Implementation began in September 2018 onsite CRISS pilot project, which takes place within the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, aims to develop and pilot the implementation of a digital platform for acquiring, validating, and certifying students' digital competencies.
As part of the project, a platform for personalized learning and teaching of digital competencies has been developed, providing users with open and scalable digital teaching opportunities via the cloud.
In the project in Croatia, 20 schools are participating, of which seven are primary schools and 13 are secondary schools. Currently, 1082 students and 80 teachers are involved in the onsite project. They will test the platform's functionality and implement and evaluate their students' digital competencies throughout the entire 2018/2019 school year. In their work with students, teachers will use the available teaching scenarios through the platform, which will assist them in the overall process of evaluating digital competencies.
It's about online A platform that allows teachers to supplement their teaching content with digital materials such as videos, images, flexible multimedia presentations, etc. Then, it offers them a simpler and faster way to evaluate, where they can monitor their students' work and progress in real time. The CRISS platform also supports a communication service that allows teachers to communicate with students at any time via messages and comments, in order to provide individual feedback on assignments and homework. On the other hand, the platform provides students with the opportunity to improve and acquire digital competencies through all subjects included in the educational system. It allows them to use a multitude of diverse digital tools and multimedia content with which they can create and design their work in a creative and innovative way.
The pioneer in implementing the project by working with the CRISS platform is the Secondary Administration School in Zagreb and Informatics professor Jasmina Kljunić, who involved second-year students in the project. From the platform's rich repository, the professor chose one of the ten offered scenarios – „My Internet.“ The goal of this scenario is to raise awareness about the safe use of digital tools and technologies, and all students, working in groups, are to develop and present a proposal for their own Internet (under the slogan „Create, Respect, and Connect: A Better Internet Starts with You“).
The CARNET team of collaborators on the CRISS project participated in an IT class and had the opportunity to observe the application of tools in teaching through direct interaction between the teacher and students. The students showed a high level of motivation working with the platform and its tools, and were extremely interested in the topics they learn in IT class. Scenarios related to the curriculum were offered and will serve the teacher to further develop students' motivation and interest in learning. A cheerful and positive atmosphere was observed among the students during the class, who worked with interest and extra effort on the tasks assigned through the platform and actively participated in all discussions. In her reflection on the progress of working with the platform, the teacher highlighted the students' positive reactions to the introduction of new forms of digital tools in teaching and believes it to be a fresh approach to the teaching process. Although Professor Kljunić teaches IT, she states that the platform is intuitive and easy to use and believes, considering the interdisciplinary approach suggested by the scenarios, that it can be used for teaching other subjects.
All interested schools can still participate in online pilot project and use the CRISS platform in their schools and enable students to certify their digital competencies.