Virtual Rural School

1. Virtual Rural School

2. Aragon – CRA de Ariño-Alloza Ariño Teruel Schools • AULA DE ARIÑO • AULA DE ALLOZA

3. NEMED Schools in Spain

4. Galicia – CRA de TEO Schools • COLEXIO RURAL AGRUPADO DE TEO (SOLLÁNS) • ESCUELA DE EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL DO AIDO • ESCOLA DE BAMONDE

5. COLEXIO RURAL AGRUPADO DE TEO (SOLLÁNS) Manuel Mesaguer Rodríguez

6. ESCUELA DE EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL DO AIDO Ángeles Pousa Díaz

7. ESCOLA DE BAMONDE María Blanco Corral

8. AULA DE ARIÑO Isabel Simón Isabel Rodrigo José A. Blesa Mª Ángeles Giménez Gemma Clavero

9. Catalunya – ZER Baridà-Batllia Schools • CEIP PORTELLA BLANCA • CEIP SANT SERNI

10. CEIP SANT SERNI Miquel Moyà Altisent

11. CEIP PORTELLA BLANCA Rosa Rius Safont

12. Asturias – CRA Juan Pérez Avello School • ESCUELA DE MUÑÁS

13. ESCUELA DE MUÑÁS Norberto Martín Gómez

14. Cantabria – Escuela Unitaria de San Andrés de Luena

15. Escuela Unitaria San Andrés de Luena Carmen Fernández Ceballos

17. CONTENTS 1.- Virtual Rural School: Goals, Contents, Target, etc. 2.- Technical Resources Used in Virtual Rural School: Moodle, Forums, Skype / Chat / Videoconference, e-mail and Distribution List (Googlegroups), Power Point and Word, Video, others 3.- Educational expectations and results obtained after the implementation of Virtual Rural School 4.- The future of Virtual Rural School, that is, the future of the NEMED Network in Spain: educational proposals at a local level and educational proposals at a global level

18. Virtual Rural School • Educational Platform called Virtual Rural School was created. It contains • training activities designed for the module • spaces designed for exchanging opinions and ideas: discussion forums, chats, distribution lists, spaces to share documents, etc. • e-learning methods • The Virtual Rural School has been designed using Moodle: • a free, Open Source software package • a Course Management System designed to help educators create effective online learning communities • a system allowing easy interaction between teachers and students, as well as among students • a design based on a "social constructionist pedagogy", which asserts that learning occurs particularly well in a collaborative environment that everyone builds together • a resource that promotes a shift in teacher role from 'the source of knowledge' to an influence

19. Virtual Rural School • With this educational platform, as a research group we aim at: • training the multigrade teachers to design Telematic Projects in order to implement them in the multigrade school • familiarizing the rural teachers with the online training so that they can experience it as students before implementing it with their own students • contributing to the creation of a small virtual community of rural teachers who share similar social realities within the same country • encouraging the cooperative and collaborative work, since we consider it essential for the correct development of the NEMED Network and enriching for every educational process

20. Virtual Rural School • These goals coincide, at the same time, with some of the goals of the NEMED Network: • to offer specialized support and training to multigrade school teachers • to evaluate the application of ICT-based methodologies and practices addressed to multigrade schools • to create the conditions for the sustainability and expansion of the network. The same process of creating a small virtual community of multigrade teachers in Spain is also generating the suitable environment for the subsequent incorporation of these teachers into the international Network

21. Virtual Rural School • We aim not at remaining on a superficial level, that is, on the merely technological level, but at placing these technological resources at the service of the teachers’ needs. This necessitates a clear identification of the learning needs of the teachers we are working with. • We point towards undoing the usually hierarchical existing relationships between experts (researchers and academic staff) and practitioners (teachers), since only in this way is a project of cooperative nature meaningful. The goal is that experts and practitioners work together, so that experts are nourished by the practitioners’ knowledge while practitioners stop being dependent and create their own knowledge and learning communities. These must be global and self-managed communities founded on experience and not only on theory all this being possible since the experts provide technological resources and knowledge (virtual rural school, wiki, etc.).

22. Technical Resources Used in the Virtual Rural School Moodle Forums Skype / Chat / Video Conference E-mail and distribution list (Googlegroups) Power Point and Word Video

23. Pedagogic expectations and results obtained • The Virtual Rural School training was designed with the purpose that the teachers participating in NEMED learn to design a telematic project, with its subsequent creation and application in the teachers’ own rural schools. • The activities were created to be carried out individually; however, the teachers were asked, specifically, to upload their exercises to share them with their colleagues. • The UB educational team had considered a collective work for the second part of the module, in which there were different activities to carry out together among the teachers of the rural schools. • To our surprise the teachers of the Virtual Rural School decided to overturn the activities scheduled in the educational platform, converting them into collective activities; this way they managed to jump towards what the UB educational team had scheduled for the third training phase. • Therefore, the module had to be quickly restructured in order to answer the need expressed by the teachers active in NEMED. The educational team assessed this change of plans very positively.

24. The teachers’ attitude is very satisfactory, for they have managed to create a link that is only possible if are really thrilled and committed with the project. On different occasions, the teachers in the Virtual Rural School have expressed their satisfaction and gratitude for the opportunity to be connected and to generate a collaborative work that fills them with new ideas and thrilling experiences (exchange of photographs, videos, opinions, experiences, beliefs, etc.). • The goals that we had planned have already been reached: • creation of a Local Network of rural multigrade teachers • who are designing and applying a beautiful telematic project • they are sharing and acquiring knowledge in different disciplines, including the use of ICT, which was the basic aim of the project • furthermore, they are learning an educational use of the ICT, and they are getting involved in the design through ICT of educational materials adapted to their schools real needs and wishes. • The project designed by teachers is "Sharing Traditions". Its purpose is to share the traditions celebrated at schools. • The ways of sharing them are different, all involving the use of ICT: Internet, Skype, e-mail (teachers’ or class’ e-mail), Office (Word and PowerPoint mainly), image processing, digital camera, sound processor application), microphone with speakers and earphones with micro, digital video camera, and also possible specific programs such as Click, Hot Potatoes, spreadsheets, etc.

25. The future of Virtual Rural School Pedagogic goals at local level 1) A greater involvement of the schools that have expressed interest but aren’t yet completely involved in the project: Canary Islands, Zaragoza and Ariño. 2) Writing a document about the design of the telematic project entitled "Sharing Traditions" (by the multigrade teachers of the Virtual Rural School). 3) An optimal development of the telematic project "Sharing Traditions" that allows the continuation of the already created Network and that, in turn, updates and improves the teachers’ knowledge of ICT. 4) Obtaining, at least, an initial contact with some school NEMED Network, out of Spain. Pedagogic proposals at global level Name of the activity: What do we have in common? Goals: links between two or more NEMED local networks, looking for points in common: languages, customs, traditions, geography, history, etc. Participants: Those multigrade schools which, in spite of language limitations, we motivate to get involved. Development: It will depend on the needs, interests and possibilities (time, languages, etc.) of every country. Schedule: The schedule of the schools that want to work together.

26. Virtual Rural School Teachers’ training in Spain NEMED project. Authors: Mónica Martínez Paz, Sara Silvestre, Mario Barajas and Roser Boix University of Barcelona. Future Learning Research gro