Methodology

The Ark of Inquiry Summers School is designed to be highly engaging and interactive. Participating teachers will work in small groups and thus be able to collaborate with teachers from other countries, discuss ideas and exchange experiences in order to create a group activity which will encompass all the features of a successful inquiry-based multidisciplinary science activity.

The course will last for 5 days, consisting in total of 25 hours of workshop based training, such as presentations followed by hands-on sessions (10 hours of lectures and demonstrations, 15 hours of hands-on workshops). The lectures and the demonstrations of the training course will be held in an auditorium equipped with a data projector and a laptop, whereas, the workshops will be held in a multimedia laboratory where each participant will have direct access to a PC with internet connection and will carry out planned exercises.

Throughout the duration of the course teachers will participate in inquiry activities from two different points of view:

as learners performing inquiry-based experimentations participating in workshops and using on-line labs and supportive applications,

as teachers implementing inquiry-based scenarios connected to on-line experiments.

Therefore, special sessions are dedicated to showcase and practice how to introcude RRI principles into their classrooms, how to collaboratively experience and use the innovative tools and Ark of Inquiry platform, as well as how to design inquiry-based multidisciplinary educational activities using educational material from digital repositories and collections of on-line labs. Participants will learn how to set up and work in learning spaces that can be personalized, how to navigate through digital resources and on-line labs, and how to browse through existing educational scenarios and work on them.

One important aspect of the training activities is the collected feedback and the common discussion among participants. We will provide a platform to exchange ideas sand talk in detail about the requirements with respect to various aspects of the tools shown in order to facilitate their further development, maximise their efficiency and enhance the adaptation potential.