onlinE PrOfessional Development in Second chance Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

onlinE PrOfessional Development in Second chance Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

Digital technology and education are evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, both separately and together. For example, there have been significant developments in new digital technology platforms such as mobile technologies, cloud computing, social media, open educational resources (OERs), free and open-source software (FOSS), as well as the associated hardware (e.g. mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, interactive whiteboards). Opportunities and demands of globalisation and technology are fuelling transformations of educational practices and school infrastructure quickly t. The evolution of educational systems and digital technology also provide additional challenges to framing our perspectives, including the emergence of virtual and networked schools that share courses and programmes within countries and across regions (Davis, Eickelmann & Zaka 2013).
Utilising these technological advancements to support good-quality training and reflective professional development are fast becoming essential parts of a teacher’s professional life. Supporting teachers in their professional development leads to improved outcomes for teachers, trainers and learners alike.
The project consortium was made up of 8 partners from The Netherlands, UK, Greece, Italy, Germany and Cyprus with expertise in second chance education, technology and e-learning and teacher/trainer education.
EPODS had two objectives:
1.To promote European integration of professional development of teachers/trainers in second chance education
2.To set up an organic / growing database connecting tools, schools, teachers/trainers and beneficiaries
In former projects many good tools were developed, in relation to the special needs of disadvantaged youngsters,with great enthusiasm and piloted in the area of second chance education that supported teachers to become more confident, responsible, reflective, innovative and engaged. The EPODS project aimed to build on the successes of previous projects and move to the next level of development in terms of its content and service delivery- by building an online European infrastructure in second chance education (www.secondchanceeducation.eu.) founded on three elements of services, resources and trainings.
Activities included an in depth analysis of professional development needs in the partner countries, the development of online CPD courses, testing of online courses and implementation of 2 training events to introduce the online CPD platform and to present the opportunity to develop own CPD courses.
Results:
SERVICES – Development of a European professional development service: This includes an online environment (a professional development profile) where teachers/trainers have their own online environment for development and guidance. With the online environment, the teacher/trainer can a) set long term development ambitions, b) determine development goals and c) register/log/capture learning curves/moments. The Impact has been a more vitalised online teacher/trainer community via the provision of e-content for teacher/trainers -the community needs to be more interactive and more driven by content.
RESOURCES -. Development of 10 e-learning courses to enhance and complement CPD of teacher/trainers.
SERVICES/RESOURCES – Development of a tool to create your own e-learning course: to support the bottom-up development of e-learning was created for teachers/trainers in which they can develop their own e-learning course. The tool was tested and at least ten bottom-up e-learning courses were developed as pilot.
TRAININGS – 2 training events provided up to 40 teachers with the opportunity to “test-drive” the online CPD courses and also the knowledge how to develop their own on-line courses to be shared on the platform for other professionals to use.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 315945 Eur

Project Coordinator

Betawerk B.V. & Country: NL

Project Partners

• PHOENIX SOCIAL ENTERPRISE LIMITED
• Lancaster and Morecambe College
• STICHTING EURICON
• Weiterbildungskolleg Linker Niederrhein – Abt. Mönchengladbach
• INSTITOUTO NEUROEPISTIMON KAI TECHNOLOGIAS KYPROU
• CESIE
• DIKTYO MENON SYMVOULEFTIKES YPIRESIES Ltd