Developing Digital Competence: A Multi-national Exchange of Technological Innovation in the Classroom Erasmus Project

Project Title

Developing Digital Competence: A Multi-national Exchange of Technological Innovation in the Classroom

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Pedagogy and didactics; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

The problem is that notwithstanding the efforts and support provided by the partnering organisations there still exist educators who need to further develop their digital competence and knowledge to integrate technology into their pedagogy.

Furthermore, there is lack of a common national strategy with each of the partnering countries and lack of shared practice for the curricular integration of such technology amongst educators. This brings about very limited/superficial use of digital resources and as a result, the students have less opportunities to learn, use and integrate learning with technology.

There is the need to observe and exchange good practice in countries where innovative pedagogies have been implemented successfully. In return, we would be able to develop a much needed common framework and strategy by mapping curricular integration of such innovative technologies across all levels of the public educational system.

The participating organisations need this project to further strengthen, enrich and develop the knowledge, professional practice of educators/staff whose role it is to enable and support educators in technology-mediated teaching and learning. 2019 Eurostat data shows that Malta, UK and Belgium are lower than the EU average when comparing their respective integration of digital skills.

The project will help the partnership to adapt the observed strategies and programmes into the local context. In return, we seek to further develop the professional practice of all educators within the partnering countries. This will help each in improving the digital competences of their educators and further enhance the support given by the partners.

Ultimately, this project will be in line with the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) framework recommended by the European Commission. With such a project, involving partners from various European member states, this framework will continue to be implemented throughout Europe.

This project aims to provide the opportunity for collaboration, observation and exchange of good practices to be better able to integrate innovative technologies across all levels of the public educational system. Ultimately, the goal is for more educators to embrace innovation in their classroom pedagogy and the students will have more opportunities to use technology in a meaningful learning environment.

In this regard, the above aim is to be achieved through the following objectives:
-To share innovative practices within the partner countries, discussing and finding solutions, innovative methodologies to challenges identified
-To observe practice in classrooms and how new innovative digital tools are used by other partner countries as well as methodologies used as regards the FCL concept
-To collectively work on the structuring of strategies/programmes which can be implemented locally
-To undertake a series of collaborative Training/workshop sessions during the short-term joint staff training events
-To develop 5 resources that will gather the acquired knowledge through our exchange of best practices for dissemination purposes.

This 24-month project will, most importantly, involve 4 short-term joint staff training events, providing the opportunity for every partner organization to collaborate, share best practices and observe during individual school visits in each partnering country. Dissemination and shared practice will take place both physically during exchanges and virtually through the eTwinning TwinSpace which will be created specifically for the Project. Through dissemination, policy makers will be aware of the stakeholders’ needs and solutions available so that technology can be integrated into the classroom pedagogy in a more transformative way. Lastly, the project will seek to create various resources that will help in the dissemination process such as curriculum-mapping programs, booklets, leaflets, websites and use of social media.

The results expected for this project are:

•Redefined digital literacy learning outcomes to serve as guidelines for educators.
•Local curriculum mapping programmes of the reviewed digital literacy learning outcomes.
•Demo workshops for stuents and educators, combining the redefined digital literacy outcomes and the future classroom pedagogy which will be held at the Digital Literacy Centre.
•Videos recordings of the demo workshops will be made available on the Digital Literacy website.
•Dissemination through regular updates using leaflets, write-ups, eBooks, websites and/or use of social media especially through College/School Facebook page.
•Dissemination through CoPE (community of professional educators) sessions, professional development sessions, departmental meetings and curriculum time slots.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 90141 Eur

Project Coordinator

Directorate for Digital Literacy and Transversal Skills & Country: MT

Project Partners

• Broughton CP
• Succy
• hi-impact consultancy ltd