Study visit group report

The reporter should submit the report to Cedefop (studyvisits@cedefop.europa.eu) within ONE month of the visit.

This section summarises the findings of the group while visiting host institutions, discussing issues with the hosts and within the group. You will be reflecting on what you learnt every day. But to put them together and give an overall picture, you need to devote a special session to prepare the final report on the last day of the visit.

In this section, it is important that you describe not only things you learnt about the host country but also what you learnt about the countries represented by group members.

Describe each of the good practices you learnt about during the visit (both from the hosts and from one another) indicating the following:

* You can describe as many good practices as you find necessary. You can add rows to the table.

1. Approaches taken by participating countries (both host and participants’) regarding the theme of the visit. Are there any similar approaches/measures in participating countries? What aspects are similar and why? What aspects are different and why?

Similarities - All participating countries’ educational policies include a firm commitment to the use of IT in the classroom. Approaches at a practical level do, however, differ. There are nevertheless some commonalities, for example in the proliferation of the use of whiteboards in many classrooms (although the utilisation of these differs within institutions as as it differs between countries). During the study visits, the learners all appeared to embrace the use of classroom technologies and demonstrated competence. This chimed with our experience as partipants in our home country environments.

Differences - Different participating countries are in different stages of adoption of the new technologies. Investments vary according to national priorities, e.g. in Macedonia there was a strategy which has been realised to provide every learner with a PC. Elsewhere, some classrooms have a fuller complement of PCs than others.

2. Challenges faced by participating countries (including host) in their efforts to implement policies related to the theme of the visit. What are the challenges? Are they common challenges? If so, why? If not, why not?

Buildings which are no longer entirely suitable for teaching and learning (given innovations in the use of teaching technologies and classroom approaches) create difficulties for some participant countries - e.g. the present school in Tuchowicz (although a brand new school  will shortly open in that case).

Another challenge is the inconsistent use of these new technologies by different teachers. Some feel comfortable with the new technologies, while others  rely on more traditional methods. We feel this is a common challenge in European countries, perhaps due to the heterogeneity within the teaching profession in terms of age, training, interest in IT, etc. Some of the possible ways of overcoming this challenge could be more incentives for training programmes and encouraging teachers to observe each other’s classes and  share their ideas and methodologies.

3. Name and describe effective and innovative solutions you have identified that participating countries (both host and participants) apply to address the challenges mentioned in question 2.2. Please mention specific country examples.

The knowledge society requires us to relate to knowledge with new characteristics: dynamism, distribution and globalization, complexity. Education systems are facing new tasks: on the one hand to promote the formation of the conceptual tools needed to deal with the new knowledge and on the other to make the learning processes within them synergistic with those that occur spontaneously, especially on the network, outside of institutional settings.

Among the principal aspects of multimedia teaching and the new approach to didactics it appears that the potential value of integrated multimedia in the new tactile surfaces is indisputable. In the formation of teachers in the use of interactive blackboards it becomes a priority, in comparison to the acquisition of technical knowledge, to give space to methodological competences. In other words, teachers need to have training that allows them to assure the quality of the connection between the use of the tool and methodology, increasing their familiarity with the applications aimed at digital editing in order to produce objects of learning of high educational value. The interactive whiteboard and the e-book are examples of this line of research.

Distinctive and common changes in schools is the use of multimedia in teaching. Graphics, video and sound are adopted more and more and not only as metaphors but also as digital objects that can contribute to meaningful learning and facilitate communicative teaching.

It is increasingly necessary in the education system to promote the development of an adequate digital competence, which expresses the ability of a subject to move in the digital world. Recently, the European Commission has defined digital competence as a skill that requires a safe and critical use of the technologies of the information society in different fields, such as work, study, entertainment and communication.

The IWB is a significant element of innovation also for digital audio, both for the remarkable possibility of interaction with its surface, as for its expansion of the size of control: using the IWB can become a new way of making instruction effective in schools. An important support for education which led to a great new feature: the ability to use the computer in a different way, where the relationship between the student and the screen, the teacher and the screen is revolutionized. The digital board contains two faces, one of the computer and the board. It is a simple screen where you project what is processed on the computer, the mouse and keyboard are replaced by finger or pen. The approach is therefore different: the behavior that results is to have a whiteboard with the power of a computer. If the boards are then shared on the network it becomes possible to bring together two classes of students who write on the same media and with appropriate technologies - video conferencing can enable synchronous distance learning. Teaching methods do not require exclusive use of ICT, but the relationship and interaction they provide are fundamental.

4. Assessment of the transferability of policies and practices. Could any examples of good practice presented in this report be applied and transferred to other countries? If so, why? If not, why not?

Please state whether and which ideas for future cooperation have evolved during meetings and discussions.

We have seen many examples of good practice and feel these ought to be shared. There have been many examples of teachers spending time and effort creating new materials, and it is our recommendation that an activity bank should be developed to capture and share these examples.

One of the future cooperation projects that is likely to result from this study visit is an e-Twinning project among schools in Poland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Macedonia.

TO SUM UP

This part of the report will not be published but it will be made available to the organiser and will be used by national agencies and Cedefop to monitor and improve implementation of the study visits programme.

We recognise the value of ongoing feedback as a way of ensuring that the programme is at all times a responsive and dynamic initiative, meeting the needs of its various participants and target audiences. In this section you are invited to give us your feedback on several factors that, in our opinion, contribute to an effective visit.

2. If you have

2.THANK YOU!

Please submit the report to Cedefop (studyvisits@cedefop.europa.eu) within one month of the visit.