FCL

The Future Classroom Lab team had a change to "play" with LEGO and learn about how they can be used to create engaging learning activities for pupils. LEGO is one of the sponsors who has provided special training to enhance the integration of their products into the Lab.

The trainer explained about how using LEGO can support kinesthetic learning and help pupils to express their creativity in different ways. For more information on LEGO Education, click here.

A total of 18 teachers and teacher trainers took part in the course "Making the most of your interactive whiteboard" that took place on 19 and 20 April 2012 at the Future Clasroom Lab. This two-day workshop was offered to eTwinning teachers on how to make more effective use of interactive whiteboard (IWB) technologies. The participants from eight different countries (France, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Cyprus, Latvia and Belgium) had their current skills level checked, find out about research evidence on effective practice using an IWB and created and shared resource to be used in their lessons. The course also emphasised the importance of creating a plan for personal development using an IWB and other digital resources.

The course was led by Diana Bannister from the University of Wolverhampton, UK who is the Development Director for Learning Technologies in the School for Education Futures and has conducted extensive development and research of classroom practice looking at the use of interactive whiteboards and other digital resources.

Diana Bannister has earlier created a booklet "Making the most of your interactive whiteboard" that is available to download in English, Portuguese, German, Czech and Italian.

Bringing together the project partners and expert teachers from Finland, Norway, Portugal, Italy, led to a very exciting and productive exchange of ideas, while reviewing and developing the phase one course modules for the CPDLab project. The project is developing three courses – a pedagogical-led Interactive Whiteboard course; a policy-led eSafety course; an implementation-led Future Classroom Scenarios course linked to the FP7, large scale iTEC project. The CPDLab project is partly funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme.

Working in European Schoolnet’s Future Classroom Lab, the group worked on reviewing and developing each of the three courses and first modules to share the wide-range of experience and best practice held within each partner country. The first modules will be piloted in the autumn and offered through the EUN and project partners, with the full courses advertised in the Comenius funded in-service training database from the Summer of 2013. The Future Classroom Lab will be used to bring together those involved in teacher training at national, regional and local level to deliver the courses in a ‘train the trainer’ model, so they can be cascaded within local training models.

In the framework of "The School of the Future" project (Een school voor de toekomst) the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training is looking for new innovative ways to support competency-based learning. In March the project participants joined up two times at the Future Classroom Lab to get inspired and exchange ideas. 

The overall concept for a competency developed learning environment must take into account the different aspects such as school building and infrastructure, furniture, software for virtual learning environments and hardware. In the first encounter the three schools selected for the project visited the lab on 9 March. All three schools have been selected for the project to develop different innovative concepts:

• Sint-Jozef en Sint-Janneke (basic school) at Eeklo will develop a multimedia storage system to facilitate competency development education
• CVO Kisp at Mariakerke will develop a mobile movie equipment to promote multimedia literacy
• Koninklijk Atheneum at Geel will develop an learning center for economics where students of different levels can take a tailored learning program in this subject.

The second encounter on 23 March gatheres approximately 80 teacher trainers and representatives of education providers (umbrella organisations of the catholic, municipal and community level school networks) who are also closely following the "School of the future" project.

For more information:

• EUN Insight report: ICT in the Belgium education system (Flemish community)
• All the Insight reports are available here

The first meeting of the Future Classroom Lab's group of expert teachers took place on 5 and 6 march in Brussels. The two-day meeting brought together eight innovative teachers from Italy, Czech Republic, France and Portugal, who brainstormed to create better pedagogical activities and services to all lab's visitors.

Since this was the first occasion for most of the teachers in the lab, the meeting focused first on explaining and discussing the lab's concept, role and potential. The teachers worked also on learning stories and activities that could be delivered using the Future Classroom Lab's facilities and technology.

The group that in total consists of ten teachers will continue working online and organise another face-to-face meeting next year. The results of the group's meeting and work will be soon available at the Future Classroom Lab.