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The project “Modeling at School” aimed at bringing two innovative issues to school practice. The first one is computer science modeling as a powerful tool and strategy for teachers and learners that can train 21st-century skills like computational thinking, problem-solving, or creativity. The second one, the educational pyramid scheme, is a new didactical concept that allows integrating this innovative method - and innovation in general - in a relatively short time to a broad audience. In this project, we developed several outputs that address different target groups, mainly teachers, teacher educators, students, pupils, and all stakeholders in the field of education. Besides an analysis of existing curricula in different subjects of primary and secondary education, we developed ready-to-use guidelines for teachers that introduce the basics of modeling techniques and explain how to use them at school in different subjects. We further developed a framework (a generic curriculum) for the integration of modeling in existing curricula of primary and secondary education with sample activities for and references to different subjects. As we wanted to foster also digital literacy we developed tools for creating models and their assessment as well as an online collection of COOL teaching units and materials. For this collection, we held numerous workshops with teachers and students in all participating countries in order to collect and develop varied teaching materials (e.g. step-by-step instructions and exercises, games, puzzles, task sheets, etc.) that are now provided as free OER (Open Educational Resources) on our website also beyond the project. With the integration of the developed tools and the online collection into our workshops and school practice, we wanted to train not only computational thinking but also digital literacy, which are both fundamental skills in the 21st century. In order to reach a broad audience in a relatively short time and to guarantee the dissemination of modeling and computational thinking as a transversal theme also in schools where no related subjects are offered, we developed an educational pyramid scheme, a teaching respectively dissemination concept inspired by the well-known commercial pyramid system. The didactical framework for the teaching units, workshops, and the development of materials is an effective teaching approach based on neurodidactical principles: COOL Informatics. To assure the quality of the local workshops as well as the teaching units and materials developed all participating partners were trained in the application of this brain-based teaching concept and its four principles (discovery, cooperation, individuality, and activity) for the lesson and task design as well as in modeling as learning and teaching tool. As soon as the modeling tools were ready, further activities were held in order to train all partners in the use of these tools in further workshops, at school, and in teacher education. Three higher education institutions from Austria, Finland, and Spain were involved in the project. They have experience in the field of computational thinking and are well connected with local schools and institutions. The partners complement themselves in their expertise: the Austrian partner has a strong background in didactics and psychology; the Finnish partner is specialized in education and promotion of STEAM, and the Spanish partner has solid expertise in computational thinking assessment and development of free software. For the dissemination of our intellectual outputs, we organized three online multiplier events, one in each participating country, where we wanted to reach not only teacher educators, teachers, and students but also stakeholders and authorities in the field of education. Through this project, we wanted to achieve - that teacher educators, teachers, and students recognized the potential of modeling as a learning strategy, which can support learning and teaching in different subjects, - that the developed educational pyramid scheme brings the developed framework, guidelines, tools, and materials to a large audience and, hence, helps to integrate computational thinking sustainably as a transversal theme in different subjects of primary and secondary education. In some institutions, this had an immediate impact on school practice because teachers finally got a guideline on how to deal with computational thinking as a transversal theme (something, that still causes problems for teachers without a computer science background who have to integrate it in their subjects). Our research findings show that a consequent integration and use of modeling in several subjects is possible and can also have positive long-term impacts such as a higher performance in vocabulary learning. Further empirical studies in this field would be very important and can be part of a follow-up research project.
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