Sowing technology, cultivating innovators: The Digital Orchard project

This is our first blogpost about the Hort Digital project, or Digital Orchard as we call it in English. The project has just started its pilot phase, and we thought it was about time that we created a blog, to share the project with other colleagues and researchers, and hopefully get some ideas and suggestions about it. We have presented it in a few conferences before, the most recent one being the Open Classroom EDEN Conference, in Porto, Portugal.

The Digital Orchard is a project developed at Citilab-Cornellà with the support of the i2CAT Foundation, and its main objective is to help high school teachers use technology in innovative ways in the classroom. We envisioned it as a Living Lab for education; we have started working at secondary education level, but we have plans to expand it to other levels and areas. This initiative is a supported by the Department of Education of the regional government in Catalonia, Spain.

We have monthly face-to-face meetings, and we also have a social network based on Ning, where we interact, participate in discussions, help each other and work together. We think that taking this collaborative and social approach, supported by the creation of a community of practice, will have a positive impact in closing the digital gap between teachers and students, help teachers realise the potential of new (and “old”) technologies, and support the new policies being issued by both the regional and national governments in Spain.

We are working with 30 teachers from 4 high schools; so far, the sessions have exceeded our expectations: although most of them had no previous experience with using these kind of applications and tools in the classroom, they have been very enthusiastic and involved with the project, and some of them have already started creating their own social networks with their students. Others have realised the potential of Google Docs to provide personalised assessment and feedback, or to create groups to share experiences and resources. We are looking forward to working together with them during this academic year, and we would like to share this journey through this blog.