During this time, I participated in a couple of
e-learning projects. One involved construction of a website for Electricity of
France, to promote the awareness of energy savings amongst students (link: http://www.cite-eco.com/). I also worked in a team to create
the content for an online platform as an e-learning resource for students at ENIL
de Besançon Mamirolle (Ecole Nationale d'Industrie Laitière des biotechnologies
et de l'eau, France).
Another project is about making a video clip about mobile classes for CNDP
(Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique de Poitiers).
My thesis topic was related to Digital Work Environment (DWE). Specifically, I
analyzed the implementation of DWE by school members in France and its effectiveness. DWE
is actually of great interest amongst the education community in France.
This project was started by the Ministry of Education of France in 2003 to provide a digital
environment which integrates all the services involved within a school context.
For example, students can look up their timetable, course content,
supplementary materials and scores through this DWE. Teachers can design
curriculum, give quizzes, provide additional reading materials and perform
online discussion outside class hours. The DWE is certainly also accessible by
other school members such as directors and administrative staff; or by relevant
people such as Education inspectors. Significantly, this environment for the
first time offers a platform for parents to monitor the school information and
activities or to check their kids’ performance or to communicate with school
teachers. At the beginning, this project met with difficulties for many
reasons. It could be due to the deficiency in IT skills of users, the
hesitation to switch to an unheard of new tool, or simply due to the limitation
of internet connection of school computers. From my research, I found that the
major obstacle is, however, due to the lack of support from local government
bodies for education technology. At school level, there is reluctance to implement
new technology in education.
