The kick off meeting of the CONSTRUIT! project

took place on October 23rd, 2014 in Warwick

(UK) and lasted 5 days. In the context of the

meeting, the CONSTRUIT! team set an

implementation work plan and reviewed

project activities.

A significant amount of time was allocated to

familiarizing project members with the ideas

underpinning ‘construal making’. An intensive

workshop took place with the principal

objective to give all members of the project

team sufficient background and practical

experience to contribute to the design,

development and evaluation of the resources

for making construals,

These resources take the form of a curriculum,

an environment and online materials..

This first workshop engaged project members in a constructive dialogue regarding the

underpinning pedagogical theories and practical aspects of 'construal making' and set a

basis whereupon future project activities were informed.

The CONSTRUIT! project ‘Making construals

as a new digital skill for creating interactive

open educational resources’ is funded with

the support of the European Union under the

Erasmus+ Programme (2014-1-UK01-KA200-

001818). The CONSTRUIT! project aims at

introducing new principles and tools for a

computing practice that enables educators

and learners to collaborate in creating live

interactive resources (“construals”) that serve

as personal, shareable ‘working models’ or

understandings.

The principal objective of the CONSTRUIT!

project is to promote 'making construals' as a

new practice that promises to integrate and

bring coherence to the dual perspectives on

computing and on digital learning.

The main project outcomes are foreseen to be:

a curriculum for making construals

an open source online instrument environment for

making construals

an open online course on how to make construals

resources in the form of examples to illustrate e.g.

how ‘construals’ can be used to create Open

Educational Resources for a variety of target

groups and application areas

reports contextualising the practice of 'making

construals' and identifying its qualities and

limitations and detailing its potential.

Case studies will take place in partner sites and online

targeting learners of all ages: higher education

students, school teachers and adults. The results will

be documented to test the claims made for ‘making

construals’.

The Construit! project

Kick off meeting in Warwick (UK)

1st Newsletter 28 May 2015

Issue 1

In this issue:

Aims and

objectives

1

CONSTRUIT! kick

off meeting

1

CONSTRUIT!

goes to SciFest

2

Training seminar

with teachers

3

Our resources 3

Dissemination

matters!

4

CONSTRUIT! ideas were

presented through a

workshop at the 9th

SciFest science and

technology festival that

celebrated UNESCO

International Year of Light

and took place in April 23-

25, 2015, at Joensuu,

Finland.

Five construals were exhibited at CONSTRUIT! workshop: the Shopping

Construal, The Light Box, Hex Grid Colouring, Nim Game and The Piano

Keyboard. These construals were made available on a suite of six

laptops.

A physical light box designed by Jonny Foss and constructed by Rod

Moore at Warwick was used in conjunction with the Light Box construal.

The three core construals: The Light Box, Hex Grid Colouring and Nim

Game had extended presentations associated with them that enabled

participants to interact with construals without having to enter text into

the input window.

Visitors were encouraged to play with the construals, and

gave informal feedback through discussion with the

exhibitors.

SciFest 2015 attracted the interest of more than 12000

visitors; among them were schoolkids, high school students,

and teachers with interest in discovering new experiences

and learning about science, technology and the

environment.

SciFest webpage: http://www.scifest.fi/home_en.php

In the context of the CONSTRUIT! project an additional learning

activity took place that was characterized as "Blended mobility

of higher education students". It was a workshop-style training

seminar that took place at University of Warwick from

December 11-16 attracting the interest of 7 higher education

students from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and the

University of Edinburgh.

This seminar had two components: a short course on 'Making

Construals' in which the emphasis was on introducing JS-EDEN

as an environment for making construals followed by activities

in which the participants explored the potential applications of

making construals through discussion and experiment.

The exploratory activities focused on two principal themes: how

construals might be used by teachers, and how construals

might be most effectively deployed in the forthcoming

workshop at SciFest 2015 in April 2015.

This workshop–style seminar represented the first attempt of the

CONSTRUIT! team to establish a basic curriculum and infrastructure for

an open online course on making construals.

The SciFest-related discussions were informed by a presentation from

Carolina Islas Sedano (an educational researcher from the University of

Eastern Finland), in which she highlighted the qualities of successful

workshops for schoolchildren and reviewed her own experiences of

staging activities at SciFest over several years. Many of the UEF students

had also been involved in SciFest and they were able to share their

experience directly with the team of Warwick tutors who brought

complementary specialist knowledge of making construals.

Interestingly, during the short course, students with computing

experience worked alongside the student from an education background

in their own impromptu tutorials. Thoughts about potential applications

for making construals at SciFest were initially wide-ranging but

eventually focused on the possible implementation of a fishing activity to

illustrate refraction of light following Snell's law.

Training seminar in Warwick targeting higher education students

CONSTRUIT! at SciFest: “how do you think it works? - how we think IT works"

28 May 2015 Issue 1

Six construals targeting the members of the school community

have been developed in the context of the CONSTRUIT! project.

The construals act as vehicles for explorations and encourage the

learner to think in terms of observables, dependencies and

agency in responding to the experience of a phenomenon

Get to know our construals for making sense of...

Everyday life…

The Shopping construal reflects a

shopping experience. Budget and

products are available. Observe, explore

dependencies and do your shopping!

Basic science…

The Light Box construal simulates shining

light into a grid of cells. Each cell can contain

a mirror that faces forwards or backwards.

Can you figure out where all the mirrors are

by looking at the rays? What is the longest

ray you can make?

Learning the piano...

The Piano construal probes the mental

models of pianists - from 'finger frames'

for beginners to scales for the expert.

Solving puzzles...

The Hex Colouring construal involves posing and solving puzzles

based on colouring cells in a hexagonal grid. You can decide

how many times you can use each colour and how the colour

you can give to a hexagon depends on the colours of the

hexagons next to it. Can you solve the puzzle? Can you change

the rules? Can you cheat?! Can you adapt the construal?

Playing games ...

The Nim construal explores the strategy behind a simple

2-person game based on taking stones from piles. Are

you ready to uncover the secrets of Nim? Can you read

pile sizes in binary? Can you figure out how to win the

Nim-with-Coins variation? ... or make your own rules?

DIY (Do It Yourself)…

The Electrical Circuit construal illustrates the use of a simple

wiring diagram. Can you make the link between the wiring

diagram and changing a light bulb?

The construals can be adapted in many different ways to create a wide

range of educational resources. All six construals are publicly available

from the Project List in the JS-EDEN environment at

http://jseden.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/scifest (see the Project List)

The construals are accompanied with worksheets that guide and

support the learning process.

The CONSTRUIT! team with the support of the Local School

Committees of the 7th and 4th municipal communities of

Athens organized the seminar “Making construals as a new

digital skill for creating interactive open educational resources”

that lasted 2 days attracting the interest of 16 school teachers

The seminar took place in the school ICT lab of the 2nd Upper

Secondary Experimental School of Athens (Greece) on 8th and

9th of May, 2015.

The aim of the training seminar was to familiarize the school

teachers with the construal making process and to gain an

insight into their perceptions regarding the pedagogical value of

CONSTRUIT! practice and tools.

The 16 teachers were introduced to

CONSTRUIT! ideas through pre-developed

‘construals’; they were given the chance to

experiment with the construals exploring

concurrently parts of the ‘construal making’

process. They were encouraged to reflect

upon their experience and the educational

value of the CONSTRUIT! practice through

an open discussion. Last, the teachers

documented their views and perceptions

about the seminar and the CONSTRUIT!

practice through an online questionnaire.

Early findings are expected in August.

Greek teachers explore Construit! ideas

Get to know our ‘construals’

CONSTRUIT!

PROJECT

28 May 2015 Issue 1

‘It was inspiring to

explore the power of

computing with the

support of an interna-

tional team of experts’.

Participant teacher

CONSTRUIT! objectives and upcoming activities were informally

presented at the Athens Science Festival 2015 to interested attendees

who visited Edumotiva's stall. The festival run from the 17th to 22nd of

March, 2015 in Athens (Greece) inviting people of all ages to discover

the world of science. The Athens Science Festival was organized by the

“Science Communication – SciCo”, the British Council, the Onassis Scholars’ Association,

the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub “INNOVATHENS”, the Industrial Gas Museum of

Technopolis City of Athens and the General Secretariat for Research & Technology, in

collaboration with various academic, research and educational institutes.

Promotional material in the form of a leaflet and a poster presenting

CONSTRUIT! objectives and ideas is available online on the project

website. Press releases on CONSTRUIT! events have been also

forwarded to interested parties and representatives of school

communities. In addition, with the aim of communicating

information about the CONSTRUIT! project across a wide audience a

Facebook page for the project has been established.

The CONSTRUIT! team aims to enhance its web presence through

publications in thematic portals and social media. Additional

dissemination activities (publications, workshops, presentations)

will be pursued throughout the project implementation period.

Several dissemination activities took

place over the past months aiming at

informing school and higher education

community on the project objectives,

activities and recent developments.

CONSTRUIT! project was presented at the

plenary session of

the 8th Pan-Hellenic

Conference on ICT in

Education ICT in

Teaching Praxis that

was held in Syros

island (Greece) on May 26-28, 2015. This

is a popular conference that attracts the

interest of the Greek school community.

An article related to the fundamental

ideas underpinning the project has been

accepted for publication in the conference

proceedings.

CONSTRUIT! ideas and objectives were

also presented at Coventry &

Warwickshire hub meetings organised by

the UK Computing At School (CAS)

community on January 13 and May 19,

2015.

Upcoming event

The next transnational project meeting and joint staff training course will be held in Ath-

ens, on September 19-23, 2015.

Contact

Meurig Beynon

wmb@dcs.warwick.ac.uk

Steve Russ

steve.russ@warwick.ac.uk

CONSTRUIT! PROJECT

Dissemination matters!

Selected dissemination and awareness raising events

We are on the Web!

http://www.construit.org

Like us on the Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/

ConstruIT/1031036183614129

This publication reflects only the views of the authors and the Commission can not be held responsible for any use which may be made of

the information contained therein.

PARTNERSHIP

University of Warwick (leading

partner)

European Lab for Educational

Technology—Edumotiva

The University of Edinburgh

Comenius University in Bratislava

Helix 5

University of Eastern Finland

28 May 2015 Issue 1

CONSTRUIT”! on Facebook