Photo: Julia M Cameron. Pexels 2023.

A new school year begins with the launch of two new educational platforms: The Augmented Assessment Library and the CACAO platform. The first development has been created in collaboration with partners from Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, and Finland. The second is a co-design with the expertise of researchers and educators from Croatia, Italy, Poland, and Belgium. 

The Augmented Assessment Library features a collection of questions with 3D representations of mathematical and scientific concepts to facilitate the assessment of newly arrived immigrant children. The library provides teachers items to assess children with Augmented Reality technology. With augmented assessment technology, students can experience the question by scanning an image or QR code through captivating videos, 3D animations, or sets of images. This immersive approach not only enhances engagement but also provides valuable insights into students' existing knowledge. To date, the Augmented Assessment library has been used as part of training workshops in the project host countries. TIDE has piloted the Augmented Assessment Library in two international workshops conducted in Valladolid and Barcelona with the participation of more than 50 attendees.
 

Image: TIDE (2023)

On the other hand, the CACAO platform features a virtual community for tachers and educators interested at teaching cell biology to kindergarten children. The platform's objective is to be a repository where teachers can create and share learning designs to teach cell biology topics with the support of music and arts. To fulfil this purpose, the CACAO platform operates in alignment with a teachers' training on pedagogical strategies to blend music and arts (The CACAO Curriculum). Although any teacher can access the platform, the learning designs will only be created by teachers completing the CACAO curriculum. All teachers taking this course will be able to create, distribute, and (re)design teaching materials from the platform. The CACAO platform features teachers to share visuals, music, and other didactic resources, protecting their authorship but allowing other teachers to reuse materials under the Creative Commons license. As part of the CACAO project, TIDE has conducted two hands-on trainings to co-design and pilot the CACAO platform.

Image: TIDE (2023)

The TIDE research group has broad expertise in research around the design, development, and evaluation of learning technologies such as (co-)authoring tools and social applications. Currently, TIDE participates in different Erasmus+ projects, developing a large number of educational tools available for the community. To learn more about the Augmented Assessment and CACAO projects, visit the corresponding websites.

Disclaimer 

The Augmented Assessment Project (Assessing Newly Arrived Migrants' Knowledge in Science and Math using Augmented Teaching Material) is an Erasmus+ K3 project (621517-EPP-1-2020-1-EL-EPPKA3-IPI-SOC-IN) with a 3-year duration. The project is led by the university consortium of The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), The Athens Lifelong Learning Institute (ALLI), University of Helsinki (UH), The European University Cyprus (EUC), The Polytechnic Institute of Porto (P. Porto), Institute of Educational Policy, Greece (IEP), The Cyprus Pedagogical Institute (CPI), and the TIDE research Group from Pompeu Fabra University. To get to know more about the project, visit the website https://augmented-assessment.eu/  

The CACAO Project (Cell Biology and Art Class Omnibus) is an ERASMUS+ K2 project (KA220-SCH-FBB8AA01) with a two-year duration. It is led by five European schools and universities (UniPula, Musica Impulse, Fabula Movens, and Pompeu Fabra). The TIDE research groups contribute to the CACAO project by supporting the design and creation of the educational platform CACAO. To get to know more about the project, visit the website: https://mycacao.eu/