An important component of the “Lehrplan 21” in Switzerland is, that students learn to handle new technologies. Its goal is to support technological capabilities in the three categories media, computer science and application.
The biggest challenge for numerous schools is the conversion itself.
The school of Menznau accepted this challenge and performed a pilot project together with IBV for digital learning and collaboration. Exciting perceptions have been delivered about how to use digital blackboards (large touchscreen), tablets and the collaboration solution CollaBoard in class, thanks to a successful project.
The Digital Solution CollaBoard
CollaBoard is a collaboration application developed by IBV to promote modern and digital ways of working. The application facilitates remote teamwork. Users can create content on post-its, documents, images and videos directly in the app and work on it simultaneously. CollaBoard is mostly used for group work, presentations and creative research activities.
Goal of the Pilot Project
The goal of this project was to find out how students react to this new way of working and whether digital collaboration between students and teacher work. Furthermore, it has been tested to what extent CollaBoard contributes to more creativity and productivity in class.
Yvonne Frank, who is the responsible teacher for the project’s students, answered to these questions:
“It is another form of encounter for students, which differs from meeting in the schoolyard or classroom. The collective way to do homework is a new challenge”, she says.
“We love to accept this challenge”, students retort, who find CollaBoard “really cool”. They’ve truly been enjoying the online search for images and the creation of colorful mind maps.
Frank adds that “collaboration would also work across classes or from home”.
The Potential of CollaBoard in Classrooms
Yvonne Frank lists, what she used CollaBoard for with her class:
- – For all kinds of group work
- – For presentations, which students had prepared for and presented afterwards.
- – In language classes to learn vocabulary more easily.
- – In NMG class (equals biology, history and geography), where CollaBoard’s search function has supported topic search.
Generally, Frank supports our theory, that CollaBoard is useful for teachers as well, for example for class preparation. However, interpersonal communication between teachers is still going to be of higher value.
Difficulties and Challenges
All difficulties and challenges Yvonne Frank tells us, are about technological requirements, not about the use of the application itself.
It has crystallized that students are really open towards new technology.
The sustainable and continuous improvement of the learning and teaching process
“After a short familiarization phase, CollaBoard provides large value for the learning and teaching process”, Frank states.
During the pilot project it has been detected, that students, who hadn’t been interested in the subject matter, participated actively in class with CollaBoard. Clearly, working with new technologies has increased their interest.
IBV would like to thank the school of Menznau and gifted CollaBoard for six months to every student of the pilot class.