23rd — 24th October 2020

ECSWE Council meeting explores digital learning
On 24 October 2020, invited experts presented ICT and media curricula from Germany, Switzerland and Hungary.

Georg Jür­gens and Dora Šimunović report­ed on the recent launch of the EU’s Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion Action Plan 2021–2027 that kept the office busy through­out this year. ECSWE has pre­pared inputs into the Commission’s two pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions and pro­posed a series of amend­ments to the Euro­pean Parliament’s report on Shap­ing dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion poli­cies, that is cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ed in the CULT Com­mit­tee. ECSWE also host­ed an online-event dur­ing this year’s Life­long Learn­ing Week.

To sup­port Coun­cil mem­bers in their work towards devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing an age-appro­pri­ate and devel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed media edu­ca­tion in their home coun­tries, the new com­pe­tence-based ICT and Media cur­ricu­lum from Switzer­land was pre­sent­ed along­side its Hun­gar­i­an coun­ter­part and the Ger­man Brochure on Media edu­ca­tion in Wal­dorf schools. Mem­bers also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss these new resources with invit­ed experts. The pre­sent­ed resources will now be trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for wider dis­sem­i­na­tion inside and out­side the Wal­dorf movement.

Ilona De Haas gave an update on the ERASMUS+ project col­lect­ing per­son­alised assess­ment prac­tices from across Europe. The col­lec­tion is pro­gress­ing steadi­ly and first results were sub­se­quent­ly pre­sent­ed dur­ing the Life­long Learn­ing Week event on Assess­ment and dia­logue: Enabling pupils’ par­tic­i­pa­tion. The project will con­clude in May 2021 with a pub­li­ca­tion of 15 — 20 good assess­ment prac­tices and a peer train­ing event.

Anoth­er nov­el­ty in our work was pre­sent­ed and joint­ly eval­u­at­ed by mem­bers in this meet­ing: Struc­tured Zoom calls with ECSWE mem­bers allow­ing board and staff to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of indi­vid­ual mem­bers’ needs and their per­cep­tion of our PR and advo­ca­cy, our inter­nal work and the qual­i­ty of our meet­ings. The first tri­al round already gave valu­able input for our future work and will allow us to align our work clos­er with mem­bers’ needs and pri­or­i­ties. In 2021 we will con­tin­ue to involve all the remain­ing mem­bers in this high­ly promis­ing exercise.

The shared expe­ri­ence of the COVID-19 restric­tions across Europe and the insights from mem­bers’ calls inspired a debate on how to rethink the way we organ­ise our Coun­cil meet­ings in the future. As a result, the fre­quen­cy of live meet­ings will be reduced from three to two per year, while shift­ing from knowl­edge shar­ing events to active col­lab­o­ra­tion. The two col­lab­o­ra­tive live meet­ings will be com­ple­ment­ed with two one-day online events ded­i­cat­ed to knowl­edge trans­fer and exchange to ensure the con­ti­nu­ity of Coun­cil work through­out the year.

A question? Please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Georg Jürgens