CONTEXT EU schools play a vital role for creating inclusive and resilient societies as they are the starting point for professional development of young people and play important part in the lifelong learning process. However, they face a number of common challenges: +high share of students underperform in general school subjects. According to the latest OECD PISA survey and Education and Training Monitor 2018 the share of underperforming school students (15 years old) in science is 20.6% and in maths-22.2% meaning that 1 in 5 students in the EU has insufficient proficiency in these subjects which is serious lag compared to the ET 2020 target of less than 15 % of 15 years olds to be under-skilled in these subjects. +increased skills gap arising from the advent of new technologies. According to the Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture(COM(2017)673) 90% of the jobs in the future will require at least some level of digital skills and at the same time many young people lack adequate digital skills. Even though the use of digital technologies for social activities and mobile internet access has significantly increased in the recent years, the use of digital technologies for educational purposes lags behind. Only ¼ of EU school students are taught by digitally confident educators which questions the ability of educating systems to ensure the necessary skills supply for the jobs of the future. The rapid digitalisation of all areas of life impasses the need of re-shaping educational processes with regards to nurturing new skills and key competences in learners. Among the key factors contributing to aligning education with these challenges are: +improving the quality of teaching/teachers + Introducing ICT for teaching purposes AIMS & OBJECTIVES sCOOL-IT main goal is to create an innovative ICT challenge-based training approach aimed at supporting educators in the process of conveying knowledge, promoting the development of key competences (digital, science, mathematical, etc.) among their students with regards to boosting their performance in these fields and enhancing their digital skills. The specific objectives of the project are: +promoting high school students’ digital skills through application of challenge-based digital training approach in general school subjects +equipping secondary school teachers with innovative ICT challenge-based training materials to enrich their pedagogic approach +creating prerequisites for educators to create own innovative challenge-based teaching resources through the use of ICT TARGET GROUPS sCOOL-IT addresses the needs of the following target groups: +Secondary school teachers & headmasters +Secondary school students INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS The project employs life-cycle methodology, which implies a sequence of activities for planning, executing and disseminating the project results. In the lifetime of the project, the following intellectual outputs will be developed: O1. sCOOL-IT Web Adventure Portal O2. sCOOL-IT Comprehensive training programme O3. sCOOL-IT Web Adventure Development Toolkit TRANSNATIONAL DIMESION The sCOOL-IT IOs will be developed under EU cooperation between schools, training center and consulting and IT companies from 5 EU countries. They will be freely available in 6 languages, and because of their nature (web tool/methodologies/guidelines) may serve as a basis for further development and adaptation to various contexts. Hence an unlimited number of school teachers, headmasters, educators across Europe can apply and benefit from the project results, creating conditions for improving young students’ performance in general school subjects and boosting key competencies to better prepare them for the 21st century challenges. IMPACT Secondary schools which adopt the sCOOL-IT training approach will strengthened their images as modern educational institutions open to the application of innovative teaching methods with regards to ensuring high-quality educational service for their students. Students engaged in learning by WebQuests in these schools will be more devoted and motivated in the learning process in general school subjects which will lead to improved performance. Teachers in schools utilising the sCOOL-IT approach will increase their confidence in applying constructivist teaching methodologies and using ICT for teaching purposes which will result in desire to further enrich their pedagogic approach with new teaching and assessment methods and thus multiplying the project impact. The cumulative impact of the aforementioned will be expressed by boosting the educational service offered by secondary schools applying the sCOOL-IT challenge based approach.
sCOOL-IT main goal was to create an innovative ICT challenge-based training approach aimed at supporting educators in the process of conveying knowledge, promoting the development of key competences (digital, science, mathematical, etc.) among their students with regards to boosting their performance in these fields and enhancing their digital skills. The project made use of a challenge-based pedagogic methodology called WebQuest (Adventure on the web) which was invented as a term by Dodge and March in 1995 and represents an inquiry-oriented activity, in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from web-based resources and maximizes the use of available digital tools and environments. The project specific goals were: • To promote high school students’ digital skills through application of challenge-based digital training approach in general school subjects; • To equip secondary school teachers with innovative ICT challenge-based training materials to enrich their pedagogic approach. • To create prerequisites for educators to create own innovative challenge-based teaching resources through the use of ICT. The goals were achieved through the development of the three envisaged intellectual outputs.
The project revolved around the idea that EU schools play a vital role for creating inclusive and resilient societies as they are the starting point for professional development of young people and play important part in the lifelong learning process. Yet they face a number of challenges that the sCOOL-IT project aimed to tackle. The rapid digitalisation of all areas of life impasses the need of re-shaping educational processes with regards to nurturing new skills and key competences in learners. Among the key factors contributing to aligning education with these challenges are: • Quality of teaching/teachers. Teachers have leading role in the process of conveying knowledge and imparting skills and competences in students. There is a strong correlation between the quality of teaching and students’ attainment, hence one of the keys to improving students’ skills and performance is through enhancing teachers’ pedagogic approaches. • Introducing ICT for teaching purposes. The rapidly changing environment requires application of new teaching and learning approaches aimed at fostering key competences such as in science and technology, digital and mathematical competences to considerably boost the students’ performance.