The Life-long Learning Research Group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos started an intensive collaboration with schools for the “Modeling at School” Erasmus+ project.
As a first step we created a set of ready-to-use resources in Spanish that mentors could use with their tutors and students at schools. Then we started the promotion of the project, contacting teacher organizations that helped to spread the word among educators. Multipliers and mentors participated in an online webinar and received the educational materials that helped them to be ready for the practical work in schools with their students that they carried out for a couple of months. Finally, we assessed the impact of the project on the modeling skills of participating students.
The resources we elaborated are formed by a set of videos that students could watch in class both independently or in groups, a set of reflection activities about the videos, and a booklet with possible answers to those activities. The videos created (in Spanish) can be seen below.
What is modeling?
Why should I learn to model?
Types of diagrams
E/R diagram
Class and objects diagram
Activity diagram
The review and reflection activities can be found in the following web pages on the project site:
- Session 1: introduction to modeling https://computationalthinking.guru/workshops-spain-day-1/
- Sessions 2 and 3: playing with models https://computationalthinking.guru/workshops-spain-days-2-3/
- Sessions 4 and 5: creating my own models (Diagram guru challenge) https://computationalthinking.guru/concurso-el-guru-de-los-diagramas/