Working Environment with Social and Personal Open Tools for inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is an EC-funded Research Project under the ICT FP7 Programme in Technology Enhanced Learning.

weSPOT aims at propagating scientific inquiry as the approach for science learning and teaching in combination with today's curricula and teaching practices. It lowers the threshold for linking everyday life with science teaching in schools by technology.

weSPOT supports the meaningful contextualization of scientific concepts by relating them to personal curiosity, experiences, and reasoning. weSPOT addresses several challenges in the area of science learning and technology support for building personal conceptual knowledge.

The project focuses on inquiry-based learning with a theoretically sound and technology supported personal inquiry approach. In inquiry based-learning learners take the role of an explorer and scientist and are motivated by their personal curiosity, guided by self-reflection, and develop knowledge personal and collaborative sense-making and reasoning.

weSPOT will work on a meta-inquiry level in that it will (a) define a reference model for inquiry-based learning skills, (b) create a diagnostic instrument for measuring inquiry skills, and (c) implement a working environment that allows the easy linking of inquiry activities with school curricula and legacy systems.