Education has shifted over the last decade. Teachers are not the sages on stage and students are not required to learn and memorize facts. Rather, we have entered a new Renaissance where creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking are the pillars of every classroom. The goal of education is not to produce the next generation of workers but rather to create global citizens who use their skills and passions to make a difference in this world by studying real world problems and providing solutions. Students need to learn what it takes to solve a problem. This includes utilizing the scientific method, considering multiple perspectives and understanding system designs.
Koios motivates and spurs engagement as students learn to use their passion and creativity to solve real world problems.
Koios is an excellent tool to use as part of the education. We welcome you to try out Koios with your students.
Why should teachers and students use Koios in education?
Koios will provide your students an opportunity to work on real world challenges. It will allow your students to hone in on a wide range of skills, which,over time, will strengthen democracy through awareness and civic engagement throughout the world.
Using Koios is an effective way for students to practice the scientific process of discovery. Solving a social problem that impacts their community and the world provides an excellent case for creative project oriented work with collaboration and dialog.
Students will learn to use virtual online tools. These tools are highly likely to be more widespread in the years to come in work settings, in higher education as well as at home. Your students’ participation in Koios will help prepare them for the 21st Century.
What kind of student skills or capabilities can it improve?
- Deliberation and dialog.
- Collaboration and coordination.
- Clear, precise, accurate, and brief communication.
- Reviewing and critiquing.
- Digital citizenship skills.
- Innovation (The art of combining, changing, evolving and reapplying existing ideas)
- Deductive reasoning.
- Development of positions with evidence.
- Critical thinking.
- Analysis and synthesis.
- Problem solving.
- Goal oriented work.
- The scientific method.
What is the recommended minimum student age?
Koios is recommended for students in High-School and up. Currently, Koios is being tested by 8th-graders. We do not recommend younger students at this time.
What resources does it require?
A computer for each student or team of students working together in teams of up to 4 persons. Laptop/desktop computers are strongly recommended over tablets because Koios is not designed for touch screens. The Koios user interface has many small screen elements and these are hard to interact with on a tablet computer.
What is the recommended duration for a Koios project?
The structure of Koios is to be a long term research project. Typically, a class can spend a whole semester working on a project, which includes allotting time for students to become acquainted with the platform. It can also be a year long project, too, depending on the topic.
What level of teacher involvement should I expect?
A Koios project will require teachers to:
- Design a plan and timeline for the project.
- Teach/review the skills necessary for students to complete a Koios project. Our teachers guide has more on this.
- Provide regular support to students to learn and maneuver within the Koios platform.
- Monitor student progress.
- Supervise collaboration and communications.
- Understand content (when necessary) and help students determine if content is appropriate for Koios.
- Assist students with editing their submissions.
What will a typical class room session look like when using Koios?
About half of the student work will go into searching the net for relevant sources or doing fieldwork/interviews.
The other half of the work will go into adding content into the Koios challenge, doing fact checking, commenting, discussing and improving content etc. Students should have a full class period (45-50minutes) to use the system. Shorter sessions are not recommended.
How big of a class or how many students should we be?
Koios is designed for mass participation so there is no upper limit. However, in an educational setting it can be difficult to coordinate, monitor and evaluate interactions if there are more than 20 students and one teacher participating simultaneously.
If there are fewer than 7 students you might have difficulties filling in the challenge with content within a meaningful time frame. This all depends on the scope of the problem. A small local community problem will require less work than for example a cross-sector cross-disciplinary problem in a municipality or city.
You may also decide to collaborate with other classes or even other schools to work on the same problem. But then again this will require more coordination such as assigning students to different tasks or assigning students to specific areas/steps of the problem solving process of Koios.
How much preparations should I as a teacher do before starting a Koios project?
Our guidelines section describes the recommended preparations and plans. Developing this plan can take anywhere from 5 to 15 hours of effective planning depending on the scope of your selected problem to solve with Koios, how many students you have, ambitions for including other learning material in the project, what skills and topics need to be covered with students prior to the project start etc.
What are some important concerns I as a teacher need to think about?
Koios will require the use of Internet search engines and online content sources. We at Koios believe in safeguarding all students on the Internet and will work with teachers to help meet that goal. We are working on several features to accommodate teachers and their students. If you have any questions, please contact the Koios representatives.
What level of support can I expect from the Koios team?