Promoter – Escola Profissional Amar Terra Verde
Action – Educar na Era Digital
Description –The changes caused by the inclusion of new technologies will be inexorable. Teaching will, necessarily, have to adapt to the new realities of the information and knowledge society, under penalty of becoming obsolete in the eyes of its actors: students; parents or other individuals in charge of students’ education, and labor market agents.
At EPATV, we started in 2017 to develop a project in the area of digital technologies applied to teaching – entitled Schools 4.0. with the support of the CEDH – Centro de Estudos do Desenvolvimento Humano, of Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
At this moment, EPATV assumed itself as a School that makes the learning process its core, instead of teaching, a School where digital skills are transversal and where students are users/producers of technology and where there is an intentionality in all learning processes.
Pursuing the design of a new School, which we are building day by day, in addition to training the teaching team in topics such as digital tools and autonomy and flexibility, we acquired equipment, such as interactive digital whiteboards and new computer labs. With regard to teacher training, sessions were held this school year within the scope of the Microsoft TEAMS platform and the Apple Professional Learning Specialist. During this school year, we also intend to carry out a 30-hour certified E-Trainer training for all trainers.
We also started, in this academic year, 2020-21, the ICLASS project, with the distribution to all students of the 1st year classes, of APPLE tablets, which were personalized with the name and class of the student, and that allow to access textbooks, digital educational resources and countless APPs, which arises students’ curiosity and creativity.
The aim of this project is to promote innovative educational environments in a logic of individual and collaborative research. At this point, with 2/3 of the school year elapsed, we can already perceive some positive aspects, namely a higher approval rate for modules/UFCD’s, as well as a reduction in behavioral problems and dropout rates. On the other hand, with the implementation of the ICLASS project, we also realized that efficiencies are created such as reductions in the maintenance of computer rooms, consumables and textbooks, hardware peripherals, printing services.
In the next school year, we will continue with the ICLASS project, we will again assign IPADs to students in the 1st year classes (the goal is that in the 2022-23 school year, all EPATV students will have an IPAD) we will continue with the training of students and teachers with the aim of becoming an Apple Distinguished School. If we achieve this distinction, it will mean that the entire school community has a clear vision of how learning objectives can be achieved with the support of technology.
More information here.