In the run-up to last year’s EUN Round Table: ‘Imagining the Future of Schooling’, two online snapshot surveys were conducted in just ten days, one for policy makers and one for teachers, to identify future trends and challenges in schooling, ICT and for EUN. These two surveys were presented and discussed at the PIC meeting for the first time, and will be part of the proceedings of the Round Table to be published next month.

The policy-maker survey was distributed by PIC members and sent to the participants in the Round Table event before the conference with the aim to collect their ‘vision of the future of education’. The results of the survey give an outlook on the personal views of 58 ICT-in-education experts on what the future of school could look like. Results of the survey, an analysis, quotes from contributors and a catalogue of projects for the future of education have been published on the EUN Round Table Blog.

The second survey aimed at schools was answered by over 400 teachers in Europe with questions such as what should be the top priorities for ICT in schools in the next ten years as well as questions about the level of equipment, the involvement in school collaboration projects such as eTwinning and the use of digital resources. One initial finding is the interest of the schools in digital learning resources (89 per cent of the schools surveyed believe it brings added value in the classroom). Issues related to elearning platforms, international collaboration, teacher training, but also challenges not related to ICT, were identified as major challenges by the schools surveyed. The results of the survey can also be seen on the Round Table blog.

Highlighted in the discussion on the future of the PIC and its role within EUN and its work programme was the need for PIC to improve communication, particularly in national educational contexts, and to ensure maximum relevance and usability of PIC activities and outputs to EUN steering committee while keeping the format which made the success of PIC: an informal platform where peers can share, discuss and inform others on issues linked to particular national contexts. It was also suggested that PIC extend its work by maintaining and developing the informal network created around the work begun on the future of education (mentioned above).

On day two, discussions focussed on teacher training/development and the challenges with the need to mainstream ICT use (digital literacy) and provide pedagogical support to teachers. In the first half of the day, participants discussed in groups and gave national updates on the state of teacher training. One conclusion was that creating a matrix for teacher training for the whole of Europe would prove difficult as teacher training appears to be a complex issue with many facets even within countries.

A series of presentations then gave an account of the state of specific projects related to teacher training in Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands and Austria.

Ulla Gjørling from UNI.C, the Danish ICT Centre for Education and Research presented her work with the ‘Pedagogical ICT Licences’, a framework for teachers’ professional development in the pedagogical use of ICT. The Pedagogical ICT Licence is used both in Denmark and abroad in countries such as Norway, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Iceland, United Kingdom and as far as Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon within the framework of EPICT, The European Pedagogical ICT Licence.

The scheme trained 80,000 Danish teachers in 6 years, localised in 11 school types nationally. Particularly interesting was the adaptation of the scheme to suit initial teacher training in Danish teacher training schools so as to to give student teachers an insight into the impact of ICT teaching and learning, equip them with basic ICT skills and give them experience with team-based work in a virtual learning environment.

Ádám Horváth from the Hungarian ministry of education, mentioned that a key focus in education in Hungary currently was to promote equity through ICT. To demonstrate this, he talked about a project developed in the north of Hungary where 60 per cent of the population is gypsy. The scheme aims to boost the motivation of gypsy children and raise the standard of learning by introducing ICT based teaching and learning methods in ten primary schools and in eight subjects. Teachers in the eight subjects attended ‘monitoring week ends’ to learn how to make use of ICT in teaching and learning.

Initial results show outstanding results. The usual drop-out rate in primary education in this area was 60%; after 4 years with the new scheme, each year, all participants finished primary school and 70% of them entered secondary education.

Bert Jaap van Oel from the Dutch Inspectorate, presented ‘it clicks’ a recently finished project in which teachers were asked to reflect on their professional development in relation to successful use of ICT. Teachers were asked to describe their ICT practice, their personal development, the path they followed and what worked best for them. Analysing the results made it possible to identify a limited number of groups of teacher characteristics that could be directly related to professional development and successful ICT practice. The Dutch inspectorate has created a portal with these ‘portraits’ of teachers that can be searched using a matching engine. Visitors can check their own profile according to the set of teacher characteristics and find best practice in the use of ICT in teaching from other teachers with similar profiles. The website is available at www.schoolvoorbeelden.nl/klikthet.

Finally, Maria Wiesinger, a head teacher from ‘Tourismusschulen’ in Salzburg, talked about the different teacher training schemes that have been conducted in Austria since the mid-90s.

After the start of the Virtual School Europe and the Virtual School Austria (www.virtuelleschule.at) other projects came into existence: E-learning Cluster in Austria since 2002 (www.e-teaching-austria.at), where schools were funded for hardware and teacher training within the project twice a year. Within this scheme, 60 schools locations have tested a wide application of e-learning tools (more at: www.e-teaching-austria.at). Each year there was a common goal to achieve, this year’s theme is e-portfolio as well as to find a partner school and support it in the development of ICT. Maria also presented the www.schule.at portal where teachers can find and use online teaching material. The website is promoted at least once a year by ministry of education.

On Insight, a thematic dossier on teacher training will be published shortly.