The demands on employees and thus also learners have changed in recent years and the increasing digitalization of almost all areas of life and work increases the requirement for constant further education enormously. For this, employees need key skills such as self-learning skills, initiative, problem-solving strategies or creativity. These key competences must be created and learned as early as possible, and expanded and practiced in secondary and vocational schools. Competency orientation has long been an integral part of all curricula, but the optimal implementation of a purposeful mixture of technical education and social and self-competence is still not a sure-fire success and must be tried out again and again by both teachers and students. In order to do more justice to the heterogeneity of the students, the proportion of individual learning should be significantly increased and here new digital technology devices offer an immense advantage over analog lessons. Students can learn at their own pace much more easily and the motivation to implement a work result creatively using the many possibilities of digital applications increases significantly for many students. In this way, conventional learning spaces can also be reconsidered, since the focus of teaching is no longer only on the knowledge transfer by the teacher, but on the learning offer that the student accepts. Classrooms can thus be designed completely differently than before and a functional learning zone principle is one of them. Of course, the mere redesign of classrooms and the digital-technical equipment of the learning rooms and the students alone is not enough to make changes. The real challenge is to break up old (teaching / learning) structures of thought, because the pursuit of new educational goals and forms of learning are still not a matter of course for many teachers. In addition to the need to be ready for something new, there is also the task of developing new teaching material, familiarizing yourself with new digital technology applications and further training if necessary. That takes a lot of time and commitment. In order to facilitate the entry into new forms of learning, the project participants should get to know and apply different methodological approaches from different countries. This should result in different teaching projects in terms of time and subject matter, which are then successively multiplied in schools and for other interested parties. The project group consists of approx. 18 pupils from various types of vocational school, including part-time and full-time types, and approx. 18 teachers, who are also supposed to be as diverse as possible. Some of the students will have at least basic vocational training, as they will design and construct (partial) furniture. As a counterpart to this is also a part of the participating teachers from the occupational theory and practical work area. During the project, in addition to room concepts, drafts and prototypes of furniture or furniture parts are to be created, which are then learned and constructed in the time after the project as learning field projects by subsequent students. Each school should then implement a spatial concept. In addition, there are several teaching projects that particularly promote the learning of key competencies using digital technology media. The educational goals are based among other things on the claim of individual, self-organized and collaborative learning and on the SAMR model for the integration of learning technology by R. Puentedura. To develop these teaching projects, the teachers learn and apply various methodological approaches, such as the model of the complete action from the field of learning field conception or design thinking. The resulting teaching projects are tested and evaluated by the participating students. A group of schoolchildren will be responsible for public relations throughout, which is particularly suitable for consolidating key competencies and digital technical competencies. All project results are made available to all teachers of the respective schools and all other interested parties. After the project, the participating schools in the project are also available to interested schools and teachers with their expertise in teaching materials or in carrying out similar projects.
The project aims to publicise contemporary forms of learning and highlight challenges and opportunities. To achieve this goal, the rooms of the German school were officially opened at the beginning of 2022 and teaching has been taking place continuously according to the learning zone principle since September 2021. Winning the digitalheroes@klassenzimmer prize drew the attention of other people from the wider education sector to the project. Cooperations have already been established, such as a research aspect that will form part of a dissertation. The project was presented to other network participants and there are several schools from Baden-Württemberg that have shown great interest in the learning spaces and the didactics realised in them. The local politicians who had campaigned for the realisation of the project have already visited the rooms several times to exchange ideas. In addition, an exemplary lesson was filmed for learning purposes for prospective teaching development consultants and made available internally at the Centre for School Quality and Teacher Training, which may lead to the spread of contemporary forms of learning at the Centre for School Quality and Teaching Development. A didactics course for prospective teachers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology was also on site for an event on contemporary forms of learning. Cooperation with the neighbouring school is being planned. The project can be explored via the project website and the learning platform, both of which will continue to be operated and expanded in the long term. Even after the end of the project, the school is open to further co-operation. A long-term goal of the project is to publicise the opportunities and challenges of contemporary forms of learning in the development and ultimately in their own schools. The school has already gained initial experience with the learning zone principle and reports successes and challenges. By cooperating with other schools and educational institutions and disseminating the project via the project website and the learning platform, further experience can be gained and insights gained. The project therefore has the potential to make an important contribution to the further development of contemporary forms of learning and to establish these in the educational landscape. Within the school, the plan is to move from project status to the implementation phase in the coming school year, with all departments examining to what extent and to what extent contemporary forms of learning can be integrated into lessons. Our project homepage offers a good impression: https://schooloftomorrow.esss.de/