Relevance

Demands and requirements for the workforce have been changing rapidly due to digital transformation, and the knowledge and skills acquired today will not be enough in future. At the same time, demand for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills is on the rise and expected to grow, and educators should take it into account. In the time when STEM has become one of the most important values in European education, it is particularly important for schoolteachers and trainers working in the informal education to acquire the skills that make them STEM and STE(A)M (including Arts in STEM programmes) – ready.

How to achieve this? How to make teachers and trainers STE(A)M-ready and help them develop and sustain students’ interest in STE(A)M? How to ensure the change when educators are eager to acquire new competences themselves, adopt the cross-disciplinary STE(A)M approaches and implement those in their work? And how to support educator preparation for this change?

The consortium of seven partners from six countries have designed the STEAMonEdu project to address this challenge.  We believe that if the change is carried through collaborative networks of educators, students, researchers, and other stakeholders, it is likely to be more successful.

In this context, the STEAMonEdu project will research how to strengthen STE(A)M education and will provide an online environment to support the eco-system, that will be based on a bottom-up approach, where  different stakeholders work collaboratively to design, develop and implement STE(A)M content, practices, projects, and policies. The project will develop and test the integrated modular training system that can be easily transferred and adapted at local, regional and national level.

 Partners

The partnership was set up considering the required expertise to realise the professional development of educators and includes:

• R&D state institute Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus” (CTI) with its expertise in project management and in ICT solutions for training;
• four non-profit organisations experienced in developing methodologies, community outreach and training: 21st Century Competence Centre in Germany, Stati Generali dell’Innovazione (SGI) in Italy, EOS Foundation in Romania, Colectic in Spain,
• The Regional Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education of Western Greece (PDEDE) bringing expertise in design and evaluation of methodologies, and
• a European network – ALL DIGITAL with its experience in advocacy, dissemination, and exploitation

The two-year project was kicked-off with the partners’ meeting on 21-22 January 2020 in Athens hosted by the lead partner CTI. During the meeting the partners reviewed all aspects of the project implementation. They explored the  plans for the roll-up and promotion of the project, considered carefully how to develop the STE(A)M repository, the learning materials, how to build and grow the community of practice, and carry out the STE(A)M policy evaluation. The pilot partners agreed on a number of following steps, and it was a valuable and productive start to the project.

Follow the project news on social media with the hashtag #STEAMonEdu

Work continues on the STEAMonEdu project with the partners meeting on 25-26 June hosted virtually by Stati Generali dell’Innovazione – SGI. Originally scheduled in Rome, the second project meeting had to be held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. SGI managed the technical part, setting up an advanced system that allowed to effectively manage not only the conversation, but also the procedures of recording, voting and production of the reports on the works. Despite the forced distance, the two days of meeting resulted to be very productive with the active involvement of all partners under the guidance of the project coordinator CTI.

During the first day of the meeting, particular attention was paid to the current phase of creating the STEAMonEdu cCommunity and collecting good practices and policies. A phase that involves all partners responsible for the creation of a good examples guide, which will be an integral part of the final toolkit. More than 50 good practices have been collected and there are already about 150 teachers registered in the platform, coming not only from the participating countries. The platform is starting to take shape and becoming a crucial meeting point for teachers, experts, and policy makers.

The exciting part of the first day was the clustering session that we had together with two other Erasmus+ projects focusing on STEM and STE(A)M education – CHOICE and STE(A)M IT, about which you can read here.

On the second day, the project partners focused in particular on the planning of the online course that will be delivered through a MOOC, the platform development, the impact assessment and the educational tools that will be produced by the project. The work ended with dissemination activities and an overview of the project progress and. The second day was

Finally, a date has been set for the next project meeting, which will take place next January hosted by Colectic, with all partners hoping to meet face-to-face in Barcelona.

By SGI

… Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters”

Nope, Metallica had no connection to the 3^rd STEAMonEdu transnational meeting, apart from the positive vibes and the eagerness of all participating partners to keep on working towards open minds and improvement of STE(A)M education!

It was just another productive STEAMonEdu partners meeting, which took place on 20-21 January 2021, hosted virtually by our Spanish partner Colectic. Barcelona was originally the meeting point, however the third project meeting had to be held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like the previous one.

Colectic was an excellent virtual host, setting up an advanced system (and a new tool for partners to discover!) that facilitated the progress of the work which had to be done by all members with increased interaction. Colectic also provided all participants with a digital cultural taste of beautiful Barcelona and shared lively energising Catalan music during breaks in order to make the meeting as pleasant as possible.

As a result, a very productive and energetic meeting was delivered with the active involvement of all partners under the guidance of the project coordinator CTI.

During the first day of the meeting, the two major deliverables of the project, the STE(A)M education framework and the STE(A)M educator competence framework were thoroughly discussed and the next  steps of the process were agreed. Extra attention was paid to the current phase of creating the STE(A)M educator profile. This is a very important aspect of the project, thoroughly researched by all contributing partners in order to finally produce a quality product to look forward into STE(A)M Education in a European education policy context.

An interactive and productive part of the first day was the workshop on the development of the training content for a MOOC, which will be produced with the purpose of the professional development of STE(A)M Educators.

On the second day, the project partners gave great emphasis on the different evaluation processes and quality assurance of the project and also planned all upcoming dissemination and exploitation activities. One of these events will be another international STEAMonEdu workshop that will take place on 26 March, as part of the ALL DIGITAL Week campaign.

Finally, the date has been set for the next project meeting, which will hopefully take place in summer in Berlin.

By RDEWG