Digital skills are undeniably major skills to be able to communicate, work and participate in the global process of the evolution of 21st century society. The impacts of technological and socio-economic current profound changes imply rethinking existing models in many fields, among which education and training whose specific missions are to prepare and equip better the students and trainees , future professionals for jobs they will do tomorrow. In this particular field of Education and Training though, despite numerous training courses available, a significant number of teachers and educators find it hard to use digital and find practical applications in their teachings.This often results in a gap between them and their students on the one hand, and between their training and the professionals on the other hand. Our Erasmusplus KA202 strategic partnership supporting exchange of best practices aims at creating a community of interest in Europe by associating a diversity of actors from the public or public sectors ie: research in education and innovation institutes, education centers, institutions for national education and training, chamber of commerce and industries and a diversity of approaches ie : round tables, surveys, on-sites visits , discussions ans best practices analyses, experimenting training periods for a transnational panel, which will bring an added-value, a special lightning, practical application and expertise in the uses of digital tools and environments. Our project will aim at helping the three worlds converge , we will work in a prospective approach for skills building in education and professional training , exploring the innovative methods and approaches. We will shed light on creative, modern and efficient initiatives of our sytems and we will try to answer some questions : how will be the world of tomorrow, how to insure quality in education and training with digital ? how to validate and valorise best impacts that will help acquire an enriched and shared culture on innovation and digital solutions to brigde the gap in the continuum of digital skills crucial for 21st century citizen.
We wanted to explore and define the contributions of digital tools more particularly in the field of vocational education. Indeed, in these courses, the need to practice a professional gesture represented in our eyes an additional digital challenge, but as we progressed in our project, we noticed that it is in this field, notably thanks to the need for physical manipulation, that the innovations were pushed the furthest. We had demonstrations of tools and virtual presentations of a level never seen before our project. This allowed us to compare all the practices and draw out recommendations representative of the widest variety and range of approaches. We wanted visit formats that would allow us to understand both the working environment and the audiences involved, the professional cultures of the entities, and to look at the best approaches proven within the entities. We hope to produce a relevant reference document, a reliable guide of recommendations that can be used by each entity involved but also evolving and applicable beyond the Citizen 2.1 project. Each of these training activities created for the Citizen 2.1 project will be designed to be particularly enlightening for the project group.
The initial objectives of the Citizen2.1 project were to find points of convergence in the world of vocational education and training between training centres, professionals and young people in training concerning the uses of digital technology, and thus to create a community of efficient digital practices in the institutions and in the partner organisations within a strategic partnership project of the Erasmusplus KA2 programme. This will enable us to address our need to target new digital competences and define key competences of the 21st century citizen related to the changing environments. We also want to give them recognition through modern means such as e-badges, and we want to enable the valorisation of modern, effective pedagogical practices in the partner institutions, thereby reinventing them. The covid-19 health crisis which impacted on the initial format of our project was also an accelerator.