| abstract: |
iTEC is a large-scale pilot involving up to 1,000 classrooms focused on Learning in the 21st Century and the design of the future classroom. Partners include 15 Ministries of Education, leading ICT vendors, innovative SMEs, TEL researchers, teacher educators and experts in school validations and pedagogical evaluation. The key aim is to develop engaging scenarios for learning in the future classroom that can be validated in large-scale pilots and subsequently taken to scale.
iTEC produces meaningful pedagogical scenarios (assisted by semantic web technology) for the future classroom and, from these, derives learning activities and new approaches to assessment that engage teachers, learners and stakeholders outside the school. These are then tested and evaluated in the largest pan-European validation with schools yet undertaken.
The iTEC technology approach will make the technical components, (people, tools, services and content) required by the scenarios, interoperable and discoverable, so that teachers can more easily select and combine relevant components tailored to the future classroom scenario of their choice. This is in line with current trends in which teachers can choose from a wide variety of loosely coupled tools and where interactive whiteboards and other interactive, multi-touch technologies may be acting as a ‘gateway’ for teachers to start exploring the further use of digital technologies in their classrooms.
Combined with this, iTEC will research the skills and competences needed by teachers in the future classroom and equip teachers, both within and beyond the project, with the pedagogical knowledge and skills needed to implement project scenarios.
Having identified scenarios with the maximum potential to have a transformative effect on the design of the future classroom, the project will implement a mainstreaming strategy designed to ensure that work carried out in the large-scale pilots contribute to the educational reform process. |
