids
• Initiation in Project Management

Teaching Method

Experiential learning:

• A new educational approach in the schools from Romania
• It includes a flexible structure for group learning activities
• The teacher's role becomes that of creator of an active background for a new kind of stimulating, relevant and efficient learning.
• The accent is on activating the creativity that aims at shaping strong personalities adaptable to the changes undergone by the modern society.

Why Multimedia?

• The PC is a modern teaching aid with a positive impact upon students. Its use contributes to the raising of motivation and mainly to improving school success.
• Students are open to modern sources of information, to new technological devices.

World Tendencies

• Students are strongly attracted and challenged by the new Multimedia devices that combine voice, pictures and sound.
• Multimedia teaching materials to be found on CD-ROMs, on the Internet, etc, strongly simplify the memorizing process being much easier to be retained due to their modernity and attractiveness.

One can learn much easier when the lessons are challenging

It has already been proved that a student can learn much easier when he is being involved in the process of learning.

• People learn best by doing.
• Through Multimedia devices we get much more information with a far lower effort.
• They offer you the possibility to choose what you learn and the rhythm in which you learn obtaining this way a stronger control upon the process of learning.

Characteristics:

• Multimedia teaching materials do not aim at substituting books or other teaching materials.
• A well-conceived Multimedia educational application is more attractive and far easier to be used than many other equivalent materials.
• E.g. A MM Encyclopedia explains things by using video and animated sequences accompanied by sound in a much more effective way.
• The result achieved by combining different media in interactive applications is incredible.

Use of Computers as Teaching Aids

• Multimedia devices offer teachers new teaching opportunities meant to optimize the process of learning.
• E.g.: PowerPoint presentations, Didactic CD-ROMs, The Internet
• !!!
  The computer should not be used in class just for its sake. On the contrary, it should be used when and where the teacher considers that it could raise the quality of his/her teaching.
• We consider that teachers must learn how to use computers also to avoid the gap between them and the young generations that are keen in using the modern devices.

Suggested topics

• Introduction in the field of Multimedia devices.
• Didactic CD-ROMs
• Use of CD-ROMs in class activity
• The Internet and its main parts
• The school Web site.

Internet Contests

• Internet contests are meant to promote the Internet Style of Learning- an interactive, participatory approach that encourages students to take advantage of the Internet as a source of information and a powerful collaborative tool.
• Students are encouraged to work in teams of two or three-from different countries- to build Web sites used as learning tools by other students.

Project Management

The new tendencies that have appeared in the Romanian society show a great need for developing project management skills. We often refer to:

• Class management
• Conflict management
• Project management
• Educational projects

Teachers should get acquainted to the principles of project management in order to:

• better organize the class activity
• be able to draft educational projects
• involve students in Internet educational projects
• be able to get financing for educational projects

WHY?

• In terms of management the students are PRODUCTS of the educational system.
• If the teachers are not aware of the real economic needs of the country and of the marketing thinking they might educate their students in a less pragmatic way.

Teachers' final evaluation

• Discovery of a fascinating field
• Opening to actual and future perspectives
• Growing "appetite" for using the computer
• The course succeeded to convince the participants about the necessity of changing their teaching methodology
• All three Units proved to be both very useful and very interesting.

Lecturers' Final Evaluation

The course totally answered the lecturers' expectations, as the participants understood the place and the role of the computer in their daily activities. At the end of the course the participants were able to:

• Use the computer for writing texts, sending E-mails and surfing the Net.
• Use didactic CD-ROMs
• Draft projects

Baia Mare
October 27, 1999

Mariana Gabriela Hudrea
Petre Mitru
Diana Slavescu
Octavian Cosma
Sorin Slavescu