Presented at LILAC 2016

1. AMORES: An Approach to Motivating
learners to Read in European Schools - Digital
Literacy in Action
Dr Geoff Walton, Senior Lecturer,
Northumbria University
Dr Mark Childs, Senior Research Fellow,
Coventry University (now at Oxford Brookes)
LILAC March 2016

2. Plan
• Background
• Our schools
• Overview of project
• Data gathering
• Baseline data from UK and Denmark
• Our response – creativity, creativity, constructionist
• Results from Sweden
• Feedback from UK
• Findings
• A information literacy of fiction?

3. Background
• AMORES- An Approach to MOtivating
learners to Read in European Schools
• Strap line - Discovering a love for literature
through digital collaboration and creativity
• EU Comenius multi-lateral strand, €299,500
• Two year project from 1/12/13 – 30/11/15
• Partner universities: Coventry, Staffordshire
Northumbria
• Partner schools in Croatia, Denmark,
Poland, Sweden and UK
• Management partners: CARNet (Croatia),
Cyberall Access (Greece) and 36,6 (Poland)

4. Five schools
• Skaegkaerschool in Silkeborg, Denmark
• Horvati Primary school in Zagreb, Croatia
• Primary School ABiS - School4Child in Lodz,
Poland
• Karlbergsskolan in Köping, Sweden
• St. Mary’s Catholic Primary, in Newcastle-
under-Lyme, Staffordshire
• Total of 400 school students (grades 1-9)

5. Overview
• Aim - Motivating learners to read through the creation
of digital artefacts
Why?
• Baseline data indicates a need
How do we address the need? Our response
• Focus on creativity
• Focus on teachers via face-to-face and online
workshops to enhance their digital literacy
What were the outcomes?
• Examples of children’s work (before and after)
• Findings
• An information literacy of fiction?

6. Data gathering
• Qualitative approach (main approach)
– Looking for any patterns, relationships and themes in
the responses
– Exploratory and not looking to find statistical
significance or ‘proof’ – even one instance of a
comment may be significant
• Quantitative approach
– Specifically ‘sentiment analysis’ – the degree of
emotion (positive or negative) shown in responses
– Scale 1 to 5 (where 1 is neutral & 5 is highly positive )
& -1 to -5 (where -1 is neutral & -5 is highly negative)
– Looking for numerical differences
– Demonstrable differences may be statistically
significant

7. UK data: qualitative
• Year 5 (9 year olds) in 2 classes (n=50)
• All responses transcribed from hard copy
• 4 themes identified:
– Theme 1 is related to feelings about reading
– Theme 2 appears to centre on the notion of
boredom
– Theme 3 is around the pragmatic/enriching
benefits/value of reading
– Theme 4 is around location

8. Relationship between themes -
snapshot
• Identified 5 highest frequency and 5 lowest
frequency readers by using responses from
question 3

9. High frequency readers tend to…
• Express very positive feelings (T1) about reading,
‘I enjoy it’, ‘I love it’, I like reading a lot’, ‘the
books I have read have inspired me’
• See the value of reading (T3), ‘Reading does not
just help you read, it helps you with your work,
‘you will learn new words’
• Be qualified in there feelings of boredom (T2),
‘some books are boring’,
• Read at home (T4) (especially in bed) and at
school

10. Low frequency readers tend to…
• Have mixed feelings (T1) about reading, sometimes I
think reading is a little bit fun, ‘you can be doing some
more important stuff’, ‘reading books you don’t enjoy’.
• Express strong feeling of general boredom (T2), ‘’books
are very, very boring, ‘it’s boring’, ‘boredom and tiring’.
• Mention value (T3), ‘you can learn’, ‘if you read it’s
better to learn’, ‘learning facts and new words’
• Read EITHER at home or school, not both (Location,
T4)

11. UK data: quantitative
• Used sentiment analysis tool Sentistrength to
measure level of emotion in responses from
‘snapshot group’
• All questions scored and aggregated
A1 A5 A14 A25 B8 A9 A23 B12 B15 B18
High High High High High Low Low Low Low Low
Summary score 2 4 5 2 5 -1 0 -2 0 1
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Aggregatedscore
Sentiment: summary scores, high v low frequency
readers
• Appears to
be a
relationship
between
sentiment
and reading
frequency

12. Denmark data: qualitative
• Total of 61 responses (4th and 6th grade)
• Began by using same themes as per UK

13. Similar themes emerged
• Theme 1 – feelings
– ‘I think is exciting and cosy to reading if I have a good book’
– ‘ ‘I never read for fun. I just read for fulfilling my reading
contract’
• Theme 2 - boredom
– ‘The bad things about reading are that it is boring’
• Theme 3 – value
– ‘The good thing about reading is that you learn from it and
that you can use it in the future’
• Theme 4 – location
– I don’t always have time to read but if I have time I
sometimes read before bed and in the weekends’

14. Our response
• Creativity
• Collaboration
• Constructivist and constructionist

15. Why creation?
(2008)
Enabling the
student to create a
new product or
point of view?

16. Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering
Creating
Bloom’s
revised
taxonomy

18. Online collaboration for design
Learning through design has two essential
features:
• learners construct meaning through the act of
design – constructivism
• collaborative learning - meaning is
constructed jointly by a community – social
constructivism
• Combined in constructionism – Papert –
blends cognitivist and situative strategies

19. So online social tools key too
• Edmodo for asynchronous sharing
• Skype or Connect for synchronous link
• DK use Facebook, PL use videoconference
• Limitations
– “In England in particular where we have legislation (sic)
about social networking and things like that. I know it’s a
secure server but I still think that’s a big concern, even
though it’s in an educational setting. It’s something we
need to look into before we can say for definitely. “

20. Teachers f2f workshops
• Participatory
• Aim
– Create a collaborative team across the 5 schools
• Achieved through 3 day workshop
– Confidence building
– Identify digital skills gaps
– Opportunities for collaboration
– Identify focus for online follow-up workshop

21. Technological focus
• Technologies for creation
– Videos (PowerPoint, Prezi, Slidemaker, keynote)
(iMovie, Moviemaker) (Animoto, Tiki-Toki,
Photobooth)
– Comic Strip generators (Lego Storyteller, various
online eg Makebeliefs, ToonDoo, Witty Comics)
– Statistics-based card game “Top Trumps”

23. Online workshop
• From the workshop emerged an outline
syllabus for the online workshop:
– Creating movies, Cartoons, Games, secure social
media (Edmodo), Videoconferencing
• Two week pre-workshop lead-in (from 5th
May)
• Six week online course
• Evaluation via questionnaire and focus group
• Constructivist, learning by doing approach

24. Some results from Sweden…
Sweden – Mio my son
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2s-YCNG1jc#t=97
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDTlUXMx9CY#t=152
http://mojojojodesuyo.edu.glogster.com/untitled-glog/

25. UK children’s feedback
• We read the book, then we had to make up our own
Mischevions.
• Mine was called Grease Grocer, I remember one of yours
[to H] Pooey Pooey [they all giggle]
• It was hilarious[…] because it was really quite, mmm…. I
think it was, there were quite a few words for it, adults
would probably say it was immature [giggles] we say
funny.
• We did like the news reports [ video e-artefact] on the
Mischevions breaking out
• Going round the school, we went into the kitchen and
things, where we had never been before. We didn’t go in
the classrooms.
• Doing the action and making up our own Mischevions has
helped some of them [original characters] stick into my
mind but not every single one. There was one called the
‘End Roller’ and the ‘Yawn Mower’.

26. Findings
• Evidence form the UK (and Croatia and Poland)
shows that students engaged with the
characters and narrative in more depth than
normal (finding and evaluating)
• Students enjoyed creating e-artefacts
(communication)
• More findings

28. Further information
Website
http://www.amores-project.eu/
Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/amoresproject
Email
geoff.walton@northumbria.ac.uk

29. References
• Bloom’s digital taxonomy: Andrew Churches, (2008) Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms
Digitally, Tech & Learning, 4th Jan, 2008 http://www.techlearning.com/studies-in-ed-
tech/0020/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988
Additional background reading
• Experiential learning cycle: Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential learning: experience as the
source of learning and development Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. P. 24
• Trust cycles: Soetanto, R., Childs, M., Poh, P., Austin, S and Hao, J. (2014) Virtual
collaborative learning for building design, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil
Engineers: Management, Procurement and Law 167 February 2014 Issue MP1, Pages
25–34
• Storytelling model: Sheherezade Consortium (2011) Sheherazade, 1001 stories for
adult learning Theoretical background for methodology: summary,
http://www.sheherazade.eu/sites/default/files/deliverable/d3/deliverable3_EN.pdf
• Virtual Teams: Lin, C., Standing, C. & Liu, Y. 2008, "A model to develop effective
virtual teams", Decision Support Systems, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 1031-1045.