USING THE GO-LAB ECOSYSTEM FOR RESEARCH-BASED TEACHING ONLINE

Modern social challenges, primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic, made educators to face the problem of using a variety of e-teaching methods. For practical work we recommend a free platform for remote learning STEAM subjects – Go-Lab ecosystem (https://www.golabz.eu/). The Go-Lab repository offers the large set of educational apps, extensive collection of remote and virtual laboratories as well as more than thousands of Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILS) for blended and distance learning, and  (emergency) remote teaching in the time of global coronavirus pandemic. The platform, which successfully uses in many school institutions throughout the globe, has become available in Ukraine due to the EU Programme ERASMUS + K2 “Modernization of Pedagogical Higher Education by Innovative Teaching Instruments – MoPED” (№ 586098-EPP-1-2017-1-UA-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP).

The educational content on the Go-Lab portal is available in many languages: most ILSs – in English (299), in Portuguese (140), in Greek (127), Spanish (77), German (50). The platform is partially extended to Eastern European countries, ILSs can be used in Romanian (108), Ukrainian (19), Polish (6) and other languages. Thus, the use of Go-Lab promotes not only the formation and development of STEAM skills, but also contributes to the study of other languages.

The team-members of the Center Prof. Olena Budnyk & Associate Professor Viktoria Gnezdilova received international certificates having attended teacher workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal to master the innovative Go-Lab software tools. This experience has been used for creation of educational programs for teachers’ professional development based at the Center.

Today Go-Lab is already used by progressive educators of Precarpathia. Serhiy Mykytsei, a teacher of computer science at Ivano-Frankivsk Secondary School No. 25, is a former graduate of the Precarpathian National University, a participant of trainings held within the framework of the MoPED project,  actively implements Go-Lab applications and tools in  his professional activities. In the proposed video he is talking about his experience working with students on this platform while creating his own lesson, in particular the use of research learning environments “Computer Modeling” and “Modeling and Algorithmization”.

A series of trainings for teachers on the use of the Go-Lab platform in professional practice will be conducted at the Center of Innovative Educational Technologies “PNU EcoSystem” after the stabilization of the situation with the coronavirus.