Partners Partners

In this section you can read about other projects whose work is supporting iTEC and vice versa.

 


Creative Classrooms Lab - Pan-European policy experimentations with tablets

Starting in April 2013, the project will provide a pan-European, controlled experimentation involving 45 classrooms in nine countries on the use of tablets in secondary schools to inform and help steer policy development related to the implementation of 1:1 pedagogical approaches. By combining resources and sharing expertise, as well as co-designing action research pilots with suppliers (Associate Partners), the project will enable Ministries of Education to address common policy challenges related to the rapid introduction of tablet technologies. The CCL project is supported by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme. The project will use the Future Classroom Scenarios methodology developed by iTEC in its scenario development process. For more information, please visit the website: http://creative.eun.org/


CPDLabCPDLab -  Continuing Professional Development Lab

Teachers in Europe are positive about using technology and use it outside the classroom, but they often lack guidance and quality training on pedagogical approaches inside the classroom. To address this, European Schoolnet’s CPDLab project (Continuing Professional Development Lab - http://cpdlab.eun.org) has developed training courses to help teachers make better use of new technology in the classroom, engage students with technology to improve motivation and results, and explore possibilities in the training venue in Brussels, Future Classroom Lab. The courses, aimed at secondary schools teachers, range from making the most of your interactive whiteboards (IWB), bringing eSafety into everyday teaching, and implementing new teaching and learning activities in the future classroom. The third course is based on the Future Classroom Scenarios methodology developed in the iTEC project.

Each of the courses consists of several modules that can be used independently and combined in different ways. This enables different learning pathways according to the need of different target groups. The courses have been designed in particular for teachers and trainers involved in CPD within their school, region or country. Moreover, the course contents will be available for re-use and localisation (translation and adapting) by training providers, under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence. Through localised contents and modules realised on national or local level, a greater number of European teachers can benefit from the courses.

The first three training courses were delivered at the FCL in summer 2013 and two new courses, Future Classroom – adapting pedagogical practice, will run in spring 2014. For more details, including information on how to apply, click here.

CPDLab, supported by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme, offers its courses through the EC’s Comenius-Grundtvig training database.

 

Future Classroom LabFuture Classroom Lab

The initial response to project dissemination activities from Ministries of Education, regional education authorities and ICT vendors indicates that iTEC has the potential to become a more permanent ‘Living Lab’ or ‘Ideas’ Lab’, a platform that enables key stakeholders to rethink teaching and learning in 21st century classrooms.

The Future Classroom Lab, a European Schoolnet initiative, consists of a room designed as an interactive classroom to illustrate how a traditional classroom setting can use technology to enhance interactivity and student participation, plus a large reconfigurable open space (divided into five learning ‘zones’) equipped with technology. In particular, the Future Classroom Lab will be used as an environment to:

  • Stimulate discussions and illustrate practice related to a range of current and prospective innovative teaching and learning scenarios.
  • Provide hands-on training facilities for teachers, head teachers and ICT advisers.
  • Act as a venue for meetings, workshops and events for Ministries of Education, regional education authorities and commercial partners.
  • Provide a platform where policy makers, practitioners and ICT suppliers can come together in order to rethink how teaching and learning can take place in 21st century classrooms and other learning spaces.

One of the first companies to support the Future Classroom Lab is RM Education, a leading provider of ICT software, infrastructure and services in the UK which has set up the REAL (Rethinking Education and Learning) Centre at its headquarters in Abingdon.

 

iTILTiTILT

iTILT (itilt.eu) stands for Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching, and is a European project which aims to promote best practice in communicative language teaching using interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards may look like normal whiteboards, but they can facilitate the integration of new media in the classroom, enhance learner engagement, support new electronic literacies and meet the needs of students with diverse learning styles.

iTILT is developing training materials for teachers specifically around the use of interactive technologies to support language education. iTILT's work feeds into the CPDLab training programmes and this will potentially support the teacher training aspects of iTEC in support of the implementation of innovative scenarios using these technologies. Moreover, the learning and teaching activities described by the iTILT project will feed into the iTEC scenario development process. The projects are also planning a collaboration on the piloting of iTILT implementation in schools and iTEC scenarios.