Project Aims
During the pandemic of COVID-19, schools forced to adapt new teaching practices and switched to online teaching. However, teachers hardly had a chance to develop key skills and competences, which would have made this transition easier. DigiTeaL therefore aims to:
●Identify training needs and gaps around teachers’ online teaching capability in the partner countries.
●Create a practical, step-by-step resource that guides teachers through the technical elements of setting up safe online teaching, using identified best practice, and giving them confidence if they have mainly focused on face-to-face teaching in the past.
●Inform teachers about the non-technical classroom management issues associated with online teaching, and provide solutions.
●Make teachers aware of an internationally recognized online assessment system that they can adapt for their students in any subject.
Background
The pandemic of COVID-19 took the world by surprise, and citizens were forced into a global lockdown with almost no time to prepare, and with no precedent in recent years. Schools moved immediately to online teaching for the duration of the lockdown, and teachers have hardly had a chance to take a breath, let alone spend time retraining or developing key skills to help with the move to online teaching. Taking into consideration the above, DigiTeal project aims to provide teachers with technical guidelines for moving their classroom-based teaching online. It aims to gather the best practice that teachers found through trial and error during the spring 2020 lockdown, and turn it into a resource that can be accessed at European level. It also gives more technically savvy teachers a chance to share their knowledge, while supporting the teachers with less confidence in IT, so that they know they can effectively meet the minimum requirements for effective online teaching. In addition, our user guide for the Open Badge qualification system will make it easier for teachers to set up a recognized qualification for any subject.