German price for innovative language program

The European project Viseus is grounded on theories of Reform education, New literacies and latest research regarding language education. It also emphasized mathetical learning, as an aspect of the learning process.

On september 23th the Viseus project received a German price, the European Language Seal 2009.Barbara Sommer, minister of Education from Nordrhein-Westfalen, handed out the prices in Bonn.

On November 11 and 12 the project has its final meeting in Osnabrück. If you would like to attend this meeting look at the website.

Multimedia, modalities and middle ages...

In the medieval society the church saw as her task to disseminate the bible to as much people as possible. However reading was the privilege of a small group . To serve the illiterates, bibles with pictures were constructed, almost similar to cartoon books.

When building churches the principles of pictures were practiced by using paintings, statues and stained glass. Music was used to arouse the emotions of people and let them participate more actively in the celebrations. For that reason organs were used, already from the early middle ages.
Using smells, like incense, completed a holistic approach to store the cognitions and emotions aroused by the celebrations. This approach was also called biblia pauperum: the bible for the poor people.

From recent neuropsychological research we know that the use of pictures, sound and smell is an enormous powerful tool to store learning events successfully. Everybody knows to recall a specific smell that reminds him/her suddenly to a lot of detailed events and emotions. When hearing favourite music, our brains produce dopamine, that makes us feel comfortable. The use of these multimodal aspects in the middle ages was, although intuitive, so powerful that modern multimedia developers still can learn a lot from it. Recent findings regarding (new)literacy confirms this.

During a visit to Braga (Portugal), guest lecturing at the Universidade do Minho, we discussed this phenomenon with Prof. Maria José Machado. She arranged a visit to the famous organs of the cathedral (Sé de Braga). Sitting high above the people, immersed in the technology of a three hundred years old instrument, knowing the neuropsychological impact of music on the learning of people, we felt humble and looked with relativism to our modern technological inventions regarding multimedia. Once again it demonstrated that our brains did not change significantly for 40.000 years….. enabling us to learn either open and free by ourselves (mathetic learning) or learn in a well prepared learning environment guided by teachers (as offered by the churches).

Literacies and new media

New media skills.


What skills do we need in today's media culture? Researchers from the Project New Media Literacies (MIT) give their opinion.

New literacy and mathetics.

For an interested audience the midtime conference on the project Viseus was held.
Central to the conference was the question of relationship between new literacy and mathetics.
In a brilliant keynote, prof. Verhoeven outlined present language education and literacy development. On these solid grounds the conference can built further.

Several speakers introduced specific themes and experts from six countries had a lively debate with the audience on actual questions.

More details on the conference will be presented soon.

New literacies as a mathetic tool

Are you just literate or already a new lit?

So far literacy was defined as:

“The ability to read, write, speak, and understand words. “

Using ICT, multimedia and other devices makes clear that we use no longer just words.
Growing up with Internet and being literate means being confronted with movies, sounds, pictures, words and sometimes even moving objects and smell. All working together to explain something, but also make the learner eager to read.

This new situation of literacy is called “ new literacies”. It is defined as:

The new literacies if the Internet and other information and communication
technologies include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICT’s to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of the information, synthesize
information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to
others.

Leu, D., Kinzer, C., Coiro, J., Cammack, D.(2004) Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the internet and other information and communication technologies. In R.B. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading, fifth edition. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Gradually it becomes clear that most learning takes place outside schools, under teacher independent conditions. That's what mathetics tries to investigate. In learning that way students encounter new literacy elements and learn to use them for their own benefit.

It is, according to Leu e.a., clear that there are some basic elements to keep in mind:

1. Internet and other ICT's are an important context for literacy and learning.

2. It requires new skills, strategies and dispositions to fully exploit its learning potential

3. it provides special opportunities for multilingual learners and schools in an increasingly globalized world.

Mathetical learning has been designed and researched in the European project "Eisweb". In the project "Viseus", development and research is going one step further, including multilinguality as a key point in vocabulary and language learning.

The projects also finds his grounding in research regarding language acquisiton, cooperative learning, practice proof concepts like some ideas from Freinet, evidence from neuropsychology and cognitive load theory. A special dictionary has been constructed, where children can, using all tools of new literacies, define concepts and relationships themselves, by actively exchanging with others. They do not consume but define their own words. This process emphasizes highly on higher order thinking skills, in his latest revision, as well as critical thinking and handling information.

Several European countries are working at this project. During 2009 the first research results will be available. The language environment, including the dictionary, will be available in 2009 for European schools.