Author: bgarate

After a successful experience last year with the e-MOTIVE project (www.e-motive.vet), following a structured methodology for international cooperation between VET teachers and students, this academic year, thanks to the support of BBK, Fundación Vital and Kutxa, 11 students from HETEL schools (Maristak Durango, La Salle Berrozpe, Salesianos Deusto, Zulaibar and Egibide) will have the opportunity to work with Dutch students from the VET college ROC Da Vinci. In this case, the challenge given by the teachers to the students to solve it is the design of something to reduce the volume of waste. After a first meeting in November among the teachers to design and plan the challenge, during these 2 next weeks Dutch students have come to the Basque Country to meet the peers in their group. After the joint presentation of the challenge to the students, these will be working partially on-line partially in person to give a satisfactory answer to the challenge. The solution given by the students will be presented and evaluated in the Netherlands the week of the 19th of February. The participants in this international project will develop important skills for companies, such as teamwork, English, intercultural communication, self-learning or self-management, which will help them to be better prepared for their next professional future.

These days HETEL International is attending the 5th transnational meeting of the EURspace project celebrated in Italy. During the meeting, the project partners have discussed about the last steps to launch a digital platform with a methodology which will help to identify common learning outcomes within a mobility project and will make easier finding commonalities among VET curricula in Europe. A training kit addressed to VET teachers and students about the use of ECVET as a quality assurance process to be used in a mobility project, will also be available. Next April 2018 a training action on these topics will take place in Portugal with the attendance of 2 HETEL´s teachers. .

Today has taken place, in the facilities of AIC-Automotive Intelligence Center, in Boroa, the kick-off of the specialization programs in Dual VET in the fields of die-making and robotics for the automotive sector in the Basque Country, organized by HETEL and AIC. This courses are funded by Basque employment service – Lanbide and by the Vocational Department of the Basque Government. The beginning of this course, has counted with the presence of the director of Technology and Advanced Learning of VET of the Basque Government, Rikar Lamadrid; of Julen Elgeta, president of HETEL and of Aitor Ruiz, Director of Knowledge Management of AIC / ACICAE, and also, with the participating companies and VET teachers and students. The acts concluded with a visit to AIC´s facilities, where the in lightening, advanced manufacturing and virtual vehicle development centres or the GTI-Gestamp Technology Institute itself, are located. These facilities suppose an unbeatable setting for this initiative, since the students will have the opportunity to work in a real world environment, adapted in a didactical way to benefit their learning process. Specifically, on the one hand, the course “Design and Manufacture of dies for the production of a metal piece” (die-making) has been started, where the students will alternate their apprenticeship in companies with their learning in AIC and GTI. 18 students start this course, in which companies such as Matrici, Garita, Batz, Cie Automotive, Irudi or Gestamp participate. On the other hand, it has also been the opening of the course of “Management of means of production in highly automated industry” (robotics), where students will combine their training in companies with training in AIC. 12 students participate in this program, along with companies such as Robot Inser, Irudi, Ingemat, Dibal, RPK, Pierburg, Inauxa, Cikautxo, PMG and Nemak.

Mobility programmes like Erasmus+ or Global Training offer the possibility to some VET students and graduates to have a working experience in a different country. This not only increases their opportunities to find a job (and a better one) but it also builds in them the concept of global citizenship and provides them with useful skills to manage their personal and professional lives. In order to prepare these VET students and graduates to take the best out of these experiences, VET teachers need to have the skills to: –         –  Integrate intercultural skills and internacionalization directly in the VET curriculum, so all students develop these skills on a certain level. –          – Be aware of mobility possibilities, programmes existing, process management and transversal aspects of the mobility for learning. –          – Explore different ways of work based learning abroad and how competences can be recognised. To upscale the teachers skills to improve the impact of mobility and to integrate internationalization as a fundamental aspect in VET curriculum, HETEL international is attending these days to the kick-off meeting in Cologne of the WBL Summer School, a project coordinated by UNISER (Italy) with German, French, Portuguese and Slovenian partners. During these 2 days meeting, we have been working in the design of the structure and learning objectives of this summer school, which will be held in Italy the last week of June 2018.  

This year, thanks to the support of BBK and Caja Vital, two financial entities from the Basque Country, a group of students and teachers from HETEL schools will participate in the international version of the Diseinua project, following the e-motive methodology. This week our colleague Martin Borsje, from the Dutch ROC Da Vinci school, visited the participating HETEL schools and met with all the teachers involved. The purpose of this visit was to design and plan both the challenge to be solved with cooperative methodologies, by the teams of students from Euskadi and the Netherlands, as well as the moments in which the student´s mobilities will be carried out. The idea is to hold a first meeting in Euskadi, where students from both countries meet each other. During the stay, the teams will be selected and the challenge to be solved will be presented. Throughout 2 months they will work together in teams using different technological means (Skype, e-mail, etc). Participants in this project, in addition to learning collaboratively through a project, acquire other key skills and competences, such as English proficiency, work in multicultural teams, independence or self-management. Abantean!  

Throughout this week, more than 300 people will debate in HETEL schools about the necessary skills to face the technological advances in the 4.0 Industry era. This action is part of the European Vocational Skills Week, which this year has as claim “Discover your talent”. In each of the 21 participating HETEL Schools, a group of three agents (students, teachers and employers) will debate, and then, they will connect by videoconference to share their reflections with two other schools, which have already performed the analysis. All these conclusions, will be collected by HETEL. In these debates, the participants will try to answer questions such as what are the key competences people should have in a changing environment?, Can these competences be acquired in a VET School? What values ​​should be taken into account when making a new contract?. The current speed of change, specially the technological one, entails that much of the knowledge learned in the school is soon obsolete, which makes more than ever necessary a lifelong learning process, and accentuates the importance of certain transversal competences. These debates involve companies such as Euskaltel, Ikusi, RPK, Goimek-Danobat, CIE Egaña, Jema Energy S.A (Irizar Group), Elimotor Workshops, Prasa, Noraybio, Wolco, Batz Araluce, Ekin, …