Digital classrooms

Tech­nol­ogy with value

Over 1,100 schools use the Fic­tion Ex­press plat­form, avail­able in Cata­lan, Span­ish and Eng­lish. For Huber, what is rel­e­vant is not that the tool is dig­i­tal but that it “changes the re­la­tion­ship be­tween stu­dents and the con­tent they are learn­ing, al­low­ing it to be much more per­son­alised, fun and based on pro­ject work,” far from the tra­di­tional – and ob­so­lete – model of re­gur­gi­tat­ing mem­o­rised facts in an exam. The same idea of the im­por­tance not of tech­nol­ogy but of how it is used and the ped­a­gogy be­hind it is em­pha­sised by Xavier Pas­cual, founder and CEO of BeChal­lenge, an on­line learn­ing plat­form based on solv­ing chal­lenges. As he ex­plains, it is con­trary to the sim­ple tran­si­tion from paper to dig­i­tal be­cause that “doesn’t add value.”

This en­tre­pre­neur’s pro­posal is a tool that com­bines De­sign Think­ing, chal­lenge-based learn­ing and co­op­er­a­tive work with the aim of “achiev­ing mean­ing­ful learn­ing that en­hances soft skills: real life skills such as com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cre­ativ­ity or team­work.” To achieve this, the plat­form of­fers more than 38 chal­lenges and the op­tion to cre­ate them from scratch or reuse them by going to the li­brary of the ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tion or the teach­ing com­mu­nity that com­prises BeChal­lenge. One of the chal­lenges that the com­pany al­ready faces is how to re­duce waste, as it al­ways strives to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, be it for the school, the neigh­bour­hood or the com­mu­nity. The BeChal­lenge method con­sists of seven phases, in which stu­dents go from dis­cov­er­ing the chal­lenge to solv­ing it, per­form­ing dif­fer­ent team ac­tiv­i­ties along the way. The com­pany has al­ready helped solve more than 2,000 chal­lenges, and al­though it ini­tially fo­cused on schools, in prac­tice those who have re­quested its ser­vices most have been uni­ver­si­ties, vo­ca­tional train­ing cen­tres and busi­ness schools.

Car­los Alonso is the pres­i­dent of the Edutech group. He be­lieves that the pan­demic has shown how com­pa­nies in the sec­tor are well-pre­pared and that they have done a good job con­tribut­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence and re­sources, even for free, dur­ing the months of lock­down. The prob­lem is that, “in gen­eral, schools lack short, medium and long-term plans.” “It’s nor­mal,” he ad­mits, “that schools im­pro­vised at first, but now is the time to stop and think about what they need, analyse what is on offer and de­fine trans­for­ma­tion plans that in­clude, among other things, teacher train­ing pro­grammes and grad­ual ac­cess to tech­nol­ogy.” Based in Barcelona, the group wants to serve as the meet­ing point for all of the ac­tors con­cerned, which is why it acts as an um­brella for 70 dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies and ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions. The Cata­lan com­pany Glif­ing is one of those and shows that, if used well, new tech­nolo­gies allow each child to go at their own pace through the right per­son­alised at­ten­tion. Psy­chol­o­gist Montser­rat Gar­cia is the cre­ator of the Glif­ing read­ing train­ing method, which im­proves both read­ing speed and read­ing com­pre­hen­sion through com­puter games. Gar­cia began de­sign­ing this tool to help her dyslexic son, and al­though it was ini­tially aimed at chil­dren like him, she soon re­alised it was a tool that could be ap­plied to the whole class. “It can be ad­justed up­wards and down­wards, so if a child is above av­er­age, it will also help them to move for­ward quickly,” says Gar­cia, who notes that while 10% of chil­dren have dif­fi­culty learn­ing to read, up to “30% of chil­dren do not have prob­lems but need spe­cific help, be­cause if they do not re­ceive it, it will take them longer to learn and will be harder for them.” Around 250 schools cur­rently use the Glif­ing method. “We have had more de­mand, es­pe­cially from schools that al­ready knew us, who had been think­ing about it and then just de­cided to go for it,” says Gar­cia, “but not as much as we thought; this is a year of tran­si­tion due to the eco­nomic un­cer­tainty gen­er­ated by the pan­demic.”