Thursday 17 September 2015

Liveblog #Ectel2015 keynote Juan Pelegrin EU #funding #Edtech

Okay, this blog might be of important for anyone searching for funding regarding EdTech skills. Juan Pelegrin seems like an honest believer in funding projects to get change done.

first part from Doug Clow's liveblog
"Digital skills shortage. Mismatch of rising unemployment, with 1m vacancies not filled. Have to modernise education and training systems, cheaply and effectively. Cost-saving a priority. The OECD report on Thursday, where the conclusions were misread to say digital technologies do not help learning. Not good news, we will have to prove them wrong."

Barriers
Limited uptake of ict is schools and unis
Fragility of current EU learning tech industry

Opportunities
  • Tech is disrupting education (moocs, cloud, tablets, interactive books)
  • Changes in education – open, flexible access t learning and education 24/7
  • Demands for 21st century skills
  • Build European market for interactive digital content for use in learning (remark Inge interesting, might be integration of MOOCs in schools)
Challenges
  • Promote excellence in education and skills through pervasive access to digital learning and 21st century skills
  • Ensure adequacy between skills and employment market (remark Inge: interesting focus still on job creation, where jobs are bound to disappear through increased automation)

Support to a triple play: innovation, inclusion, and economic impact

Digital tech in EU
  • In EU education is failing to keep pace with digital society and economy
  • 63% of nine year olds do not study at highly digital schools
  • Teachers feel insecure about working with tech.
Gunther Oettinger – commissioner for digital economy and society
Mission: (interest!) “… to reinforce digital skills and learning across society, with a view to empowering EU workforce and consumers for the digital era”
This is new to EU, a focus on digital skills. The EU has put real political attention on this topic (feeling funding opportunities here

Recent EU actions
  • Digital single market initiative (2015)
  • Initiative opening up education (2013)
  • Grand coalition for ICT jobs (2013)
  • Research and innovation on ICT for learning: close to 40 projects, ne calls under H2020 contributing to shape the future of education and training (remark: look for calls)
An overview of funding is given… but … the question is of course (in my opinion) which type of funding of projects has had which type of objective impact (objective meaning: not-self reported, but established from outside findings).

Outcome Topic 20: tech for better human learning and teaching WP 2014-2015
Input: 174 proposals for 640 million funds
Output: only 54 proposals ranked as high quality, 12 retained (as many calls were resubmissions trying to fit into other calls), 5 were put on the reserve list.
(remark: this makes it possible if you write a high quality call to get funding: make it new, authentically fitting the call…)

Outcome Topic 20: Coverage
  • Good coverage overall with wide reach of learning contexts from formal to informal (schools, universities, VET, workplace, social learning).
  • Advanced personalisation and adaptivity through robotics, AI, immersive environments, wearable tech, analytics)
  • Key areas target STEM, artistic expression, languages, open courseware, assessment, career development skills and skills for industry 4.0.
  • Special needs widely recognised
  • No PPI submission (PPI? Lite umbrella – not sure what this means, need to look up)
Horizon 2020 work programme 2016 – 2017
ICT 22 2016 can be found on page 53 of the Horizon 2020 report.
  • ICT 22 2016 tech for learning and skills (30 -  20 million EUR – if I heard correctly and looking for proposals around 5 million – WHAT?! Well, just an indication)
  • Focus on developing open and interoperable components
  • Digital learning infrastructure
  • Personalised learning
  • Skills validation
  • Assessment of learner’s progress
  • Availability and wider adoption of education tech
  • Efficient and effective learning
  • Very large pilots in several European countries (very large: scalable across countries, schools, organisations… so deployment of tech)
Wise advise: read the call, and stick to the suggestions.
Primary and secondary schools only = focus

Other option for funding: focus on Research and Innovation Action
  • Tech to focus on Science, Tech, Engineering, Mathematics, combined with Arts (STEAM) – remark Inge: seems good bet, as art always led STEM innovations, think Einstein visualisation capacity)
  • Develop creativity
  • Foundational research and piloting
  • Potential impact on key growth areas
Competition remains to be very high, so if you answer a call, do it at high quality. “Half of the project evaluators sit in this room” 
16 April 2016 will be deadline
Look for good, strong partners (Lisa?)
Interpret the language of the text as it is (and/or means and/or). 

Additional information: there are billions of EUR for professional development (local initiatives) of teachers in schools... so make bid. This is apart from the above, just a note to take into consideration of CPD of teachers is in your mind. See EU structural funds.