The project Virtual Spitfire has 4 partners from 4 countries; UK, Sweden, France and Greece, all working with adult education in socially deprived areas of post-industrial decline. The project aims to support individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences for low-skilled adults living in post-industrial areas. It will also focus on upskilling adult educators in the use of Virtual Reality in the educational process. This will be carried out by utilising the interest and local knowledge of the people and environments of post- industrial landscapes. We will encourage the often deep interest for the local area by using the context of old industrial factories, mines, harbours, agricultural production centres that once stood at the centre of local communities. The industries may have dissapeared or experienced technological change such as automation leading to loss of employment Social inclusion is a process, which assists people to participate fully in life from an economic, social and cultural perspective. The idea is that every member of the society, no matter their background or situation, should be able to participate in the community and society and be encouraged to contribute to social, cultural and work life. The focus of the Virtual Spitfire project is the enhancement of intercultural competences of adults and the improvement of social inclusion capacity through the provision of continuous professional development courses to adult educators for diversity management and intercultural management. Virtual Spitfire project addresses the entrepreneurship, Civic skills, Personal, Social and Learning and Cultural awareness and expression, key competences as specified in Key Competences Recommendation for Lifelong learning (revision 2018). This relies on an awareness of how culture, as a collective social construct, shapes the views of the individual in return. It is important to highlight the crucial process of developing a sense of one’s own place or role in society – which may be understood as one's 'socio-cultural identity' - as well as a sense of the identity of others with positive open-minded attitudes towards diverse cultural differences in different contexts. This understanding of culture, based on the individual existing within particular contexts and communities implies interaction, inclusion and mobility as key issues and opportunities in society. Extending and developing educator's competences.High quality and well trained educators can help adult learners to develop key competences for the labour market and in everyday life. The project is based on a methodological approach designed to maximize impact through the production and sharing of OERs based on practical classroom and work based training activities and on the use of VR and digital media. A Continuous Professional Development course for the training of adult educators on th euse of VR is to be developed by the Virtual Spitfire project. The project focuses on on-line training material where adult educators etc. can access to high quality material for the target group. The project allows adult educators through the use research skills for VR in a simple, effective and relatively inexpensive way to contribute to an individials development. Allowing them to train on simple tasks and key competences that would otherwise be prohibitively time-consuming. Additionally adult educators will receive training on the use of post-industrial landscapes with their asscoiated archives as a resource in their work. The Outputs include: 1. Methodological Framework. Using Local Industrial Heritage and Virtual Reality for Adult Education 2. Main Virtual Reality Production Example of Spitfire manufacturing 3. CPD Training course curriculum 4. Scenario-based eLearning and Learning Outcome Matrix 5. VIRTUAL SPITFIRE OER Platform The impact and long term benefits At local level, the availability of “ready-to-use” resources on VR in Adult education and methods will immediately reinforce the response of the sector to the urgent needs of EU societies in terms of social and professional inclusion of different cultural groups and in general people with disadvantaged backgrounds. At regional/national level, the Virtual Spitfire project is expected to create a common methodological framework, based on a smart use of VR technologies for enhancing key competences. At European level the project aims to contribute to the debate of facilitating VR blended training to adult groups into order to enter the labour market. The creation of a local body of adult educators trained and competent in using materials and implementing strategies to successfully transfer key competences to adult learners entering the labour market.
There are several outcomes that the project set out to achieve: Creating a socially inclusive project, which assists people to participate fully in life from an economic, social and cultural perspective. The idea of the project was that every member of the society, no matter their background or situation, would be able to participate in the community and is encouraged to contribute to social, cultural and work life. The focus of the Virtual Spitfire project was the enhancement of intercultural competences of adults and the improvement of social inclusion capacity through the provision of continuous professional development courses for adult educators. Extending and developing educator's competences. This was through high quality and well trained educators who in turn would help adult learners to develop key competences for the labour market and in everyday life. The project is based on a methodological approach designed to maximize impact through the production and sharing of OERs based on practical classroom and work-based training activities and on the use of VR and digital media. The project would provide a Continuous Professional Development course for the training of adult educators on the use of VR.
The idea of celebrating our cultural and industrial heritage has been a long standing vision for Spitfire Services. Working with a number of partners, we realised that the best way this could be achieved is by celebrating the industrial heritage of the Spitfire airplane and the impact it had on a number communities not just in east Birmingham where the Spitfire airplane was originally designed and manufactured, but also across Europe where it has also had impact. In working with a number of transnational partners , we identifies many similar socio economic demographics within their countries and we therefore decided to develop a project called ”Virtual Spitfire” which we would submit via the UK National Agency to the Erasmus+ programme. There are several needs which have been addressed; these have included the following: • Building Capacity of partner organisations, • Developing learning materials to suit low skilled citizens from post-industrial communities, • Developing transnational partnerships, • Building the “Virtual Spitfire” application, • Extending and developing educators’ competences. High quality, well-trained educators can help adult learners to develop key competences for the labour market and in everyday life.