VETworking@NETworking Erasmus Project

Project Title

VETworking@NETworking

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

Nowadays the Network Technologies are growing very fast and are in a very high demand. The annual average salary of a Computer Network Technician is $44, 562 per year in the United States and €47,793 in The EU, while a freelance technician earns $20.07 and € 25.35 per hour, according to payscale.com. Job opportunities for computer systems and network administrators are estimated to grow up to 15 percent during the period 2016-2026, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics by the top IT giants employers, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, HP, DellEMC, etc.
According to the job descriptions, a Computer Network Technician which is also known as a Network Technician, manages the network system of the organisation. Computer network technicians install, maintain, resolve, and supervise the use of LANs and WANs, besides establishing and maintaining the internet, intranets, and extranets of an organisation. Technicians monitor the day-to-day operations of an organisation’s computer network.
Project “VETworking@NETworking” is being developed in order to create new, structured, innovative and mainly unified teaching/learning IT programme called “Computer network technician” for vocational training institutions in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Analysing the near neighbourhood countries, such as Latvia and Estonia it turned out that the main places where the students can have such a big skill set are Universities. However, during the main tendency of the Ministries of Education the most non-theoretical skills can be graduated from the Vocational Education and Training sphere. According to that, the potential skilled student who could pretend for the job described previously can be graduated in VET training centers or IT schools.
Kaunas Information Technology School was the first VET organisation which accredited the Computer Network assembler modular programme and since 2014 executed it successfully in Lithuania. However, we also need the good practice experience from another EU countries. Latvian VET education modular programme according to our partners should be updated because some parts are not up to date and must be supplemented by new technologies and innovations.
Estonia has very strong modules from different specialties, especially for Cybersecurity but they are mostly focused on security or on general knowledge of technology and there is no specific structure for networkers.
As a result, all the partner institutions has experience in partnerships or transfer of innovation projects. However, there is no institution in this project, which would have been created the unified teaching programme for some vocational training institutions from different EU countries.
The combined international vocational training programme should be created by partners specialists who several years organised the studies in Network Technologies subjects. As described earlier each partner has some parts in their programmes but they are teaching very basic skills and the student can pretend for the better job during requirements. Moreover, the curricula of each programme, methodical material, subjects and planned number of hours are very different. So the main goal of the project – each partner specialists should create a new, innovative, united part for the modular Network Technician teaching programme for vocational schools or training centers. In other words, the main idea of the project is to collect the knowledge of other countries and to create the universal for Baltic States programme for Network infrastructure and technologies specialists, which should be based on the searching results of the ITVET principles. It must be expected that this new programme will make sense to become more appealing and effective for students and more easily applied for the Network Technologies jobs because would be orientated to teach more in practical way as it is required by VET.
Participants: 3 people from each partner institution will be chosen. The first one will be responsible for coordination and cooperation. Two other people – should be the specialists of network technologies.
Project’s duration – 18 months. During this period 3 partner meetings and final one will be organised.
After successful realisation of this project teaching curricula in IT sector will be renewed and created, vocational training in EU will become more popular, IT specialists will be more qualified and will have more opportunities to find a job abroad. What is more, unemployment in EU among young people will be reduced, vocational training institutions will improve international cooperation while working/searching common solutions and sharing responsibilities, developing mutual cooperation and communication. What is more, the new structured Computer Network Technicians programme for VET could be implemented not even in the Baltic states in the future. Also, the program due to full integration could expand in accordance to other EU VET institutions.

Project Website

https://sway.office.com/y0ye4feD4B9RBHbn

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 38867,72 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kauno informaciniu technologiju mokykla & Country: LT

Project Partners

• Ida-Virumaa Kutsehariduskeskus
• PROFESIONĀLĀS IZGLĪTĪBAS KOMPETENCES CENTRS “RĪGAS VALSTS TEHNIKUMS”