Exploring Storyline pedagogy with integrated use of ICT and a virtual classroom
Norway
NO008 Ringstadbekk lower secondary school
A. Meso-level context of the IPPUT
A1. School background
Ringstabekk is a lower secondary school located half an hour outside the capital (Oslo). The school has 350 students and 40 teachers. The students involved in the Innovation are 8th grade students between the ages of 13 and 14. Sixty students and 3 teachers are involved in the Innovation.
The school was built in 1972 and has been a project school since the 70s, when it became one of the first schools in Norway to be designated as such. In different periods they have struggled to gain acceptance from educational authorities for their school vision. However, in 1997 the national curriculum that was implemented had a very strong focus on project-based learning, which gave the school a renewed status as a school with long experience in working with students on projects. The school was built along the principles of an open school, with three rooms for each level. Two of them are open; one is shaped as a rectangle and another as a triangle. The main idea behind this architecture is the same as we can see in many companies these days; different types of rooms are suited to different activities. The intention was that it would imply more flexible learning methods.
On each level there are two classes with 60 students and a team with four to six teachers. The students do not have to relate to many different teachers as the teacher team has most of the lessons. The class is divided into four groups, and each of the teachers is responsible for one group.
The school year is divided into six periods of six weeks. Each period has an overall theme into which one arts subject is always integrated, e.g. they have music grouped together for one period instead of having one hour per week during the whole year. The students receive more concentrated knowledge and they have the opportunity of studying problems in depth and creating better and more substantial products they can be proud of.
The Innovation is a storyline with the use of ICT. This pedagogical method is used to a certain extent in primary and lower secondary schools, but it is not common to use ICT in connection with the use of Storyline.
A2. School culture
At Ringstabekk they focus on creating holistic continuity in the students’ schooling. They have a philosophy about learning and teaching that involves active students. This means that the students take an active part in acquiring knowledge, as the following conversation illustrates.
Boy: Very often we get a specific task we have to work on during the lesson. There is not so much work for the teacher. They walk around in the class and help us. They are available.
Girl: We have to find out things on our own.
Boy: That is Ringstabekk's philosophy: responsibility for your own learning. You have to do things yourself. The teachers just hand out the assignments.
Girl: It is all up to you. You can decide to work, or you can skip it. What you decide influences your grades. But it is your choice.
Boy: You can choose yourself.
Knowledge is just one of three areas of competence emphasized by the school. The students also need to develop social competence and methodology. This means that they need to vary the teaching and give students the ability to use different “…senses and different kinds of competencies…the students can use their sense of form, they can create empathy and can draw different things. You can use different channels in the learning process. That is not possible when you are working with a book.” (Teacher)
Every second year the school develops a new pedagogical platform, which all teachers are involved in. This is important in relation to planning and for the further development of the school. “New teachers have to make a commitment by signing the pedagogical platform. The next time we construct a new platform, you get involved in shaping it.” (Innovation Teacher)
A3. ICT in the school and beyond
The administration and all the teachers see ICT as a useful learning resource, and they all use it in their teaching “It has never been a question of whether we are going to use it (ICT) or not. It has been a necessity. All the colleagues have been willing to learn, and we have had lots of courses.” (Innovation teacher)
The teachers are convinced that ICT can bring a new dimension into teaching and is also a new organization of the school day, since ICT provides opportunities for asynchronous and synchronous communication. As one of the teachers says: “The students can work from home on planning and preparation and become familiar with the opportunities afforded by ICT. They can use ICT to report to the teacher and hand in papers and get feedback, and they have the opportunity to ask questions.”
The teachers at the school have good ICT skills: “I think they have really good ICT skills, and most of the teachers are motivated to learn what is necessary.” (Teacher) The administration focuses on increasing the ICT skills of teachers, and the principal thinks that “…most of the teachers have the basic knowledge and there are only a few who do not handle ICT as a tool for educational purposes.” (Principal)
A4. ICT support structure in the school
The municipality has the overall technical responsibility for the school. The school has one contact person in the municipality who can assist them when needed. At the school they have two persons responsible for technical support, a teacher and a vice-principal. Their role is to keep the equipment in order and arrange for the use of ICT.
At the school they have a computer room with 15 computers, which all have Internet access. There are also a couple of computers in the library and the music room. The students have access to 21 computers. The ICT resources are not satisfactory. As the principal says: “We have very little equipment. We only have the computer room. This is our biggest problem. Many others complain about a lack of equipment, but we really think we could have done so much more if we had better access to ICT resources.”
At Ringstabekk they focus on developing the ICT competencies of teachers and students alike. They have courses for the teachers and they have developed a three-year course for the students. They are responsible for giving the students the necessary training, but they can get some assistance from the technical support staff if needed. The ICT coordinators are also responsible for training the teachers. Because of the variation in ICT knowledge among the teachers they have courses on different levels. “We do not have joint courses any more. We have not done that for a long time because of the wide variation in the ICT skills of the teachers.” (Principal)
B. Macro-level context of the Innovation
B1. National and State/Provincial Policies
There are national and regional policies that are relevant for the school’s learning vision and for the use of ICT in the Innovation. In 1997, a national curriculum was implemented strongly urging project-oriented pedagogy across the board. Contrary to most other schools in Norway, Ringstadbekk has a long tradition of project-oriented pedagogy, so it did not have to define any changes because of this curriculum. However, an important consequence is that it gives them better national backing at the policy level for developing their visions for student learning.
It also gives the school a better framework for implementing the use of ICT since this is mentioned especially in the national curriculum[1]. ICT is viewed as an integral artifact in project-based learning. They also think of ICT as a catalyst for change in educational institutions and for collaboration among teachers. The national policy plays an important part of the work with Storyline and the pedagogical visions at Ringstadbekk in general. The use of Storyline as a learning resource is connected to a constructivist view of knowledge, on which the national curriculum is also founded.
The municipality, which is responsible for the primary and lower secondary schools, emphasizes the use of ICT and project-based work. In order to get financial support from this municipality, ICT has to be an integral part of the school’s curriculum.
In the new pedagogical platform ICT is integrated in all parts. One reason for that is the municipalities’ focus on ICT. If we do not integrate ICT, we will not get more funding. So it is a double-edged sword. But we focus on ICT because we see the great opportunities it can give us. (Innovation teacher)
The school has a yearly plan for ICT training. This plan is developed according to the national and regional focus on ICT. The yearly plan for 2001/02 will focus on “…how we can ensure that the teachers will be better in using ICT in different ways and be able to use the different opportunities ICT can provide.” (Principal)
C. Thematic analysis of the Innovation
C1. Curriculum content, goals and assessment
The pedagogical method used in the Innovation is “Storyline,” where the learning process happens in a realistic context. With the use of narratives, knowledge is obtained in a context that is experienced as meaningful to the students. The main feature that differentiates this approach from others is that it recognizes the value of the existing knowledge of the learner. Through key questioning, the pupils are encouraged to construct their own models of what is being studied, their hypothesis, before testing this against real evidence and research. The key questions are used in a sequence that creates a context or setting within the framework of a story. Together, learner and teacher create a scenario through visualization – the making of collages, friezes and pictures employing a variety of art/craft techniques. These provide a visual stimulus for the skill practice planned by the teacher. It seems a kind of paradox. The teacher plans a sequence of activities by designing key questions. The teacher has the story but does not know the detail of the content.
An example of a Storyline at Ringstadbekk was one they had just before a school trip to Lofoten, in northern Norway. The students together with the teacher constructed a fictional village, Torskvik, in Lofoten. The first part of the storyline is: “The year is 1970, what kind of houses and buildings do you think they have in a village in Lofoten?” The students were working in groups, and the groups came with suggestions in a plenary discussion. They got several problems they had to find out to the next day, e.g., do they have a doctor’s office and a gas station in such a small place? When the class agreed on which buildings the village probably had, they had to draw the buildings and the people living there. An important part of the work was that the students’ drawings had to be in the same scale. After they had made the drawings of the village, the groups had to present the buildings and people they had made. A boy pointed out that we did not have “JET” gas stations in Norway in 1970, and the group that had made the gas station had to change the building. Another group presented the hairdresser in “Torskvik” who had been to Paris. The teacher asked if it was common to travel abroad in 1970. Then the students had to go home and ask their parents and grandparents. They found out, to their surprise, that the vacation habits seen in Norway today are of quite recent date. In the next part of the storyline, the teacher said that they had found oil in the North Sea. The students had to make an application for a building permit for an oil refinery in “Torskvik.” They received a positive response, but this had consequences for the village. Just two places could be used, and in both cases it implied tearing down some buildings, among others the school or the church. The students had big discussions, since both buildings were important to the local community. The students got very involved in their story, and paid great attention when they arrived in Lofoten a couple of days later.
During our observation, this class worked on a storyline about the universe[2]. As usual in Storyline, it is an interdisciplinary project, with integrated use of geography, science, English and Norwegian.
Innovation teacher 1:We have done away with subject divisions. We work with different subject areas.
Innovation teacher 3:We are work on an interdisciplinary basis but there is a close connection between the main content of social science and natural science.
Innovation teacher 1: And it is related to the national curriculum for 8th grade. We have to do that otherwise we will not be able to go through the main content in the different subjects.
As the one of the Innovation teachers says, the teacher has decided on curricular aims related to the theme of the storyline.
The students often take an active part in the shaping of projects. When they initiate a new project, four of the students work with the team of teachers to make the plans for the project. The students are involved in the whole process, from planning to realization of the project. The students are either volunteers or picked by the teachers. New students are selected for each project, that way everybody gets an opportunity. One of the teachers says that the students become more responsible for their own learning process when they have a say in the decisions made.
When they started to work with the storyline about the universe they had a plenary discussion about the theme. The students wrote down what they knew about the universe and the teacher introduced the theme.
After a plenary session, the students gathered in groups. When we were there, the first thing they did was to draw a spaceship and find out what kind of equipment would be necessary for the trip. The product was presented to the rest of the class, and they had a competition on making the best product. This was clearly motivating to the students, and they made extra efforts, because they had to convince the others in order to win the competition.
Girl 1: I liked it. We got one hour to create a spaceship. Afterwards we presented it to the rest of the class and then we voted for the best one and everybody had to use it in their presentations.
Boy: We were just one from winning the competition.
Girl 1: I thought it was really fun because we had to present it to the class and tell them what kind of equipment they had on board.
Boy: We had to convince the others why ours was the best and why they should vote for it.
The students created their own aliens with a sixth sense such as being able to read people’s minds. The storyline was organized as a trip through the universe. But it is the aliens who are traveling, so they have to present the journey through the words and thoughts of the aliens. The students made a PowerPoint presentation with pictures and text for each of the stops of the journey. The students therefore scanned pictures and the drawings they made for their presentation. The first place to explore was a heavenly body outside our solar system. The students made a PowerPoint presentation with 4-5 pictures. It was important that the pictures were illustrative. As one of the Innovation teachers says: “We told them to make 4-5 pictures and they could use animation, texts and pictures. And we told them that the illustrations had to be informative with not too much text. The text they used had to be important.”
The story continued and the next task was to explore a planet in our solar system. The groups got different planets and they had to find out whether their planet could support life. They made a PowerPoint presentation about this as well.
The last stop on the journey was Earth. The groups got three different routes to follow, from the North Pole to the South Pole. On their trip the aliens had to stop in three different places. The students got the coordinates for the places and had to find out which country they had to travel to. They had to find out about the climate, vegetation and geography of the different places. They also had to write about a natural disaster that commonly occurs in one of the areas they visited.
They have to find out what a volcano is or why we have earthquakes, and where they can happen. They have to search for information to be able to make up a story. And they have to make a story about it. (Innovation teacher)
The students then have to make a PowerPoint presentation with about 12 pictures from the journey from the North to South Pole.
The assessment strategies at the school are influenced by the national curriculum, where the goals for assessments are learning and development. Consequently, the strategies have changed from an evaluation on just the product, to an evaluation on the process as well. It is important here to have assessment with and without (numerical) grades. The assessment strategies used in the Innovation and in other projects are not different from the assessment strategies elsewhere at the school. The students get different types of evaluations evaluating their work process, how they have worked together and how each of them has worked. The student’s log is important here. They get an assessment of their presentations. During our observations the groups presented their PowerPoint presentation about different planets. After each presentation the other students give feedback on the presentation in relation to the criteria they had agreed on. The students and teachers work together in creating the criteria before they start with the storyline. “What kind of criteria must be fulfilled for this to be a good storyline? And we write down the students’ suggestions and then we systematize them. These suggestions will be the evaluation criteria.” (Innovation teacher)