Primary school Milosav Koljenšić is located in the village Slap, rural part of Danilovgrad municipality. All school-age children from Slap and surroundings go to Milosav Koljensic School. There are 53 students and 19 teachers. No teacher lives in Slap.

Students from Slap are disadvantaged in comparison to the majority of their peers. Their disadvantages are primarily arising from their village location. Remoteness and isolation were the main problems mentioned by the interviewees. Some of the students also come from the families with low socio-economic status.
Unfortunately, unlike their peers from other parts of Montenegro, they rarely have computers, tablets and phones. The majority of students from Slap do not have an Internet at home. 

There were 34 students from Slap enrolled in Milosav Koljenšić’ grades six to nine in 2019/20 and therefore, they got a chance to participate in the project ‘Schools for 21st Century’. Among them, 19 (11 girls and 8 boys) actively and continually participated in the Micro:bit club work.

Analysis

According to the informatics teacher and the Micro:bit club coordinator, the girls were more interested than boys. The club coordinator conducted a detailed analysis of the students learning achievements and motivation during the project. The analysis shows that 79% of all eligible girls joined the club while significantly less (57%) of all boys expressed an interest to join the club. In terms of age, the most interested were the students of the seventh grade while the least interested were the students attending the grade nine.

About the project

They had one to two Micro:bit club sessions per week and came up with the mathematic game to promote student engagement with science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Moreover, the project idea was inspired by the specific needs of one school student who has been categorised as a student with learning difficulties.

‘We have a little student who is not well and does not do well in mathematics, so we wanted to help him with basic mathematic functions.  He really liked the game. he said ‘I really needed this’, one of the students from the Micro:bit club said. 

The members of the club developed the game over a few months. It included different functionalities namely addition, multiplication and division. Four members team (two girls and two boys) were the most active in its development. Two girls then led the team that represented the school at the national competition in March 2020. They took the second place and qualified for the regional competition.

The team plans to continue their work on the game, to improve it and add some more functions.  Also, the students highlighted that the mathematic game has potential to be used with younger kids too. With small modifications, the game could be applied in work with the younger children, even in a preschool. 

Impact

They are somehow freer now. I used to have to prompt every their word in a classroom but now they are much more involved in a class’, Teacher.

Firstly, the positive impact has been noticed in relation to new skills and knowledge students immersed.
Secondly, both students and teachers increased their self-confidence and readiness for participation and promotion of their work. 
Finally, the project positively influenced relationship between students among themselves as well as between students, teachers and parents. 

Further, both teachers and children emphasised that this project significantly improved public speech and presentation skills of the students participating in the competition. This is essential because as one of the involved teachers stated ‘Children from the city express themselves better’. ‘It is difficult for the children from the village to make presentations, but they were great’ she said. (Teacher)

Further on, students’ increased interest in Micro:bit also supported teachers to apply new technics in the classrooms.

All consequently led to considerable increase in the their self-confidence. ‘Now that I’ve seen that I can do it, then I know I can do everything in life’ one of the students said. The teachers noticed this newly gained self-confidence too. ‘They are proud and we are proud of them too’ one of the teachers noticed. ‘They are somehow freer now. I used to have to prompt every their word in a classroom but now they are much more involved in a class’, the same teacher continued.

‘We had wonderful support from school - they believed in us more than we believed in ourselves’ Student, grade 9. Different project, school and environmental factors enabled disadvantaged children from Slap to benefit from the project.

To conclude, according to all our respondents, it would be good to replicate the improved project to other rural schools in order to support vulnerable children engagement with STEM but also in a classroom more general.
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