Online Handbook

This section presents a set of practical tools to support teachers and educators in facilitating meaningful online exchanges between their students and peers. It aims to address the challenge of ensuring lasting, active and collaborative online interaction and participation between students over time despite availability of many online tools. It will provide guidance on how to plan and facilitate online exchanges and use tools most effectively to achieve rich interaction and dialogue between children and young people online, especially within an international dimension.

The above photo is of an online meeting between teachers and students from different European countries on a school visit to Poppi. These types of online encounters are really valued by the children and young people allowing them to share their local insights and awareness with each other.

The full draft of the handbook is available in English, German and Italian.

Pre-Planning

Giving children and youth a voice is a crucial and yet often marginal aspect of their learning. This does not only mean allowing them to express their needs, ideas and wishes but also to be able to having meaningful conversations both on and offline. Teacher and educators have an important role as facilitators of these conversations and we have learnt from them that they often need guidance for facilitating online dialogues. Pre-planning can be an important step along the way.

Planning

The preparation for setting up and facilitating online dialogue will involve several steps. This section offers a checklist to assist teachers in making the most from their online session.

Facilitating the Online Dialogue

How are you going to keep the students engaged throughout the online exchange and motivated to have open and active discussions? For example, having student led activities usually guarantees active participation, so activities such as those adapted from flipped classrooms, presenting, journaling, drawing on paper, embodiment activities or reflection activities can be incorporated into session. This session gives facilitation and evaluation tips.

Considering Intercultural and Inclusion Issues

There are many issues that need to be considered when facilitating online dialogues that value and promote cultural diversity. This is also the case for offline classroom time and should always be given appropriate thought and planning, especially if there is a predominantly diverse group of students. The main intercultural issues cover a broad range of topics and identities including race, religion, ethnicity, culture, socio-economic backgrounds, sexual orientation, disability as well as different epistemologies/ways of knowing and different learning approaches.

Activities and Resources for Online Engagement

This section is all about activities or resources that have been tried and tested through CEPNET and other parallel projects that focus on fun motivation.