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MenSI School Blog

Poster Diary Entry of the Blue Hub

In the MenSI project each school cluster has a diary, and they produce diary entries on a regular basis. Cluster diaries are used to make notes of the common actions, decisions made, and most importantly, this is a way to reflect on the learnings. Diary entries can be created in Word or in any multimedia format. Diaries are also a very important source for the MenSI research. The Hungarian MenSI schools agreed to create their last cluster diary entry in the form of an online or offline poster, and in this blogpost, we highlight the blue hub’s poster.

In Hungary school clusters are named by colours. The blue hub schools are primary-lower secondary schools located in Gyömrő, Algyő, Csólyospálos, Gyomaendrőd and Szandaszőlős.

Locations of MenSI schools in Hungary

A mentor network

The blue hub was organized in a bottom-up way, the leading school took a very important role in organizing the hub, but decisions were made together, and information flew in many directions, not only from mentor to mentee. For this reason, the hub members don’t use the expression mentor school, instead they use the term mentor network. In the network it is up to the topic, who is in the mentor and who in the mentee role, best practices are offered by all schools and could be adapted by any school in the hub. The hub developed its own document types and tables for organisation, information exchange and reflection.

An online hub

The hub’s first face-to-face meeting was scheduled for November 2021, but the meeting was cancelled due to Covid restrictions. But the hub found its ways to work online, and they developed a strict work schedule with many online meetings and deadlines, which they followed rigorously till the end of the school year. Although during the spring sanitary conditions got more favourable, the hub decided not to meet face-to-face. The members were very busy, and they found it was more practical to schedule intense, but short online meetings into their agenda. Members met face-to-face first in August 2022, during the national conference.

This is the final diary entry, the poster of the hub:

The poster has links to the relevant documents and sites.

Networking: the hub organized its activities around the areas they wanted to develop based on the Selfie results. They scheduled meetings for the specific development areas and shared supporting resources.

Active learning: many best practices promote active learning, for example the school in Algyő shared a great collection of active learning events, that are organized regularly in their school.

SELFIE: the hub analysed the Selfie results thoroughly. They identified strengths and weaknesses in all areas, in all schools, and together they came up with ideas on how to develop those specific fields.

Reverse classroom: the Csólyospálos school shared how they use the reverse or flipped classroom method in their school.

eDia: national competency measurements are changing from paper-based to digital in Hungary, and teachers are challenged to prepare their pupils to this new way of measurement. eDia is a measurement tool developed by the University of Szeged, and it has been used by the Szandaszőlős school since years. It can offer a safe way to introduce the new type of assessment in the school culture, so it is no wonder that many schools showed interest for this best practice.

Gamification: the Gyömrő school has an elaborate system on gamification: pupils collect points with all learning activities. There is technology available to support this type of assessment: hashtag school and motimore.com.

Collecting points in the hashtag.school app

Learning paths: the Gyömrő school shared, how they offer different learning paths to their pupils, to boost their independent learning skills. The tools being used are: a collaborative spreadsheet, where pupils’ progress is tracked, Edmodo, a national digital platform and many other free online tools.

Evaluation: the Gyomaendrőd school introduced their own, self-developed LMS, with many practicing tasks, tests and assessment options.

The hub members have an intense, but very fruitful hub year behind them, where they shared goals, collaborated and challenged each other in a fun way.

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