BUILDING DIGITAL EUROPEAN SCHOOLS THROUGH CREATIVE, COLLABORATIVE, AND EFFICIENT PRACTICES is a project born of the needs detected in the field of secondary education by the participating schools. Fundación Patronato de la Juventud Obrera is well aware of the importance of the digitalization of schools as a process to create 21st century schools and improve the academic results of educational centers. We have been pioneers in the use of the SELFIE tool since 2018, and after detecting the weaknesses we had, and the educational and management opportunities offered by digitalization if carried out properly, we started to create an innovative methodology of our own that encompassed the whole school. We understood soon that this strategy could not only cover the classroom, since it was necessary to achieve a global digitalization of the center that would promote new technologies and integrate the entire educational community in the digital learning processes for it to have a real impact on educational improvement and, above all, to avoid early school leaving. However, thanks to the contact with other European centers, this strategy has shown that it can be improved with the practices that are carried out in other European countries, which is why we want to go a step further in 2019 and create a strategic partnership of 5 European countries to build a useful and powerful tool, along with a methodological guide, in order to establish a digital holistic educational process to help schools across Europe to reach the future. This will be substantiated in 2 high-quality Intellectual Outputs with great impact capabilities: a Virtual Platform and a Methodological Guide for Digitalization. The first Intellectual Output: the DIGITAL PLATFORM FOR THE CREATION OF DIGITAL EUROPEAN SCHOOLS. This digital platform will be a tool that will not only help to implement an innovative process of digitalization for schools, but will also guide them throughout the process to achieve a full digitalization: From the initial evaluation of the school with EU’s “SELFIE” tool, until the full IMPLEMENTATION OF A HOLISTIC DIGITAL EDUCATIONAL PROCESS OF THE SCHOOL. This innovative platform will stand out for a new concept of digitalization methodology, which we have called the HOLISTIC EDUCATIONAL DIGITALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL, which is based on a continuous process of analysis and improvement and the digitalization of the whole school that encompasses the CLASSROOMS, the SCHOOL and the EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY. This digital platform will also have resources to facilitate this digitalization process, such as free software, for the management of the educational center itself, to train teachers and students, and for the relationship and communication between of the entire educational community. It is a dynamic platform that consists of 6 steps: - STEP 1: your school is sent to the “SELFIE” tool to get a true analysis of the real situation of the digitalization of the school and its weaknesses. - STEP 2: once the “SELFIE” results are available, they are registered on the platform. - STEP 3: the platform generates a report with proposals for improvement in the digitalization of the school according to the model of the HOLISTIC EDUCATIONAL DIGITALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL. - STEP 4: the platform will provide your school with materials and resources to help in the process of digitalization, which will train directors, teachers, and the educational community to be able to carry it out. - STEP 5: the platform will include tools and spaces for virtual dialogue between schools and educators. - STEP 6: the school will be encouraged to repeat the evaluation periodically to monitor its progress and see which aspects could be improved. The second Intellectual Output: the METHODOLOGICAL GUIDE FOR THE CREATION OF THE PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE HOLISTIC DIGITALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL. This methodological guide will allow any secondary school to implement this revolutionary holistic educational process, matching the regulations and proposals established by the EU in the “SELFIE” tool, and including coordinated action and collaboration frameworks between the different departments of the school and proposals for the use of software and digital applications. The network created for this project will work together during 24 months, during which they will hold 3 Transnational Meetings, carry out activities for the creation of results, virtual mobilities, 3 student training mobilities in the most digitalized partner schools, 1 joint teacher training activity, multiple learning activities (to test the results and train the participating students in new educational techniques), and finally a great Multiplier Event. All of this will be done to obtain high-quality results aimed at facilitating the digitalization of secondary schools, enabling better educational results, and reducing early school leaving through an ICT-based education that connects with younger generations.
With this project, the entities that comprise the partnership intended to provide our grain of sand to facilitate the process of digitalization of schools, since these often find difficulties to carry it out, by helping dozens of schools in Europe (in addition to the participating centers themselves) to start a process of holistic digitalization with a real impact in all its areas. More specifically, our goals were: To improve the schools’ administration and management processes thanks to its digitalization. To contribute with this process to a better school-family communication. To increase the digital competences of teachers, renewing their teaching practices in the classroom and the school. To develop student learning and facilitate a more effective academic monitoring that helps to detect early signs of school failure to stop it in time. “BUILDING DIGITAL EUROPEAN SCHOOLS THROUGH CREATIVE, COLLABORATIVE, AND EFFICIENT PRACTICES” advances in the fulfillment of the objectives of the EU 2020 Strategy, those proposed in the 2030 Agenda, and those established in the DigCompOrg Framework; all thanks to the will of many teachers, experts, and the enthusiastic collaboration of the students.
In 2019, 5 educational centers from 5 European countries designed the project “BUILDING DIGITAL EUROPEAN SCHOOLS THROUGH CREATIVE, COLLABORATIVE, AND EFFICIENT PRACTICES”, born from the digitalization needs that we already detected then, and that now more than ever -mainly due to COVID-19- have become a first magnitude priority. The digitalization of schools is not only one of EU’s key objectives, but also an imperative need for schools, which must be prepared for future crises, adapting their administration and training methods to the new reality we are experiencing. However, this process of digitalization -not only of the classroom but also of the school- has usually been a challenge for the educational community, both due to the lack of resources, and above all due to the lack of knowledge on how to implement it. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which we had to face shortly after the start of the project, the partner entities were more aware than ever of how necessary a correct holistic digitalization of the school is... and the proposals that we could provide to help Europe’s schools to achieve it.