As part of its Forward-Looking Cooperation status, the STEAMonEdu project comprises specific tailor-made actions aiming to develop a policy influence toolkit and establish a structured framework in order to promote STE(A)M Education in the key policy making environments. In this perspective, a series of Capacity Building sessions have been developed, addressing the major pillars of advocacy practice and aspects of policy making, to provide the partners with concrete tools and methodologies to exert pressure in the most relevant environments and maintain the attention high and on the spot on STEAM Education and practices.

Due to its expertise in policy influence activity, ALL DIGITAL has been responsible for the planning and delivery of the Capacity Building sessions. These are 90-min workshops held every Thursday, with the participation of all project partners and both internal and external speakers.

The first session on 29 October, chaired and delivered by ALL DIGITAL’s CEO, Renato Sabbadini, focussed on providing the most relevant tools and a broad overview on advocacy practice and on the key aspects and actors of policy making activity. The second part of the session was then dedicated to an open dialogue between partners, based on the comparison of STE(A)M Education policies in different Member States, using the output of an internal Questionnaire compiled by the parties. This set the foundations for the future sessions which will explore more in detail the relevant tools and methodologies to conduct advocacy at European, national, regional and local level.

The second capacity building session was dedicated to Effective advocacy practice to influence policy at European level and welcomed the participation of Brikena Xhomaqi, Director of the Lifelong Learning Platform, who offered a valuable contribution based on first-hand experience, on the tool, methodologies and activities conducted at European level, to achieve a significant impact in the relevant policy-making environments.

The session was complemented by the contribution of Prof. Achilles Kameas from Hellenic Open University and project coordinator, who shifted the discussion towards STE(A)M Education and the current standing of STEAMonEdu,  It included a SWOT analysis and a detailed assessment on the role of the Educator, in the teacher-trainer-tutor context, as designer and creator of processes, then orchestrator and manager, coordinating procedures and outcomes, and ultimately as an active community member, able to influence others.

The next capacity building session is scheduled for 19 November and will focus on successful advocacy practices at regional/local level.

ALL DIGITAL delivered one more compelling Capacity Building Session on 19 November 2020. Capacity Building sessions are a series of five 90-min workshops addressing various aspects of advocacy and policy making, with the participation of all project partners and both internal and external speakers. You can read about the first two sessions in this blog.

This third session was once again moderated by Renato Sabbadini, CEO of ALL DIGITAL. He presented local and regional policy-making environments and underlined the importance of interaction of those environments with advocacy dynamics.

The advocacy practice at local level was analyzed by Dr. Panagiotis Papadouris, member of the Research Team of the Regional Directorate of Education of Western Greece, coordinator of Educational Work in Greece, and Professor at Hellenic Open University. The participants had the chance to know in depth the advocacy strategy and different tools Regional Directorate of Education of Western Greece has utilized in the past for its Policy Recommendations.

Finally, Borut Cink, programme officer at ALL DIGITAL with many years of advocacy experience at national level, provided the participants with all practical steps to address local and regional governance, including the descriptive demonstration of the most successful tools and methods.

The STEAMonEdu project partners are getting one step closer to advocacy! Stay tuned for the next steps to come in the European Policy influencing.

By RDEWG

In order to develop the Policy Influence Toolkit, a series of five online capacity building sessions were organised by ALL DIGITAL for STEAMonEdu project partners. Each of the sessions focused on a different layer and scenario, with the purpose of supporting project partners to develop and consolidate their policy-making strategy and to ensure a transversal action across Member States involved in the action.

With these sessions, we tried to provide a clear insight on how the institutions operate and to define the role of each organisation in convincing their government and policy makers in the importance of our cause. The sessions were centred on concrete examples of advocacy strategies and described diverse tools tailored to different actors at various levels. They were all moderated by ALL DIGITAL’s CEO Renato Sabbadini and involved speakers from partner organisations and external experts.

We have already talked about the first three sessions in our blogs The Way to Advocacy and One step closer to successful advocacy.

The 4^th session on 3 December, was focused on effective advocacy practice to influence policy at national level. In the discussion with Pierluigi Vaglioni, Italian representative on the Working Group DELTA of DG EAC and public official at the Ministry of Education of the Italian Republic, participants learned about national policy-making environments and advocacy dynamics; some tools and approaches used at national level; and practical examples of national advocacy.

The 5^th, final, session on 10 December “Effective communication strategies” was devoted to the most important aspects of effective communication in policy-making – how to develop communication strategy for advocacy, how to create and communicate advocacy message(s), engage policy makers and key stakeholders, and organise awareness raising campaigns.

Valentin Dupouey, Head of Communications at European Green Party, gave a detailed presentation about Advocacy-Campaigns-Comms. Valentin talked about elements of successful campaigns and tips for advocacy with practical effective examples at European level.

Valentin’s engaging presentation was complemented by Ekaterina Clifford of ALL DIGITAL, who touched upon other aspects Communicating for advocacy with the focus on what ALL DIGITAL does in policy and advocacy, what STEAMonEdu consortium can do as a whole to influence policy, and what tools, channels, approaches each partner can use in their work to convince busy policy-makers and raise awareness among educators and general public about the importance and benefits of STE(A)M education.

STEAMonEdu consortium thanks all the speakers for sharing their expertise and hopes these sessions will support partners in their activities to ensure proper impact and further exploitation of project results.

By ALL DIGITAL

The winners of the SteamonEdu Photo Contest show fragments of the creative STEAM learning from the different schools and projects in the project countries.

Technology is changing our society at a dizzying pace and with it, the learning processes of children in education and training. STEAM education, which stands for five subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Arts, helps to promote a series of skills and knowledge that helps them innovate, imagine and solve.

In the first quarter of 2021, STEAMonEdu launched a photography contest through its platform with the aim of collecting the day-to-day STEAM activities of the different schools and partner projects. A total of 67 photographs have been sent.

A jury made up of project professionals have evaluated the pieces and have chosen the three winning images based on the criteria of active participation, aesthetic quality, motivating or effective to explain the phenomenon or concept of STE (A) M education.

Three finalist images

The three finalist images reflect practical training, where students learn and work in a real way through experimentation and STEAM methodology while teachers provide the necessary tools for students to acquire autonomy and use their knowledge profitably and enriching.

The first award: Project STEM “Mr. Science” by Alina Frățilă

The project «Mr. Science» aims to optimize the quality of primary education with the help of more motivating, stimulating and effective learning contexts, based on active learning and problematization, contexts that prepare students to adapt to the requirements of the society of the 21st century, training their digital skills. The educational project aims to promote active learning and problem-based learning (PBL) as strategic educational approaches in primary education. «Active learning has many benefits for education. And it facilitates the formation of basic knowledge, as well as non-technical skills such as analytical and critical thinking, entrepreneurship, the ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary groups, etc.», explains Alina Frățilă.

The second award: STEM Activity with Arduino by Adnan Akyüz

Using the SCAMPER thinking technique, the image reflects how students use the rain sensor in Arduino projects for a very different purpose. At the end of the event, the students examined the designs they created by combining the laws of physics and technology in a single process. They chose designs with the most efficient and ideal cost/benefit ratio. «Going beyond the known, thinking differently and being creative emerged as activities that encouraged creativity. The future belongs to those who make a difference «, explains Adnan Akyüz.

The third award: STEAM in my School by Nectara

The photo reflects a very interesting and creative STEAM activity. The students were able to work with different techniques such as Scape Room, to help find information about different tasks and laboratory techniques, to see how to obtain paper and purify water. Finally, they built a tower of spaghetti.

By Colectic

The event, in hybrid format, is within the 2021 social internet day #Jdis21, where Esther Subias from Colectic, Claudia Matera from ALL DIGITAL, Achilles Kameas from Hellenic Open University, Cornelia Popescu from Fundatia EOS Romania, Katrin Schuberth from Helliwood media & education and Paolo Russo from Stati Generali dell’Innovazione will present the European framework and approaches to STE(A)M education in the session “STEAMonEdu for digital inclusion: project results”.

The Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia (Spain), through the Xarxa Punt TIC and the Secretariat of Digital Policies, are pleased to invite you to be an active part of the conference.

During the conference, will be presented the most relevant results of the project and how STEAMonEdu works to strengthen a network of people interested in the field and offers the opportunity to share their experiences.

Time for interactive workshops will take place from 12:15 pm to 13:45 pm.

Additionally, the workshop “Free software tools and resources: the Punt TIC experience” will be focused on free software and tools helpful to work and share results, with open standards to facilitate cooperation. These opportunities can allow wider control over the computer, data and privacy.

From the Punt TIC experience, we’ll explore how it can be implemented in telecenters.

A second workshop on “SteamOnEdu and the telecenters: exploring the intersections” will be focused on how the professional profile of digital trainers and facilitators influences and matters. And to which extent sharing ideas, experiences, activities, resources, networks and dialogue is an element that makes a difference.

The STEAMonEdu project has explored all these avenues as ICT Point Network. Now is time to share, analyze the results, see how we can improve our impact on the citizens we interact with and answer some questions such as: Is the STEAM profile essential in a telecentre?

Registration for the final event session at #JdIS21.

For any questions, feel free to contact steamonedu@colectic.coop.

By Colectic