School Education Gateway newsletter 4/2019 - December View this email in your browser
SEG - Newsletter

Reminder: User survey open until 1 December!

We are your gateway to EU education policies and actions. How do you think we are doing? Give your opinion!

Complete the annual user survey and let us know why and how often you visit the website, what topics you would like to read about, how we could improve different tools and services, and any other feedback you may have.

If you haven’t done so yet – or if you started but didn’t complete the survey – please respond to the School Education Gateway User Survey 2019 here. It takes just 5-10 minutes and you can do it one of the 23 available languages (choose your language in the right-hand side menu).

Join the last webinar of 2019: ‘Digital competence’ - 10 December

Or access previous webinars, such as the ones on learning spaces or creativity & entrepreneurship, through the recordings anytime.

The Digital Competence webinar, on Tuesday 10 December at 17:00 CET, will offer findings from the recent Eurydice report on Digital Education at School in Europe, and insights into how the SELFIE tool can support schools to embed digital technologies into teaching, learning and assessment. The speakers in the webinar will be Peter Birch, coordinator for education policy and systems analysis for Eurydice (who published the report), and Seán Gallagher, a leader at St Angela's College, Ireland, speaking about their experiences with SELFIE.

If you missed any previous webinar, you can find all the recordings and presentations online. For example, the webinar on creativity and entrepreneurship features Andy Penaluna, Emeritus Professor in at the University of Wales, speaking about the theory of creative learning. In another recent webinar we asked how can schools design better learning spaces to enhance teaching and learning, with contributions from Massimo Belardinelli (Italy) and Cidália Marques (Portugal) presenting practical examples how their schools went about creating innovative learning environments.

With the end of the year in sight, it’s time to look back at 2019

Inspiring webinars, insightful practice articles, successful Teacher Academy courses, useful website updates. Twelve months in 120 words.

Updates: Following popular demand we made reviews of course providers more visible. Our archive of webinars now is easily accessible via the Teacher Academy. The home page was updated, and other improvements were made under the hood.

Editorial: From citizenship to gaming, from bullying to learning spaces. With 12 monthly topics our practice articles, survey results, news items and Education Talks covered many themes. Find all articles around your favourite monthly topic.

Teacher Academy: Thousands joined our webinars and online courses. Course participants not only shared experiences through learning diaries, the best of their final assignments were published as Gamified lesson plans and Learning scenarios against bullying.

Growth: So far, this year almost 17.000 new users have joined! Welcome! See you all again next year!

SEPTEMBER: MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOMS

Literacy and multilingual competences are EU Key Competences. Given that multilingual classrooms are a reality in Europe, we highlighted projects awarded the European Language Label that do their best to help students thrive in such environment. Even then, Alex Rawlings (Britain’s most multilingual student 2012) notes, linguistic hierarchy problematically de-prioritises some languages, regardless their neurolinguistic value. Then the UN Year of Indigenous Languages draws important attention to actions supporting linguistic diversity.

OCTOBER: LEARNING SPACES

Learning environments include the physical spaces in which learning occurs. But they can also be particular spaces, approaches and atmospheres through which learning occurs. Ellen Beate gives the example of children’s need for thrilling and exciting environments to learn about risks. Some example projects remind us also to go beyond the physical space and consider virtual and social spaces. Karen Könings, then, gave an interview about participatory school design and building information modelling.

NOVEMBER: RESEARCHING SCHOOL EDUCATION

Education is a well-recognised field of study. Victoria Elliott shows that sometimes research stays research, but in other cases leads to bottom-up classroom innovations, such as with her research on marking in schools. But research doesn’t happen only at universities – teachers too conduct studies within daily activities, as shown in our practice article on such action research. Events, like the recent European conference on supporting key competence development, then give an opportunity to discuss how research and evidence from practice can inspire, and be part of, policy development.

The School Education Gateway is funded by Erasmus+, the European programme for Education, Training, Youth and Sport. It is operated for the DG Education and Culture of the European Commission by European Schoolnet, an international partnership of 32 European Ministries of Education. The School Education Gateway is linked to eTwinning, the community for schools in Europe.
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