Emil is a unique method for teaching and learning computing at primary school – for every learner, letting them experience the joy of discovery.
With Emil’s help, we strive to support the development of:
Emil is fun. However, it’s not meant to offer just a fleeting fun for a couple of moments. It’s school-oriented and based on scientific research and many years of working with teachers and pupils.
It’s rooted in international experiences gained in teaching programming and computing, as well as in modern learning theories, while at the same time it fully meets the requirements of the current national curriculum . For the first time ever, Emil implements educational programming as a well thought-out and systematic cognitive process intended for every pupil. Emil transforms school informatics from a subject ‘teaching computer use’ to a new form of exploration, problem solving, and collaborative partnership between subjects. Computing with Emil teaches students how to live and learn in the digital environment, and how to explore and change the world.”
Emil respects pupils at the primary stage of their education and their cognitive development and needs. Emil respects and exploits everything that’s unique and valuable in primary education. Thanks to its constructivist method, it creates opportunities for cooperation and creativity.
Emil develops computational thinking together with logical and mathematical thinking, critical and analytical approaches to problems, creativity, communication, and self-expression.
Our team has developed Emil for Year 3 in three design schools (public, private and Church school) in close collaboration with 90 students and five teachers. Currently, more than 130 primary schools have joined the trialling process – in Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, England and Czech Republic.
The author trio consisting of Dr Andrej Blaho, Prof Ivan Kalaš, and Dr Milan Moravčík has ample international experience in developing and researching in the area of constructivist programming environments focused on programming and algorithmic thinking of pupils in pre-school, primary, and secondary education.
Peter Halák is a director of the non-profit organization Indícia, which takes patronage over this project. Through his work, he supports the development of the constructivist teaching in schools and connects innovative teachers and school head teachers. Dana Retová is the project manager of the Computing with Emil project. She is responsible for the organizational, legal, financial, and communication activities of the project.
The project is being realized under the auspices of Indicia, a non-profit organization which have been focused on education in Slovakia for more than ten years. They organize conferences for in-service teachers, publish textbooks, provide professional development for teachers and struggle to improve the education system in place through various projects.
A team of the researchers and educators with ample experience in the area of educational research and the development of the environments for learning programming led by Prof Kalaš is developing, trialling and deploying the educational content and teacher materials for the new Computing with Emil intervention.
Highly experienced team of developers, they focus on designing and developing software solutions meeting research requirements and needs for various platforms in frequent and short interactive cycles.
Pupils and their teachers involved in our development process play key role in obtaining first experience and feedback from our new software environments and the teaching method itself.
Since the first year of the development, we’ve been approached by several researchers and educators from abroad, with whom we’re now partnering in preparing different localizations of Emil for primary schools, as of now, in French, Czech, English, Polish, Hungarian, and Norwegian. With some of the partners, we plan to launch joint research activities in the near future as well. We have established the first of such scientific forms of collaboration with the HEP Vaud, Lausanne, a leading university in research into educational sciences in Switzerland.
The PI and professional guarantor of the project is Prof Ivan Kalaš, head of the Department of Education, Comenius University, Bratislava. He leads the development of the new method of teaching computing with Emil together with Dr Andrej Blaho and Dr Milan Moravčík. For five years Ivan was a member of the Governing Board of the UNESCO Institute IITE. He was also an international adviser for Microsoft, Redmond, in their global initiative Partners in Learning, in which he acted as an evaluator of the primary and secondary teachers’ projects. From 2013 until 2018 he was a Visiting Professor at the UCL Institute of Education in London. He dedicated his entire professional career to the development of the constructivist software interfaces for teaching and learning computing, as well as writing textbooks and modern teacher materials. Imagine Logo, which has been adopted in 15 countries around the world, serves as an example testifying to the success of said environments
Identifying computational concepts and skills being developed, setting the learning objectives; designing corresponding activities and gradation of tasks; formulating pedagogical principles.
Explaining learning objectives; learning about teacher’s experience; obtaining the feedback.
Programming, designing tasks; designing activities and pupils’ worksheets.
Teaching or observing a lesson, assessment of understanding, verification of fulfilment of the learning objectives, and of the suitability and appropriateness of the activities.
After the lesson, we once again talk with the teachers. We discuss strong and weak points of our approach, tasks and materials, their suitability and appropriateness, their potential for cross-curricular interactions, etc.
Thus concluding one cycle and preparing for the next one.
Fill out the form and our team will be happy to answer your questions and advise you on how you can have Emil at your school too.
Emil is an educational method and software intended for primary schools and fully functional on tablets, laptops and computers. We support Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS platforms.
Emil has been developed for primary schools and institutes of education specializing in professional development of pre-service or in-service teachers. If necessary, we are able to tailor it to your needs, e.g. translate it into another language.
