Dorothy Cassells, ITELab Project Manager, opened up the workshop at EMINENT by giving an overview of the project and results accomplished so far, with an open invitation to Universities, Industry, Ministries of Education and other educational institutions to participate in the project by joining the ITE Forum as associate partners.

 

Bart Verswijvel, Future Classroom Lab Pedagogical Advisor from European Schoolnet, gave the participants an insight into the ITELab online training course – MOOC for student teachers, whose content he created together with an input from ITELab partners. The MOOC will prepare student teachers for entering their evolving career requiring lifelong learning, will be available by invitation at the beginning of next year, and then improved based on student teachers' feedback and open to everyone the following year. 

 

Dr Conor Galvin, Director of University College Dublin's MA Education Programme, Ireland talked about the aims and content of face-to-face training modules for student teachers, which he put together with his team at the University together with the input from ITELab partners. The modules will be applied at universities involved in the project in order to improve student teachers' confidence in using ICT in their future teaching practice. 

 

Vesna Belogaska, leader of our Pedagogical Board and Head of International Development from IRIS Connect in the United Kingdom, performed a demonstration of IRIS Connect platform and its peer review and self-reflection functions, which will be used in the ITELab modules. This will provide the student teachers with the opportunity to reflect on their practice and  support their own Continuous Professional Development. Workshop participants were then asked to review a video and work in groups to discuss the teacher's style and use of questioning demonstrating the experience for the student teachers in the ITELab module. 

 

The workshop was then closed with a short reflection by Dr Conor Galvin on the importance for student teachers to experiment with the pedagogical use of ITC in teaching and learning as part of their training  and the invitation for interested institutions to join our ITE Forum to share best practices with universities, industry and policy-makers engaged in Initial Teacher Education.