With the support of the European Commission

DIGITEACH: a European project http://www.digiteach.eu/

Visit to “ Tõrva Gymnasium” in the town of Törva (Estònia)

Espiral, Educació i Tecnologia ­ Centre de Recursos de Formació de Persones Adultes

DIGITEACH working group. Spain Imma Barriendos, Mercè Batlle, Juan Miguel Muñoz, Eva Royo, Pepa Valdelvira

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DIGITEACH: teacher training http://www.digiteach.eu

Visit to “ Tõrva Gymnasium” in the town of Törva (Estònia)

1. Introduction

Digiteach is a European project within the Grundtvig program which promotes the

education of adults. Six countries are involved in the Digiteach project: Belgium, the

Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Estonia, and Spain.

The goal of the project is to promote the use of ICT among teachers, first by analyzing

the obstacles that prevent some teaching professionals from using ICT in the

classroom and, secondly, by sharing best practices that will stimulate ICT use.

The Grundtvig program provides for the possibility of organizing meetings to

interchange ideas and experiences and, as a result, 2 trips were organized: one to visit

the Adult Regional Training Center “Waas and Durme” http://www.pcvowd.be located in

Lokeren (Belgium) and another trip to the local school for adults in Törva (Estonia)

www.torva.edu.ee.

A summary of the main conclusions reached in the first meeting in Belgium in

November 2006 is available at

http://www.xtec.net/%7Ejvaldelv/digiteach/digiteach_index.htm. The aim of the present

article is to describe the activities that were carried out and the experiences that were

shared during the visit to Estonia from April 18­21, 2007.

2. ICT tools utilized to prepare for the visit

As we pointed out in a previous article describing the visit to the Adult Regional

Training Center “Waas and Durme” de Lokeren (Belgium), those of us who are

involved in Digiteach believe that what we learn during the process of carrying out this

project is invaluable. Our premise is that, reflecting on the tools that we use and the

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discoveries and the problems that we encounter in the use of ICT are part of the

interchange of experiences that we are looking for and which help to enrich the

conclusions that we make.

We used the following tools over the first trimester of 2007 as we worked together on

the project, the project renewal, and to prepare for the visit to Estonia:

o Google Docs and Spreadsheet. This is an online word processor and

spreadsheet that has allowed us to collaboratively prepare the project renewal

proposal which we all have to submit to our respective national agencies.

o Videoconferencing. We used the Flashmeeting platform for

videoconferencing. This has made communication between us more fluid so

that we were able to establish agreements and to coordinate the work that

needed to be done.

o Moodle. This is a platform that allows us to exchange messages through a

forum and also to upload and share documents. Before Moodle, we used

eSnips http://www.esnips.com and

o Nexus: http://www.digiteach.eu/nexus/index.php but we switched to Moodle

http://documents.digiteach.eu because it is better organized and more

appropriate for our needs.

3. Brief notes about adult education in Estonia

Estonia, with approximately 1.5 million inhabitants, achieved its independence from the

Soviet Union in 1991.

Adult education in Estonia is generally associated with professional training

(vocational) although permanent education through INNOVE (Foundation for Lifelong

Learning Development) also has a well­defined presence in the educational system

and indeed is part of the structure of the Department of Education and Research

The young people of Estonia have a high level of English and they are very much

interested in forming relationships with other European countries; they feel especially

close to Finland. The effort that has been made to improve the level of English in the

schools can be seen at this web site:

http://vana.hm.ee/uus/hm/client/index.php?135262301323341025.

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4. The “ Tõrva Gymnasium” in the town of Törva (Estonia)

The “Tõrva Gymnasium” building

4.1 Introduction

The “Tõrva Gymnasium” is an educational center in the town of Törva and offers all

educational levels from primary and secondary schooling through adult education. The

school has around 500 students.

The school was founded in 1917 and the building itself has been expanded and

improved over time as new necessities have arisen. Two years ago the building was

expanded again and modern infrastructures were added, including modern computer

facilities (school network, projectors, interactive digital whiteboards, language lab, etc.).

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Aula

4.2 Web sites and platforms that they use

One of the web portals that they use is called Koolielu

http://www.koolielu.ee/pages.php/0702. This site provides information for teachers and

on this page http://www.koolielu.ee/pages.php/03 teachers can access a collection of

digital teaching material classified by subject and course.

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They also use a platform called IVA http://www.htk.tlu.ee/iva. They showed us the

content and also how they used it but were unable to give us a user name and

password because this area is reserved for their own educational community. The

resources that they showed us were quite interesting. Some of the material is designed

to show teachers how to use computers in the classroom and there are other materials

available to teach the fundamentals of computer use. For example, they showed us

some exercises prepared with the program Hot Potatoes, articles about how to create a

blog, how to add an image to a document, a discussion of the most useful software for

online learning, information about conceptual maps and portfolios, etc.

5. Projects they are involved in

5.1 “ The Tiger Leap” Foundation

The Tiger Leap Foundation http://www.tiigrihype.ee/?setlang=eng organizes ongoing

training of teachers throughout the country through the dissemination of new ICT

resources, the creation of online training programs, and the development of learning

platforms. This is an institutional foundation and is included in the organizational chart

of the Department of Education.

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“ Calibrate” is one of the projects promoted by this foundation:

http://calibrate.eun.org/ww/en/pub/calibrate_project/home_page.htm. Through this

project, Departments of Education from different countries in the EU agree to

collaborate to share educational resources. One of the tools they use to do this is the

Learning Resource Exchange (LRE)

http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/interoperability/learning_resource_exchange.ht

m. As part of this interchange they share two lessons each week and after putting

these lessons to practice in the classroom, they explain how it went and write about it

in a blog.

They are also involved in the Celebrate project, which aims to take an innovative

approach to the use of new technologies in teaching. The object of this project is

provide teacher’s with a database of multimedia resources and learning objects (LO).

http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/interoperability/eun_actions/archive/celebratelo

s.htm

Finally, they also participate in the web community called Lemill which is designed to

share web resources for classroom use http://lemill.net/front­page. The search for

resources can be made by area, subject, language, and also by educational levels.

This is a very useful database of material for use in the classroom.

Other web pages they also use include: http://www.ise.ee/indexeng.html and

http://es.lefo.net/

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5.2 Project eKool

This project http://www.ekool.ee was presented by Mrs. Ene Lindemann. It is a

program to manage information and to connect families, students, teachers, and

administrators of educational centers through the internet. It allows anyone in the

aforementioned groups to access information at any time and therefore reduces the

amount of routine work and management required of teachers and center directors.

Specifically, it manages such areas as marks, evaluations, homework, attendance,

schedule, forums, and personal data.

6. Other participants

6.1 How to promote the use of virtual platforms among teaching staff

Eric de Vos presented his analysis of the causes that might hold back teachers from

using the virtual platform at his center (which we call Virtual Leaning Environment ­

VLE). He presented 20 ideas that might motivate the teachers to use the VLE. The full

document in English is available at http://www.digiteach.eu/index.php?title=Main_Page

under the heading:”Media:Motivating teachers to make use of a VLE.doc”.

6.2 Poland

Kaszia Stec, the Poland coordinator, presented the strategy that is being used at a

national level to stimulate the use of ICT in both formal and informal training. She

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analyzed the current state of the Polish labor market and, in this context, discussed the

advantages and disadvantages of digital training. She also showed us the web sites

they use:

1. Project interkl@sa www.interklasa.pl

2. The web site Scholaris: http://scholaris.pl/cms/ , which provides resources in

Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry etc.

They also use www.nbportal.pl, a web site designed to teach Economics.

6.3 Permanent Seminars in ICT for Adult Education (SETICPA). Barcelona

Imma Barriendos, from Barcelona, gave a short presentation on the Permanent

Seminars on ICT for Adult Education (SETICPA), which is offered in Catalonia as a

form of continuing education for teachers. These are periodic meetings of the

information technology coordinators from the various schools who meet to exchange

knowledge and their experience in the pedagogical use of these information

technologies in the classroom. The aim of these meetings is to facilitate the integration

of ICT in the schools’ curricula.

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Information about SETICPA can be found here:

http://www.digiteach.eu/index.php?title=Permanent_Seminars_in_ICT_for_Adult_Educ

ation_%28SETICPA%29.

Pepa Valdelvira, from Barcelona, gave a presentation on the “Espiral, Educacion,

and Technology Association”. Espiral is a group of teachers, technicians,

researchers, students, and other organizations interested in promoting and applying

the use of ICT in education. The association organizes conferences, courses, and

workshops, and also publishes a bulletin (Bits).

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6.4 Multimice

Barbora Barrakova, David Jandera and Jan Kopriva, from the Czech Republic.

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David Jandera of the Czceck Repúblic presented the Multimice system, an application

to facilitate the wireless connection of multiple mice and keyboards (up to 30) in parallel

to one computer. This tool allows various students to respond simultaneously to

questions that are presented to the whole class through the digital whiteboard. In

addition, the teacher can see who has answered correctly or not.

7. Planning the group work at Digiteach

Digiteach Working Group

Part of the time for these working meetings were set aside to plan the work that needs

to be done over the next few months.

Cederic Van Herreweghe (Belgium), the Program Coordinator, began the session on

this topic by providing us with a summary of the current situation. He suggested

creating 2 working groups. One group would focus on the standards that should be

considered in digital teaching and, once those standards have been established, to

develop an activity to present it to the teachers from the different countries. The other

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working group would study how to create a “marketing campaign” to disseminate the

project’s results to the teachers from each country.

7.1 Standards

The group that worked on this topic recommended using as a starting point the

standards proposed by the European Vision of Supported Employment

http://www.euse.org/ in their “Information Booklet and Quality Standards” which

discusses such things as: trust, flexibility, accessibility, self­determination, respect,

individuality, etc.

The group also proposed carrying out a bibliographic and internet search.

7.2 What teachers need to learn

The other working group suggested trying to identify the most important and

fundamental resources for teachers and then to explain how and when these resources

should be used. They proposed to work on this topic over the course of this trimester

until they reach consensus on a list of useful resources for teachers, the characteristics

of these resources and their benefits and drawbacks. Later, this list would be presented

to the teachers in each country for discussion.

At the end of the visit, all the participants were confident that the project would be

renewed for next year and we all were certain that we would be back to work on the

project in November, 2007 in Barcelona, as the renewal application calls for. Likewise,

we expressed our satisfaction with the work carried out so far and for the mutually

enriching experience that working together on this project has given all of us.