Author: bgarate

This week HETEL international has met in Pescara (Italy) with the EIDE partners, an Erasmus+ project which aims to reinforce entrepreneurial education of VET learners by focusing on the development of their emotional intelligence and their digital competences. The meeting was focused on the assessment of the contents produced by the partners for an on-line course addressed to VET learners for self-learning and on setting the basis for a manual addressed to teachers and learners on how to use the course, as well as complementary activities to be carried out in class. The course will be available in September in the project Website: http://www.eideproject.eu/

Entrepreneurship is a concept integrated in the curriculum of VET programmes in most of European countries. In the case of the Basque Country, entrepreneurship is one of the common subjects to any vocational programme, disregarding the profession. However, is usually focused from the perspective of business creation and management and it is difficult to promote from one subject entrepreneurial behaviour beyond the concept of setting up a company. That was the origin of CiTE (Confidence in Teaching Entrepreneurship), an Erasmus+ project addressed to identify how entrepreneurship is integrated in the VET curriculum and which materials are used for it in a number of countries (United Kingdom, Spain, Finland, The Netherlands, France, Portugal, Luxembourg and Estonia), filtering the good things and developing materials for those aspects not covered or not enough. Having that first step, identification and definition of the state of the art, almost done, the partners of the project, led by Colleges Partnership (UK) and with HETEL among the partnership, met in Tampere (FI) to discuss about the ideal profile to teach entrepreneurship in order to develop a set of materials (a toolkit) addressed to this profile. During this meeting, we counted with the presence of 2 teachers in the field, one from Nazaret Zentroa (Donostia-San Sebastian) and another one from Egibide (Vitoria-Gasteiz), who are part of the advisory group for the quality assessment of the project. In the next months, we will work in the definition of contents to include in the toolkit, having our next meeting at the end of September in Durango (Basque Country). Keep updated in the project Website: https://www.citeerasmus.com/

Once again, the European partners from the UK, Germany, Italy and the Basque Country met to discuss at Dekra in Berlin. This time around, there was some significant progress in AUTO 4.0 erasmus + project, with some tangible outputs from the 2 days of discussions. The partners opened by discussing the 19 job profiles which had been generated by and develop one job profile, which was a combination of six ‘operational’ profiles and one ‘data management’ profile: the new ‘Automotive Digital Mechatronic X.0’ profile. Next, the partners discussed which new IR4 competencies this job profile should contain, and developed a list of generic and specific competencies. This was an important step, as it was the logical approach following the 19 profiles. To finish, the partners developed a 4-step approach for teaching the students. Next steps for the Erasmus team is to fine-tune the ‘Automotive Digital Mechatronic X.0’ job profile, and then to finalise a teaching template to be used by each partner for developing the teaching material. Overall, this was an action-packed international meeting, with great progress. Lastly, all partners offer a special thanks to Malte and to Dekra for hosting this meeting.

Last week HETEL International attended the 4th meeting of the Mobiliteach project (funded by the Erasmus+ Programme) in Maribor (Slovenia) to prepare the next summer school, to be held in La Rochelle (France). As the summer school celebrated last year in Bologna (Italy), this year we are inviting VET teachers from France, Italy, Slovenia, Germany and the Basque Country to get together and learn and exchange on their experience in mobility projects: how they prepare students from an intercultural and professional point of view, how they support students while abroad, how they follow up their progress in cooperation with companies and mobility providers or how they deal with mobility management, dissemination and sustainability. The summer school in La Rochelle will take place between the 8th to the 12th of July and it is foreseen the participation of 2 VET teachers from HETEL´s VET schools. The programme will be soon available in the Mobiliteach Website: www.mobiliteach.net  

In the framework of the Erasmus+ programme, with the mobility grants managed by HETEL, Xabier Puertas, VET teacher in La Salle Berrozpe, and Karmelo Usategi, VET teacher un Zulaibar, were in the Netherlands during 4 days to learn how VET colleges in that country get ready for national skillscompetition (preparation methodology, structure, available resources, etc) The first days, they visited Deltion College, in Zwolle, and Albeda College, in Rotterdam, where they could see the dimension and importance of vocational education in the country. They could also see how students are prepared to compete in Skills competitions. They also had the opportunity to visit the Dutch National Skills Competition, Skills The Finals 2019, being able to see by themselves student´s skills in the Netherlands

VET organization´s representatives from Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland are these days in Durango in the Cyvetsecurity Erasmus+ project meeting. The aim of this project is to contribute to a safer Europe, trying cybersecurity to be a transversal digital competence in all VET programmes.   The increasing number of social networks and mobile apps, the security of the information shared and the personal data, must face frequently cyber attacks. In the business world, especially in those sectors that manage sensible data, the risk increases exponentially. In this context, the objective of this second project meeting is to identify the learning outcomes related to cybersecurity for the different job profiles. The next step is to develop materials to acquire these competences in the VET schools during next course. More updates in the project Website: www.cyvetsecurity.eu

Last week teachers and students from HETEL´s Vocational Training schools La Salle Berrozpe, Egibide, Somorrostro and Zulaibar were in the Netherlands to present the project that, for 2 months and in cooperation with ROC Da Vinci college, have been designing in the framework of Diseinua International. This year, the project consisted of the design of a plastic injection machine. The students, working in international teams (Netherlands-Basque Country) presented their projects in front of 60 people (students, teachers and companies from the Netherlands), being the presentations in English and answering to all technical questions about their work. At the end of presentation, a ranking with the 3 projects was made, attending to various criteria (presentation, quality of plans or manufacturing possibilities). This experience, possible thanks to the support of BBK Fundazioa and Fundación Vital, has been very enriching both for students and teachers, not only from the point of view of technical competences development but also for their personal and social development. We are very glad to be able to keep alive this experience, which started 3 academic years ago and we hope to keep offering this opportunity to our students in the future!

Last week an HETEL team met at Roskilde Technical College (Denmark) with VET teachers from Norway, Finland and Denmark in order to set the basis for a coollaboration in the framework of Erasmus+ KA2 2020. In the meeting we defined the fundaments of a European project to define the contents of a European curriculum in robotics. During our stay in Roskilde we had the opportunity to exchange very interesting ideas in this regard, as well as to visit the facilities of the Roskilde Technical College and the company Aplika. Thank you very much for your warm welcome, it has been a very satisfactory exchange! Abantean!

Last week the SIMPLE team met in Elazig (Turkey) as part of the exchange of practices we have been carrying out to compare how migrants are received, assisted and integrated in the partner countries (Germany, Spain, Turkey, Sweden and Slovenia). To do so, we visited Elazig vocational school and we had the opportunity to meet with 2 students, from Afghanistan and Iraq, who shared their story with us. Furthermore, we were also received by the Education Department from Elazig, where we were told about how the public authorities assist migrants so they will feel welcome and part of the Turkish society. During the meeting we had the chance to wrap up what we have learnt during the project until now and to discuss about possible next steps together, making good use of the knowledge gained with SIMPLE.

New academic year and new opportunity for Diseinua international, a cooperation between HETEL and ROC Da Vinci, following e-MOTIVE´s methodology, counting once again with the support of BBK Fundazioa and Fundación Vital. In this new edition, the HETEL´s VET schools taking part are Egibide, La Salle Berrozpe, Zulaibar and Somorrostro, together with the Dutch college ROC Da Vinci. Students have met this week in the Basque Country and the teams are already working to solve the challenge proposed by their teachers this year: to design a machine to produce filaments to be used later on, for example for 3D printing, using plastic as raw material. The participants in this project, apart from learning collaboratively solving a project, acquire other skills and competences, as the use of English as foreign language, working in multicultural teams, independence and self-management. The solution of the challenge will be presented to a jury of teachers and employers in March in the Netherlands. In HETEL, we are greatly satisfied to see that this working methodology keeps going one more year.