27 March 2019
Cars with all kinds of cantonal coats of arms are parked in front of the Limmattal Education Centre in Dietikon. Even a delegation from Hamburg has arrived. Teachers, headmasters and other interested people squeeze into the auditorium. According to headmistress Claudia Hug, it has rarely been so full. The reason for this is the presentation of the new learning system n47e8, which is supposed to make cramming tasty again for the students. After an introduction to the system named after Dietikon's GPS coordinates (n47e8), the classrooms are opened to visitors. Young people sit in the room with laptops on their laps. The pallets they have taken a seat on indicate their profession: they are all budding logisticians. They log on to their learning profiles and receive their orders there. The feedback from the students is positive: I can work at my own pace , says one learner. Some discuss in groups of two, others click through the programme alone.
Even though the apprentices can now organise their learning process individually, this does not mean that they can appear or disappear at will.We did not abolish block times, after all, we still have conventional classes in addition to the pilot classes, says headmistress Claudia Hug. The class structure also still exists. Especially with the additional freedom, the students still need a certain framework to develop well. The students seem to appreciate this. One of them says: "This project offers a lot of variety, you can vary a lot.If possible, he fulfils his mission in a team of two. He says that if he is sick, it is not a tragedy for his learning progress. After all, he can continue learning online. All the material the young people are supposed to learn is also stored on the internet. Some have even installed the programme on their mobile phones. One disadvantage of the change from conventional teaching to the n47e8 learning system is the requirement to follow along all the time. After all, it is no longer possible to sleep in class if one is to be a teacher of oneself at the same time. Teaching does not only take place within the four walls of the classroom: Some corridors of the school building shine in a gaudy pink-purple. Blue symbols are drawn on them: When the students photograph them, they are taken to a website that is intended to provide them with even more learning content. The learning space is being expanded into the entire school building, says Merz. The evaluations of the project so far have shown that the learners in the pilot group felt that their workload was just right, with a slight tendency to be overtaxed. The learners in the conventional classes, on the other hand, tended to feel slightly underchallenged. This confirms the developers of n47e8 in their work. We will continue along this path, says Hug. Modern learning is extremely important to her. She definitely does not want the students to go back to the Middle Ages after graduating from secondary school.
