Abstract
The DIYLab project (Do it yourself in Education: expanding digital competence to foster student agency and collaborative learning. European Commission) seeks to explore the changes (and its educational effects) occurring in the last decade regarding digital competencies, especially in relation to the emergence of a culture of collaboration, that connects youth learning, technology and DIY (Kafai & Peppler, 2011). To achieve the project's objective, we are following a methodology based on the principles of collaborative action research (CAR). This paper focuses on the first step of the CAR process and shows the main challenges identified by teachers, students and parents in order to implement the project’s learning philosophy in the current curricula and schools organisation. We carried out a series of focus groups with teachers, students and parents from primary and secondary schools and the university to discuss what DIY learning looks like in the participants’ educational contexts. Based on these discussions we have begun to analyse how each context imagines DIY learning and how it relates to the notion of virtual space. This paper focuses in the Spanish primary and secondary school participating in the project.
Highlights
In January 2014, we began a 3-year project titled Do-it-Yourself in Education: Expanding Digital Competence to Foster Student Agency and Collaborative Learning.1 This Comenius grant stems from the acknowledgement that over the last decade young people’s relationship with digital competencies has evolved drastically
To achieve the project's objectives, the consortium membersii have followed a methodology based on the principles of collaborative action research (CAR): “A participatory, democratic process, concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment
The idea of autonomous learning was familiar to all focus group participants and it appears that it is well managed and has become an integral part of the activities carried out at the primary and secondary school participating in the project
Summary
In table 2 we have compile a list of activities that teachers, parents and students identified as containing elements of DIY learning. In school Computer classes, where the students are creating apps. The “Entrepreneurship project”: in the class Educating Citizens, the project allows students to design their own businesses. Lego League: an extracurricular project that is “really fun!” According to a parent’s comments, “the participation is horizontal and the kids teach each other.”. The event when the school is open to the perspective and current students’ families. “You can learn as much from books as you do from clicking around on ClickEdu (a language platform).”. “Many kids in English classes aren’t interested and they don’t learn... Students volunteer to participating and learn different skills or do community service activities
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