Workshop DOLPHIN

Workshop DOLPHIN (in Greek)

Teaching about energy to 5-7-year olds

by
Dimitrios Koliopoulos,
Professor in Science Education and Science Museum Education
Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education,
University of Patras

In this workshop participants have the opportunity to learn and comment on activities related to the concept ‘energy' aimed at children aged 5-7. These activities are designed to familiarize children with material and situations (lighting a bulbs or moving a small motor using battery or solar cell) that can be described using a precursor mental model for energy.

Discovering the world of probabilities

by
Evdoxia Siolou and Jenny Pange,
Laboratory of New Technologies and Distance Learning
School of Education, University of Ioannina

The ability to understand the randomness, to find the set of all possible outcomes of a random experiment and to identify the most possible outcome is referred as probabilistic thinking. The development of probabilistic thinking is evolving through four stages. The initial stage is characterized by subjective thought, the second stage is a transition from subjective thinking in naive quantitative thinking, in the third stage naive quantitative thinking evolves into informal quantitative thinking, while the fourth stage is characterized by numerical reasoning. 

At the University of Ioannina, under the supervision of Mrs Jenny Pange, doctoral research entitled: "The use of new technologies in researching the perception and implementation of applied mathematical notions concerning young children: the notion of risk", has been made by Ms Zoe Nikiforidou. According to this research, preschoolers have intuitively developed probabilistic thinking. The results of this research and the fact that children with moderate mental retardation can develop their reasoning to the same extent as preschoolers have motivated researchers to launch another study about probabilistic thinking of children with moderate mental retardation, as shown by a relevant publication.

The workshop includes experiential activities which can be undertaken by teachers along with students in their class. Through these activities, participants will have the opportunity to discover how to indentify the interests of children in order to be able to shape the children’s learning environment, which allows them, in a creative way, to promote their probabilistic thinking.