The Municipality of Ekerö supports new arrivals and provides more opportunity for all students to enhance their learning
The Municipality of Ekerö enlists the aid of visual learning to enhance inclusion and provide more opportunities for students in the municipality to increase their knowledge of natural science subjects with the aid of The 3D Classroom. The tool will also be used to create our own educational materials, including with the aim of facilitating integration and providing education for new arrivals.
Like most Swedish municipalities, the Municipality of Ekerö faces major challenges and opportunities. One important part of its continuous effort to improve education consists of finding educational tools that can help teachers to increase motivation and learning in the classroom in order to include all students in the learning process. This includes not only the large number of students who need visual support in order to assimilate knowledge, but also all new arrivals who are unable to immediately assimilate the education provided in Swedish schools and who thus face major challenges in their integration into Swedish society. Schools in the Municipality of Ekerö will use The 3D Classroom to increase interaction and motivation in the classroom and also to create their own educational materials that will be translated to Arabic, Dari, Farsi and other languages. They will also be used for flipped classrooms.
“The idea for the project emerged through discussions with Sensavis. In The 3D Classroom, besides fantastic visual material for natural sciences and for teaching mathematics, we also have educational aids that enhance students’ learning processes. It will also be easy for us to use the tool to record our own teaching materials and provide students with the opportunity to learn at their own pace. The ability to record enables us to work with the municipality’s native-language teachers to create teaching materials in new arrivals’ own languages. This will provide our new arrivals with immediate access to learning, even if they have not yet learned Swedish. It will also speed up learning both of Swedish subjects and the Swedish language. We are thus improving accessibility in the classroom as well as integration into Swedish society. We hope to be able to set a good example and we also hope that other municipalities will begin working in a similar way so we can cooperate across municipal borders”, says Lotta Lorentzon, Assistant Head of Production for Children and Education, Municipality of Ekerö.
The 3D Classroom is an interactive visual teaching aid that includes students of all ages in the learning process by involving and motivating them to participate more. The teachers in the municipality of Ekerö will create an archive of teaching materials in languages such as Arabic, Dari and Farsi by recording the high-quality contents using their own voices and their own approach to easily customise teaching materials. The videos are created using Office Mix, a free plug-in for PowerPoint from Microsoft.
“We have been working with reception centres for new arrivals for some time now and we have seen how our visual teaching aids have helped to open up the discussions in the classroom and have also helped teachers to assess students’ prior knowledge, which is a prerequisite to allow anyone to receive personalised education. Research shows that those who have well-developed skills in their native language are more likely to develop good skills in a second language. By combining subject and language skills, Ekerö is able to offer a fantastic basis for new arrivals in the municipality and is also able to do this in an efficient, cost-effective way by sharing materials between schools. We are seeing initiatives similar to those taking place in Ekerö in several schools around the country and we would like to help disseminate that knowledge more widely. The challenge faced by Sweden and several other European countries is, in fact, a great opportunity for our society. We are incredibly pleased to be able to help increase interest in natural science subjects and at the same time improve conditions for all new arrivals”, says Fredrik Olofsson, CEO of Sensavis.
About The 3D Classroom
The 3D Classroom is a visual learning tool that creates a sound basis for inclusion that enables all students in the classroom to be motivated and engaged and to achieve good results. The teacher controls the interactive, realistic visualisations and can customise the lesson according to the desired objectives and the student group by using his or her own words and educational approach. The teacher can also interact with the content to reinforce a message or respond to questions posed by inquisitive students. With video rights, teachers can create their own teaching materials using the high-quality content and their own words. The function can also support collective learning by enabling teachers at the school to share videos with one another. The 3D Classroom contains subject modules for biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geography and technology and is now being used at all educational levels, from pre-school to University. The tool contains no text or speech and is not restricted to any curriculum.
About Sensavis
Swedish Sensavis has been a market leader in the development of fully interactive visualisations since 2008. Its aim has always been to increase understanding and learning. The first version of The 3D Classroom, software designed to make it easier for teachers to increase motivation and learning in the classroom, was launched in September 2013. Today, The 3D Classroom is used by hundreds of leading educational institutions and schools in Europe, the United States and Asia.