The aim of the project “Our Friend Mr Robot“ is developing the competences of teachers and students through strategic partnership in initial and continuing IT education where professional competences of teachers of vocational subjects in IT education will develop and improve their knowledge of new technologies that are coming to the world market. Alongside with our students, we are going to start three different training courses which are very important for the future of young people and innovative schools, because that way we will be able to monitor needs of the market and modernise teaching process in schools in accordance with the VET strategy. The main goal is for IT companies in Europe to get young, educated IT workers. IT sector is a field of each country’s economy which has been developing rapidly for the last years and it is advancing every day. Secondary vocational technical schools courses cannot follow this progress due to lack of literature, materials, equipment and also lack of non-education/education of teachers who should be the leaders in class. IT jobs are among the most wanted in Europe and wider, so the need for additional education of both teachers and students is present, and as well as the need for merging and exchanging experiences with other countries in order to create the schools and companies quality assessment in individual countries. The aim of the project is holding training courses through strategic partnership between Serbia, Slovenia and Portugal and writing the manual with detailed instructions from training courses. Jobs that exist today will disappear in the future, whereas the jobs from IT sector will be major in education of young people and major jobs after schooling. Companies are looking for educated young people who will work as drone operators, programmers for purposeful usage of a drone, designers of robot parts meant to be used in agriculture, operators and programmers of 3D printers, which are the key jobs of the future and we will be dealing with them in this project. The project leader is IT company “The Centre of New Technologies” from Serbia together with rightful partners Secondary Vocational Technical School “Milenko Brzak Uča”, Agrupamento de Escolas de Barcelos from Portugal and School center Srečko Kosovel Sežana from Slovenia, along with the joined partners (two IT companies from partner countries whose role is to provide training courses for teachers and students in the chosen areas). All project partners own competences that enable them the position of a partner in the project. Also, each school lacks exactly what another partner has and does in their own country. All partners have human resources for writing the manual for schools where the results of the project will be applied later The task of the company from Serbia is to provide training for 12 students (4 vocational training courses from each country-programmer, electrical and mechanical technician) and 6 teachers (two from each country, a teacher of electrical and mechanical type of subjects, a programming and robotics teacher from partner countries) on the topic of drone operating. The task of the partner from Portugal is to provide training in the field of robot programming and the automatisation of its certain parts for the chosen task. The task of the partner from Slovenia is to create a new mechanical part for a robot with the use of 3D printer which will be an extension or addition to the original, for the purposes of strictly defined activities of the project. After the realisation of all three training courses, following the same principal, the manual in English and three manuals in mother tongues of the partner countries will be written with detailed instructions from the training courses along with the project activities. The project activities will be: • choosing the participants of the project teams, meetings of the project teams, analysing the market, gathering necessary information, creating working materials, training of project teams members regarding agreed topics, training courses, practical usage of all parts of the training courses, final development of the manual in printed and electronic format, organising the material for the manual, creating and updating the web page with the information regarding the project, informing the public about the results of the project in the media, on the Internet and holding conferences. The expected outcomes of the projects are to offer students and teachers new topics for realisation of regular and practical classes, to allow students to gain knowledge and skills through additional teaching process which will enable them better opportunities in finding a job or starting their own business and make it easier for them. In this way, we provide better cooperation to small IT companies in Serbia and partner countries with schools and teachers of programming in the field of training courses that are wanted in the market,
During all phases of the project, we wanted to connect education and the economy with threads of knowledge.More modern classes for teachers of practical and theoretical electrical and mechanical subjects will be possible thanks to the literature created during the implementation of the project.Each phase had its own goals- research work,teamwork, cultural differences and similarities, equipment of schools, comparison of teachers' knowledge, dexterity and ingenuity of students - all of these were hidden or very clear gains made during the project.Through the project, we wanted to bring the education systems of Serbia,Slovenia and Portugal closer together, and for each country to notice its shortcomings and try to implement something better based on the good practice of the partner country.Also,we have shown that the economy should be the first in the chain of professional education and that it should ask about the needs of the labor market and that, based on that, new educational profiles and programs in secondary vocational schools should be introduced. The economy has long wanted a better,deeper and more interactive cooperation with educational institutions, and we started it through this project and showed that it is possible.
We applied for this project in order to develop new key competencies for teachers and students in IT education through a strategic partnership. The reason for this is that professions that exist today will eventually disappear, and professions born from the IT field will dominate and the largest number of young people will be educated in this domain. Companies already have a need for young educated people in these fields (drone manager, programmer for dedicated drone use, designer of robot parts, executor and programmer on 3D printers and others). All activities in the project went in the direction of obtaining new knowledge for teachers and students. The needs of the teachers to make their classes more contemporary with new topics and the practical work of the students to be more diverse is the need of the school. And thus formed students with modern knowledge and experience are welcome workers in the IT companies of the countries involved in the project.