INFORMATICS IS COOL: CROSS-CURRICULAR CONCEPTS FOR COMPUTER-SUPPORTED OPEN LEARNING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Informatics is COOL – as a subject and as a tool for interdisciplinary and cross-curricular learning. In this paper COOL refers to three different aspects of learning not only in informatics but also in other subjects: According to the original sense of the word COOL stands for “cool”, interesting, motivating or fun, for topics that students like to learn and methods that enhance learning, e.g. brain-based teaching. Furthermore, COOL can be the abbreviation of COoperative Open Learning, an Austrian teaching model based on the Dalton-Plan or COmputer-supported Open Learning. This paper aims at showing how to use the three meanings of COOL in cross-curricular computer-supported teaching and learning. After presenting the three forms of COOL and cross-curricular learning the paper describes criteria that should be considered in COOL lesson design. It further presents some examples of COOL teaching units for different subjects and reports on experiences with COOL in secondary schools.