Supporting Teachers to Plan Culturally Contextualized Learning Activities

Abstract

This paper presents PACO-T, a common sense-aided computational tool that helps teachers on planning culturally contextualized learning activities supported by common sense knowledge. The tool is based on the framework PACO, a seven-step framework for planning learning activities that concerns pedagogical issues, for an effective learning. It implements the framework seven steps and makes available common sense knowledge from the Brazilian Open Mind Common Sense (OMCS-Br) knowledge base, so that teachers can analyze how people with the same profile of their target group talk about themes related to the learning activity which is being planned, and therefore possibly identify the target group’s previous knowledge and contextualize the learning activity to its needs. In this way teachers can approach themes which they consider relevant to reach the intended pedagogical goals with that specific target group.