A collective brain to adapt teaching to quarantined first and second graders

Abstract

The education of first and second graders was the hardest hit by the pandemic. They have to learn to read, which is the biggest learning leap one can take. However, learning to read with a remote teacher is very complex at that age, and even more difficult in vulnerable sectors without access to computers or internet. In this work we investigate whether a playful smartphone based territorial ecosystem of collective brain among teachers of first and second graders can be implemented in the current pandemic and study to what extent it fosters the exchange and improvement of teaching strategies among teachers. Based on the experience gained on the ecosystem built in 2019, the system was adapted in order to encourage the sharing of teaching strategies between teachers. We obtained our data from the online territorial ecosystem where we received 450,000 responses from students, and from 3-minute videos made by teachers and shared on the ecosystem. We found that 640 teachers adopted the ecosystem App, with 98 of them sharing their strategies by uploading 3-minute videos. From these videos we also found evidence of an evolution of the strategies, which may have come from teachers imitating and improving on the strategies shown in previous videos.