Transdigital Education –
Developing Key Competencese through Holistic Learning and Teaching in the Digital Age
Partner Schools I Partnerschulen
Goetheschule Essen, Deutschland I Międzynarodowe Liceum Ogólnokształcące Paderewski w Lublinie, Polen I Siauliu Didzdvario Gimnazija, Litauen I Ikast-Brande Gymnasium, Dänemark I Voramar, Spanien
Project Overview I Projektübersicht
As the world becomes increasingly digital, both students and teachers face a number of unprecedented challenges. The key question is how schools may develop new learning and teaching methods to integrate digital media technologies across the curriculum while sustaining a balanced focus on the cognitive, affective, social and creative competencies needed by young Europeans in the 21st century.
In accordance with the ‘European Digital Competence Framework’ and the ‘European Framework for Digitally Competent Educational Organisations’, the goal of this project is to create an innovative, ‘transdigital’ learning and teaching approach based on the conviction that effective digital-age learning does not make isolated and ineffective use of digital devices and applications, but considers them as part of a holistic educational concept “to prepare students for a fulfilling and productive life in which their skills and attributes are constantly challenged, developed and applied as part of their lifelong learning” (J. Hare, Holistic Education).
Project Modules
→ Module 1: The Concept of Bildung
→ Module 2: Environmental Awareness & Engagement
→ Module 3: European Values, Democratic Participation and Civic Engagement
→ Module 4: Personal Development
→ Module 5: Digital Literacy & Learner Autonomy
Project Outline I Projektbeschreibung
The project “Transdigital Education. Developing Key Competencies through Holistic Learning and Teaching in the Digital Age” will foster a broad and sophisticated set of skills, competences and personal qualities in secondary school students between the age of 14 and 18 – and also teachers trained in the fields of Language and Literature, Natural Sciences, Human Sciences and ICT. The impact of the project will be most visible in the close international collaboration and the professional exchange of best practice among the project schools from Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Spain and Sweden, which will strengthen the awareness for how digital and traditional methods and media may intertwine to meet individual learners’ needs.
In Module 1 we look at the concept of bildung to gather ideas how to inspire educational change. Module 2 is based on a holistic understanding of the environment, which includes scientific study, practical and creative work beyond the confines of the classroom and aesthetic appreciation. In Module 3, students will explore deep reading strategies which require a close, inferential analysis, analogical reasoning and thorough deliberation of the value of cultural diversity and multiple perspectives. This is in contrast to today’s media-driven information flood which emphasizes speed, simplicity and immediacy. Module 4 is intended to enable students to participate actively and critically in democratic processes and help them to acquire the values of care and compassion. Module 5 promotes critical self-reflection and a self-conscious examination of the influence of virtual role models. In Module 6 students will be encouraged to take responsibility for their own personal and academic growth, especially with regards to digital literacy, and take ownership of their own learning through autonomous planning, prioritization and persistence. Module 7 will finally allow students to discover the potential of open learning through online courses and engage in the construction of a project-based distance learning course. Additionally, students will be given the opportunity to experience the current scope and scale of digitalisation in different school systems through long-term exchanges between DE, DK and PL, countries whose digital classroom development has taken strikingly different routes during recent years. While the ‘Digital Pact’ in Germany was only initiated in May 2019, the Polish school has considerable experience with digital learning and teaching and the Danish school, after having introduced the paperless classroom in 2014, is now in the process of deciding where it might be necessary to revert to analogous tradition.
Methodologically, students will collaborate within this 3-year project in a number of ways, both creatively and analytically. Activities will range from the creative writing of hypertexts or Twitter novels and the design of eTwinning websites, Padlets and Youtube videos to the production of macrophotography, the conceptualisation of a rewilding initiative, the broadcast of an internet radio podcast, the making of a civic
engagement portfolio and the compilation of an exhibition about digital and non-digital future trends. The main project result will be a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course with pedagogical essays, videos, interactive quizzes and tests about the benefits and challenges of a holistic implementation of digital learning.
Long-term benefits of this project will be relevant for teachers and students, educators, teacher trainees and interested parents around the world. The free MOOC with its wide variety of teaching ideas, classroom resources and student sample work and its didactic step-by-step reflections, developed during international project weeks and staff training sessions and based on a sound evaluation of cross-border collaboration, will offer a rich framework for future project work and may thus be seen as a unique means to inspire educational change in all who are open to a ‘transdigital’ point of view.
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Illustration adapted from Morning Brew. Released into the public domain via Unsplash.
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