Expanding students’ access to learning as well as providing additional open educational resources are definitely key challenges of the educational system in North Macedonia. In order to fill in the gap and provide good quality educational resources in 2020, we started working on EDUINO, a project that aims to collectively improve education through co-creation and innovation. The project is contained of three stages, and each stage focuses on the development of different types of free online resources intended for: teachers, parents, and students. All the resources that we co-create with our partners and the community of educators are uploaded and available for use on the portal EDUINO.
EDUINO is a collective portal for digital educational content, collaboration and professional development that contains platforms for teaching and early childhood development. The purpose of these platforms is to create an environment where quality educational materials and tools are shared to improve the overall educational process. Today we are sharing with you more about the three EDUINO platforms: EDUINO-teaching, EDUINO-Early Childhood Development, and EDUINO-Lab (soon to be available on the portal).
1.EDUINO-teaching
The EDUINO-teaching platform contains over 4000 video selections that have been viewed more than 4 million times. The platform also offers resources for professional development as well as games and educational activities to support the educational process. This platform is led by the Bureau for Development of Education, as an institution responsible for preschool, primary and secondary education. The platform provides educational materials and resources in seven various segments aiming at three target groups: educators, parents, and kids/students. Segments such as:
-E-kindergarten classroom, preschool education
-E-classroom, primary education
-E-classroom, secondary education
It contains educational materials for parents, kids, and students from preschool to secondary education. Some of the materials that you can find in these segments are Instructional videos for educational activities as well as Video lectures for primary and secondary education that cover most of the school subjects in five languages: Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Serbian, and Bosnian. The other four segments are mainly created for educators and their professional development. Those are:
-Resources intended for educational staff
-Resources for personal growth and development
One of the most popular segments on this platform during the online learning period from 2020 to 2021 was: video tutorials. This segment includes over 50 video tutorials for teachers helping them learn new tools and optimize their use of online learning platforms. In order to continue supporting educators and teachers in their further professional development, we’ve created the EDUINO-webinar series.
In a period of two years, starting from September 2020th, we have organized three EDUINO-webinar series so far – interactive online lectures for professors, teachers and educators to give them support in the process of their professional development. All of the webinars that’d been part of the series are available in the segment ‘Webinars’.To learn more about or EDUINO-webinar series read our latest blog post: Еlevate your teaching skills with EDUINO-webinars.
2.EDUINO-Early Childhood Development
EDUINO Early Childhood Development is a platform created for educators, class teachers and parents. The platform contains verified educational materials and activities for preschool children from 3 to 10 years, in order to encourage socio-emotional development and game-based learning. This platform is recognized by its digital library of educational activities, with over 780 game-based activities available in two languages: Macedonian and Albanian. A big part of co-creating this platform was including our community of educators in the process by giving them the opportunity to create educational activities that will be a part of the digital library. Through the two open calls for educational activities over 1200 educators contribute to the platforms with their original activities created individually or in a team.
The purpose of these activities is to encourage proper early childhood growth and development through game-based learning in kindergarten, primary schools, as well at home – having quality family time while playing.
Having in mind that the activities can be realized in different environments the digital library allows teachers and parents to search for activities by аge, participants in the activity, forms of work (individual or team), location for realization, as well as aspects of development. The EDUINO-Early Childhood Development platform aside from the educational activities also aims to include more quality resources for educator’s professional development that’s why the platform includes four segments:
-Educational activities and games
-Educational resources
-Professional development for educators
-Add an educational activity
Some of the segments are yet to be updated in order to contribute to the continuous professional development of educators in North Macedonia. Stay tuned for the newest features and updates!
3.EDUINO-Lab (coming soon)
The 2D EDUINO laboratory is the third platform that will soon be launched and available on the EDUINO portal. EDUINO 2D Lab represents a safe virtual space for experiential learning with a focus on climate change and environmental protection. The platform is primarily intended for students’ experimental learning but teachers can also use the platform as an additional learning tool, especially in subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. Additionally, teachers can use EDUINO laboratory as a teaching resource or implement the flipped classroom method.
EDUINO 2D Lab can be also used by parents at home together with their children in order to expand their knowledge of natural sciences. Some of the features and resources that will be available on the platform are:
-Experiments in the field of subjects that belong to the group of natural sciences (STEM), that is, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and natural sciences within the framework of primary education, approved by the Bureau for Development and education and the Ministry of Education and Science.
-Operational lesson plan to help teachers implement the experiment in a lesson.
-Quizzes with a certain number of questions with which the student will be able to evaluate the gained knowledge of the studied content.
The launch of the 2D EDUINO laboratory is expected by the end of 2022, and the first stage of launching the platform will mainly focus on educational experiments. Stay tuned and make sure to follow us on our EDUINO social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram in order to find more up-to-date information about the EDUINO Lab.
Join our EDUINO community and be part of the project that actively works on creating lasting values of improving education in North Macedonia.
We would like to note that: the Bureau for Development and education prepares, evaluates and approves program contents for the users of the EDUINO portal.
The project EDUINO: Collective Improvement of Education through Co-creation and Innovation project is funded by the Government of the United Kingdom through the British Embassy in Skopje, with support from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Bureau for Development and education and UNICEF. The project is implemented by SmartAp — Laboratory for Social Innovation.
