REPRESENTATION - Représentations des Élèves sur les Nouvelles Technologies Appliquées à la Transmission Informatique et les Outils informatiques Nouveaux

What the school children think of learning technologies
REPRESENTATION aims to develop a cartography of primary school pupils' representations about new technologies. The goal is to map pupils' representations in terms of cognitive and socio-cultural factors.
The project is based on a three-axis assumption embedded both in theory and practice. The tools and applications of recent technological development require investigation in terms of representations, as these give rise to impressions that are becoming integrated into our teaching and learning practices. Teaching for or with new technologies requires a different conceptual framework of learning processes and teaching practices, both in terms of acquisition and transfer of knowledge. Finally, learning and cost effectiveness in the process of learning material development is achieved when these are developed with methods and tools appropriate to the media, taking into account the new modes of representation and transmission.

The case study approach
The project objectives address the issue of representation through a bottom-up approach, namely through case studies. The project calls for a multi-level investigation of students' representations with feedback and quality control assurance mechanisms built into its design. Representation of new technologies and representation of new technology capabilities and the learners' perceptions being formulated will be studied with the utilisation of tools to be developed and integrated in the project. These tools include exploratory and open software and multimedia-based applications available on the WWW.
The project workplan calls for an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art, the design of the research methodology, the formation of a teacher's network and the corresponding training, tools development and installation, collection and analysis of evidence, pedagogic audit and dissemination and exploitation actions. The project's outputs will facilitate the conception, design, development and production of educational multimedia and will be instrumental in enhancing the concept of telematics and multimedia-based learning.

A teacher-oriented observatory on educational multimedia
The specific set of tools to be utilised in conjunction with pedagogical practices, learning arrangements, classroom observation, etc., is also under investigation. The project will bring to the fore the representative structures and their evolution in pupils as they learn with the assistance of telematics and multimedia. Research is to be conducted into diverse learning and cultural environments throughout Europe. Existing school networks constitute the project's research sites and validation sites will be identified based on them. The validation of tools and methods is to take place in over 100 European schools. In parallel, the project aims at the establishment of a teacher oriented observatory on educational multimedia.
The nature of the composition of the consortium is cross-sectoral in that represented are research/academic institutions, multimedia developers and management of school networks. The partnership consists of ten institutions from eight Member States.

To discern primary school pupils' representations about new technologies
A comprehensive literature review, a mapping of pupils' representations, development of guidelines and methodologies on the creation of educational software
The project users are primary school students, school teachers and in the longer term secondary school students, teachers and users of new technologies. The project architecture necessitates the direct involvement of users in all project phases and levels
The teachers participating in the project workshops will enhance their competencies and knowledge related to the pedagogical use of new ICTs. The students will benefit from the use of the tools produced to develop their representations. Both students and teachers can benefit from the use of the school network that will be set up during the course of the project
A wide spectrum of technologies (multimedia technologies, network, Internet) will be utilised within the framework of the project. The approach adopted associates the basic research related to the perceptive, cognitive and social aspects of the learning process and the applied research in the production of multimedia tools conceived for this purpose