INNOVATIVE WEB TOOLS FOR SCHOOLS, Study report

Project involved over 60 teachers with quite different backgrounds: ICT, science, math, humanities, liberal arts and class teachers. 30 teachers from Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Spain and Lithuania responded to the survey. Majority of participants had at least some knowledge of ICT and access to the Internet. Figure 4 represents the changes in ICT skills of participating teachers, based on their self-evaluation against the following four-level scale:

I. I am just a beginner, I need often help from others
II: I am able to handle basic operations with computers independently, but sometimes I need help from an expert
III: I use computers independently, I don't need guidance
IV: I feel myself quite confident with computers, I am helping and guiding other teachers in my school

Figure 5 demonstrates a slight shift towards better ICT skills, which can be interpreted as a result of project activities.
Good ICT-skills are only one of many pre-conditions for successful integration of ICT into everyday teaching and learning. In order to make the difference, teachers need the ICT infrastructure, support from the administration and belief that ICT could have positive effect on learning. The respondents were provided four-level scale:

I: I do not believe computers can make positive effect on learning
II: I don't have clear position, because I have not enough experiences about it
III: according to my experiences, the use of computers can make positive effect on learning
IV: I am using computers in my teaching work often and I believe strongly it has positive impact to learning

According to the table above at the end of the project 63 % of the participating teachers declared that they are often using computers in their teaching work and believe strongly that it has positive impact to learning. 33 % has experienced that the use of computers can make positive effect on learning and only 3 % does not have a clear position as their own computer skills need some further development (see Figure 6)

An interesting detail occurring from the survey was that many teachers over-estimated their unassisted computing skills but new inputs to their knowledge-pool throughout the project made them realise that they still need some supervised training while working with more sophisticated software intended for educative use in school including web production and media software like Frontpage and Impressio, mentioned by 13 participants. Next to novelty software appeared that teachers also need further assistance while working with educational Web content management systems like eJournal and WebMagazine, both mentioned by 23 participants.

As the main aim of the project was aimed at assisting the teachers in adapting web-based learning and working environments and tools in classroom and the partners and pilot schools shared the same web based learning and working environments questionnaire tried to seek an answer to the motivation of teachers and what they consider the reason for the process of integrating ICT into education.

The results of the survey indicated that the participants brought out two main reasons. First that the use of computers in learning process raises the students` motivation to learn and that computers allow us to use new methods of learning and teaching both being mentioned 7 times. Followed by the thesis that learning with computers makes students more independent and responsible for their own learning (mentioned 6 times). Thus proving that the aim and the objectives of the project were well met by the participants.

Figure 7 illustrates the distribution of responses on the following preference scale:
I: Students need computer skills on their future job
II:Computers allow us to use new methods of learning and teaching
III: Computers can help us to individualize learning process
IV: Computers can help us to enhance communication and collaboration in learning
V: Learning with computers makes students more independent and responsible for their own learning
VI: Use of computers in learning process raises the students' motivation to learn

Another very important feature to monitor was the communication abilities of the participants. Due to criteria of partnership there was no respondents with zero English abilities but in fact 25 % of the participants indicated that their English was poor, majority declared it to be fair (45 %) and only 8 % had excellent English (see Figure 8).