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iTEC for different stakeholders

Teachers

How to take part in the iTEC school pilots? In general, any involvement of schools need to be via a regional education authority, the national ministry or an existing relationship with a supplier. The national coordinators in each country select the schools depending on different factors. Please read in the FAQ more information on how the schools are selected (countries and school criteria).

Policy makers

Adopting a ‘one size fits all’ approach to the design of the future classroom is neither practical nor desirable, given the differences between national curricula, assessment practices, teacher education, and ICT infrastructure and support in different countries. In iTEC, the direct involvement of 15 Ministries of Education in scenario development and school pilots, however, ensures that the project is producing results that can be adopted by policy makers in different countries and in schools that have reached different levels of eMaturity.

iTEC is also doing more than allowing Ministries of Education to rethink how ICT can have a transformative effect on teaching and learning processes. The project’s High-Level Group is working with Ministries to determine how iTEC Learning Stories and Activities can be mainstreamed and taken to scale and how results from the project can support the educational reform process and both national and European level.

Industry partners

With its objective of mainstreaming innovative use of ICT, the iTEC project has been designed from the outset as a multi-stakeholder partnership involving policy makers in the public sector working alongside ICT vendors. Promethean and SMART Technologies, two of the leading Interactive Whiteboard suppliers to education, are iTEC partners. Since the project commenced, companies such as Acer, Microsoft and RM Education have also joined iTEC as Associate Partners.

In addition, over a dozen Industry partners are now supporting the European Schoolnet Future Classroom Lab that was launched in January 2012. This new initiative is closely linked to iTEC but independently financed in order to ensure that iTEC results can be sustained after the end of the project funding.

Companies joining iTEC as industry partners can benefit by involving schools they are working with in the iTEC pilots. It is anticipated that some iTEC scenarios will also provide ICT vendors with opportunities to demonstrate and test new hardware, software, content or services that support designs for the future classroom. It may be possible to do as a large-scale pilot directly within iTEC or on a smaller scale in pilots run under the umbrella of the Future Classroom Lab (see the Charter for iTEC Associate Partners).