Innovation, knowledge and sustainability with PLEs: an empirical analysis from SAPO Campus Schools pilots

1. Innovation, knowledge and sustainability with
PLEs:
an empirical analysis from SAPO Campus
Schools pilots
The PLE Conference, Berlin, 11 july 2013
Fátima Pais, Carlos Santos and Luís Pedro
University of Aveiro, Portugal

2. SAPO Campus
http://campus.sapo.pt

3. Sapo Campus Schools as a
Disruptive Innovation Tool:
Could it be the Educational Ba?

4. The Ba concept
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/content_images/fig/2200100304001.png

5. Innovation
http://www.khoslaventures.com/the-innovation-ecosystem-2/

6. Methodology [1]

7. Methodology [2]

8. Use Cases
• School A is located in a fishing village and has 378
students (ages 3 to 15) and around 40 teachers.
• School B is located in a rural setting. It is attended by
2606 students (ages 3 to 18) and has 241 teachers. It is
a cluster school made up of 10 different establishments,
8 of which are geographically scattered.
• School C is located in an urban and industrialized area
and is a junior/high school attended by students from
the 7th to the 12th grade. It is a former industrial school
known for its use of technology with 971 students and
134 teachers.

9. Data - users

10. Data - activity

11. School A
• interactive and sharing space for
Curriculum Enrichment Activities of
Elementary School
• evolved from being a display of the
work being done by the students to
become a sharing, collaborative and
socialization space, combining formal
and informal learning and interaction

12. School B
• interactive and sharing space for developing
multidisciplinary activities that promote the Arouca
Geopark
• important to mention the interaction strategies adopted
by the teachers involved, who would readily answered
all their students’ questions and stimulated them
• informal user policy and promotion of online safety
• SAPO Campus most significant benefit: the fact that it
made it possible for them to showcase their work in a
safe environment within the school community

13. School C [1]
• 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) club from to raise
people’s awareness for this movement
• as the different challenges were issued, many of the
discussions extended beyond SAPO Campus,
taking place in and outside the classroom
• according to the teacher in charge, many students
that were not involved in the project would question
her about the challenges and the results
• because it was a non-curricular project, most
interactions took place after classes

14. School C [2]
• You speak, I speak, we speak
• involving an 11th grade class (students ages 16-17), this project was open
to the community and, according to the teacher in charge, aimed at
“promoting the use of Web 2.0 as a way of bringing participants closer and
developing their critical sense”.
• participants agreed to meet every Sunday from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Participation was optional and there was no kind of reward or compensation
other than taking part in the discussion and sharing personal thoughts and
opinions.
• in addition to the sensitivity and the intimate nature of these particular
subjects, the fact that the debate was public had an impact in the
discussions. When discussing and commenting on this project, other
teachers referred that they followed the blog and the interactions but didn’t
feel comfortable enough to engage in the discussions, given their personal
nature.

15. Wrap-up
• disruptive processes usually take place in smaller
groups, slowly and gradually being adopted by larger
groups. Of the cases described, this can be best seen in
school B5, where SCS has been the catalyst for change
• combining change and innovation, and using technology
as a catalyst for a disruptive, student-centered process,
can be the key to have a school fitting the values of
today’s knowledge society
• Ba can be translated as place and is defined as “a
shared space that serves as a foundation for knowledge
creation” (Nonaka & Konno, 2005, p. 1).

16. Thank you!
• And now, power to the people -->