ETWINNING PROJECT: USING SMARTPHONE'S SENSORS TO DO A RESEARCH

 (Teniu el mateix article en català en una altra entrada d'este mateix bloc)

Following the work that was done last year with the 3rd ESO students about research and the use of smartphones sensors, this course this study has been included within an eTwinning project. In this way, we contribute to improve a wide range of competences, starting with scientific, personal, social and digital competences and ending with linguistic and communicative competences. Besides, with this kind of activities we also encourage students to make an active use of the English language and to acquire a specific vocabulary related to science. But this is not all. We motivate students and make them understand another essential aspect of science: the necessity of the collaboration between different research teams and the transmission of knowledge.

As we did last year, all 3rd ESO students have participated in a research project but only 20 students of the G4 English Language group have taken part in the eTwinning project together with 13 students of 4th ESO, those who were coursing Physics and Chemistry. The teachers involved in this eTwinning project were Marina Martínez, who teaches Art, Neus Barrera, the English language teacher and Anna Valle, who teaches Physics and Chemistry. The English teachers Ariadna Asnà and Pilar Juan have also collaborated with it.

The objective of this project was clear: students had to design a research project to study the different magnitudes of luminosity, sound intensity, the intensity of a magnetic field, temperature pressure or radioactivity. Students had to choose one of these magnitudes and make use of different sensors in their smartphones to measure them. During this process, they had to get in touch with students from other European schools who were doing the same project in order to agree some parts of the investigation and to share results and conclusions.

This main goal was divided into other specific objectives related to problem solving, the scientific method, the use of different languages (English and Catalan in our case), the use of different technologies related to mobile applications and the use of other technological tools to build up knowledge like Drive, Canva, Genially, video editors and the eTwinning platform. Equally important was the intercultural communication and the responsibility in the use of these tools.

The idea of this project and the coordination of it was born in our Secondary School, Institut Sòl-de-Riu. It also had the collaboration and coordination of the French Lycée Jean Monnet through its Physics teacher Christian Manin. At first, this project counted on five more schools: Scoala Profesionala Sig, from Romania; Special High School and Liceum for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing from Thessalonica, Greece, Scoala Gimnaziala Neagoe Basarab, from Romania and Aydin Lisesi, from Turkey. At the beginning, all teachers participating in the project got in touch with each other thanks to the platform eTwinning Live and through emails. Finally, only the French students and the Catalan students have interacted with each other and a group of Turkish students presented a study.

The idea was to develop the project along all the course. On the one hand, during the autumn, we started with the introduction activities. In our case, each student recorded a video where they introduced themselves (without showing direct images), our school, Institut Sòl-de-Riu, and a little bit of our town, Alcanar. All these videos were gathered together in two different “Geniallys”, one for the 3rd ESO students and another for the 4th ESO students (click the links in the pictures to view the videos). The French students did the same introductory activities and the other secondary schools shared some videos introducing their schools. 

(If you click on the pictures, you will be able to see the complet Geniallys)

On the other hand, teachers created the Twinspace pages for the project with different useful information about Internet security. Concepts like E-safety, Netiquette or Copyright were explained to students.

The next step was to create an activity to study the scientific method before starting the investigation. Students watched two videos and read a text where they could see the different parts and characteristics of the scientific method. They also studied a word cloud and created a padlet with all the explanations of the parts of the scientific method and their application to a specific research.

Then, during the month of January, students had to choose which project they wanted to work on, thinking about which sensors they had on their mobile phones and taking into account the real possibilities to accomplish the investigation. Different pages were created in the Twinspace in order to give students some instructions and guides to make a good work. The pages also explained the project assessment and how to make a shared poster (Canva) to present the final results. Students also had a padlet in their Twinspace which specified which projects students were going to work on. In the forum section, students wrote the objectives of their work and the initial hypothesis. In this way, all students from the different schools who worked on the same research project should coincide with these same parts.

In order to do all this, students had to know each other. The teachers scheduled some video conferences with different games and presentations. In the case of our secondary school, Institut Sòl-de-Riu, we held these video conferences in the meeting room, since we were a big number of students. Despite some technical problems, Catalan students valued these activities in a positive way and interacted with the French students.

Finally, a very sad thing happened. Covid 19 pandemic arrived and some of the projects had to be reinvented since the experimental part couldn’t be realized at home. Even so, all Catalan and French students could finish their research projects and managed to write their works. Most of them could also design the poster showing their final results.

Here you have some pictures of the process and the apps.

During the confinement, we also held two more video conferences in which students participated actively. Finally, we celebrated a final meeting in order to present the final results. This was done off school calendar and only one of the Catalan students participated in it. She was Berta Raga and she offered a very good presentation of her research project which was done by herself and her team.

In the end, students had to fill out a questionnaire in order to comment on the different aspects of the project. Taking into consideration their answers and the results obtained, we can say that despite the difficulties, the results have been satisfactory. Most of the students liked to participate in this project and they think it has been useful in order to improve their English language, above all in writing and vocabulary related to science. They have also valued the fact that now they understand how a scientific investigation works.

Here you have the most valorated Spanish posters, and the link with the other ones.