Dear Go-Lab teachers,
Welcome to the 11th Next-Lab newsletter! We have some interesting Go-Lab news to share with you!
First of all we are happy to announce that now ILS # 1100 has been published on Golabz. This ILS on Coulomb’s law was created by Vasileios Koukoudis. The ILS is created in Greek, but if you go into it you will still appreciate the nice work done by Vasileios. You can see the ILS here. Vaselileos included a nice lab that was created in Scratch. Currently that points to an outside link but we will be working on an app that allows Scratch labs to be included directly in an ILS as already can be done for Geogebra apps.
As you may have noticed there are quite a few updates in the apps. First, the Quest tool, for giving questionnaires to students, has been redesigned. It is now similar as the Quiz tool (for presenting knowledge questions to students) in user interface, and allows you to pose open answer. Multiple choice questions, and Likert scale questions. You can now also include pictures or an Avatar in the question and use formulas in the questions. You can now also find three versions of the hypothesis scratchpad. The original hypothesis scratchpad, now also has a built-in “limited” option that limits students’ flexibility but also makes it simpler for the students. A full new app is the Hypothesis scratchpad basic, which is based on pictures and that was specifically created for young kids. In addition, you now have much more freedom to adapt labels etc. to your own needs. There have also been updates in other apps, like the peer feedback app. From a technical point of view the apps have been fully overhauled to fit the new underlying structure of Graasp. You will not see this on the outside (apart from the new ILS interface) but soon you will notice the difference in speed and stability that this brings with it.
The SpeakUp app is now used in ILSs for discussions between students or between students and teachers. It can also be used independently with a browser on a mobile phone to enable easier supervision of the discussion (speakup.graasp.eu). Once SpeakUp is added in a space, a new discussion room can be created or an existing one can be used. Discussion can be set as anonymous to trigger more contributions or the nicknames of the students can be displayed depending of the chosen settings. In addition to questions and comments, SpeakUp also supports multiple choice questions and has a built-in an interaction dashboard.
When you create an ILS from a lab in Golabz (using the Create Space button) you end up in the Go-Lab Basic scenario. Of course, you can change the phases and the names of the phases in this scenario but you could also consider using one of the other scenarios. We have recently updated these scenarios and also included instructions and examples to help you create ILSs following these scenarios. These include scenarios like “Find the mistake” (in which students have to spot a mistake of a fictitious student in the ILS, or the Six Thinking Hats, in which students each have to take a different mode of thinking. An overview of all available scenarios can be found here. To use a scenario, select one from Graasp, when you are creating an ILS, of start from a directed ILS at Golabz using the (same) overview page here.
Exciting news is that Denis Gillet and the EPFL team succeeded in getting contributions of Go-Lab integrated as the core part of the newly accepted IEEE-SA P1876 standard for “Networked Smart Learning Objects for Online Laboratories”. This means that our smart device specifications for remote labs are adopted and disseminated worldwide in the IEEE and STEM education communities. On the photo, Denis Gillet receives the plaque granted by the IEEE for this achievement from prof. Takayuki Nagai from the Kyoto Institute of Technology.
More news in the upcoming Christmas newsletter!
You can download the newsletter here.
Ton de Jong
Next-Lab coordinator
