We took a tour through the whole school, we saw their classes, their teaching tools, their study materials. Our teachers shared their experiences and knowledge with a wide range of activities and educational approaches.

Karaton

Of course, we also talked about Karaton and its implementation at schools. And we saw a group of pupils playing Karaton during one of their training sessions. Imagine, even their assistant who is always with them during these sessions plays Karaton at home. She loves it, and all the pupils and the assistant show each other what they have built on their islands. They really enjoy it. However, their trainings will stop in March 2024 as they are about the reach the highest levels of training. Then a new group of pupils will start their trainings.

Last but not least – we already have enough experience with Karaton, and our COP members planned various ways how they would disseminate information on the project.

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Main points of our discussion:

• All the schools have started with Karaton - one of them is about to finish work with one group of pupils. They will start with another group in March. The other three schools will continue to work with the same groups of pupils for the rest of the school year.
• The COP members commented on Karaton – they take it seriously and they want the pilot Karaton till it is a ready-to-use tool which can be offered to other Czech schools. Therefore, they focus on various aspects of Karaton – the settings, the environment, the course of game, use of hardware, etc.
• We realized some specific Czech language issues which may affect the game – the COP teachers are willing to suggest updated for the next version of Czech Karaton.
• The schools have experience with various forms of implementation - within lessons, outside classes, in groups, individually; they usually train twice or three times per week. All the pupils are very enthusiastic about the game, even some teachers play the game and have fun.
• It is sometimes difficult to work with the pupils when the COP teacher who is in charge of Karaton is not a class teacher and has to organise the trainings with pupils beyond their standard schedule.

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Project dissemination:

• ZS Chrast has going to publish an article about their involvement in the project in local newspaper. They have informed about the project on their website; one of our COP members is member of local elementary school experts (a group organized by National Educational Authority) – she will inform their colleagues from the professional group at one of their regular meetings.
• ZS Cimburkova published the information on the project is on their school website; our COP members will prepare a presentation about Karaton to elementary level teachers when they have a meeting at school.
• ZS Slunce is planning an article in school monthly on-line Newsletter.
• ZS Poznávání has the information about the project on their website; they are planning an article in a national teacher professional journal.