The experiences of setting up, developing and implementing a mobile learning project in Croatia The SCOLLAm project

This paper problematizes the challenges of setting up a new mobile learning project in a Croatia, a country where technology-enhanced tools in classrooms are not often used due to a number of reasons, two of which are the lack of infrastructure and no teacher professional development. There are three focal points of this paper: designing scalable and durable mobile learning solution, working with teachers in order to ensure an adequate teacher development and creating appropriate digital contents to match primary school level 2, 3 and 4 curriculum. Scalable and durable mobile learning solutions in the context of this project include two main platforms: (1) a mobile learning tablet application for primary school students and (2) a designer application mainly aimed at digital contents designers and producers, to also be easily used by the teachers. On the other side, it describes the processes of strengthening digital competences of the participating school teachers, including technology competence, leadership capacity and technology supported curricular innovation processes. Thirdly, the issues of design and implementation of digital lessons are explored with a special focus on digitalization of the existing non-digital lessons together with the teachers, wherever appropriate and feasible. As a result, conceptual prototypes of digital lessons are produced to be analyzed and discussed amongst teachers and researchers, after which the selected ones get integrated into digital lessons for tablet computer. In addition to describing the threefold process and the accompanying issues, the paper presents preliminary experiences and results in this novel research initiative, sets up mid-term goals and proposes and adequate methodology in achieving the project goals.