Information and communication technologies in schools: a ...

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ICT IN SCHOOLS
A HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS
that students use to name, not only sounds, but their created melodies as well.
Once students begin to play with short sounds, they then tend to regulate the
quantities of sound. For example, they discriminate between long and short
sounds, while associating them with numbers; they combine closed notes, or
make repetitions of two or three sounds, which results in sketches of a more formal
organization where, for example, the first and last sounds are the same.
The third stage brings mastery of this particular music microworld. Here,
students match the commands of sound qualities with desired pitch and duration.
They become capable of anticipating a sound in their minds and generating it
with the computer to produce more elaborate combinations leading to more
complex musical patterns.
From this point on, students are aware of what they can do with this programmable
instrument by setting a goal and carrying it out. There is an evident
tendency toward perfecting the musical sentences and making them more
expressive. The students are trying successfully to compose music they can dance
to or sing, and to depict aurally some simple scenic actions and characters. The
structure of the computer programs they create shows the development of musical
intelligence and the ability of even quite young students to appropriate
important concepts in their own way (Gargarian 1990; Bonta 1990).
Scientific research
Students at all grade levels and in every domain of science should have the
opportunity to use and develop the ability to think and act in the ways associated
with empirical inquiry, including asking questions, planning and conducting
investigations, using appropriate tools and techniques to gather data, thinking
critically and logically about relationships between evidence and explanations,
constructing and analyzing alternative explanations, and communicating scientific
arguments. The general model of scientific research and the qualities
required of a researcher have many things in common with the models and qualities
described above as important for most social roles, far beyond the purely
intellectual one.
Stages and types of research activity in school education are:
• formulating goals and research hypotheses;
• finding basic information, known experiments and results from the
Internet and other sources;