European Commission - LEONARDO DA VINCI  Programme  

PILOT PROJECTS   - Contract  n. I-02-B-F-PP-120439  

The idea of the project arises from a real need shown for lots of years by the teachers of  the I.T.I. “S. Mottura”, promoter of the project. The school is the oldest of the four Italian Mining High Schools, but it has never had at its disposal textbooks modulated on the needs of the specific study course, because editors find uneconomical to print textbooks used just by a small piece of market. Thus the need to identify some models as a guide for a co-operation between the publishing market actors, has been the spring that has driven us  to look at user niches in the European publishing market that show needs like ours (Vocational Training centres, Small/Medium Enterprise). The individuation of needs has occurred both through a statistical research developed within CENSIS about system integration and about the operator skills for the integration of the education world, the vocational training and the enterprise, and through contacts with European training centres we have worked with.

 The NUVOLA Project aims at:

1)  Providing trainers and educational administrators (managers) with an effective system for the spotting of teaching aids and supports appropriate to formative needs;

2)  Providing teaching aids publishers and planners with a guide ( list of indicators) to give reference to products planned for vocational training (VT);

3)  Creating the conditions for all educational agents (schools, vocational training centres, small and medium enterprises) and private institutions to easily cope with present communication technology, to acquire and make use in a dynamic way of teaching aids, personalised and functional to specific needs. Such needs derive from taking into consideration that:

1)  Technological innovation is so rapid that very often books, magazines multimedia products and widespread operating softwares, available and related to specific topics, end up with being out-of-date, (soon after their release);

2)  Publishing product proliferation often causes users to lose their bearings (it is possible to buy under/oversized or even unsuitable materials;

3)  There is no definite reference to establish if the content of a teaching aid is functional to the acquisition of competences and abilities expected form a teaching unit aimed at specific professional needs;

4)  The media development leads to a reconsideration of the concept of “monomedia” and physically homogeneous (the equivalent of a bibliographic entry today could be represented by a link to a specific internet site);

5)  The lack of a shared model of “reference guide” in different fields of Vocational training, leads trainers and administrators (managers) to a “self-production” of products (sometimes ordinary ones) reproducing, selecting and simplifying existing materials.

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NUVOLA SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES ARE:

1)   To adapt teaching aid production, supply and distribution systems to vocational training needs, in all fields (professional and technical education, initial and on-going training) and to availability of new technologies (telematics, computer science);

2)   To define once again the logical and  physical nature of teaching aids, meant for vocational training;

3)   To define once again the way of packaging of intellectual products, by those authors acting on behalf of editors (publishing houses, public and private organisms creating and/or publishing interesting materials for the vocational training);

4)  To provide editors with clues for the implementation of a new model of organising, computerising and filing the informative heritage that the editor can place at  VT agents-users’ disposal.

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EXPECTED OUTCOMES

 NUVOLA aims at carrying out:

1)   the ideation and formalisation of a VT “user model”, meant as a list of indicators able to specify prerequisites, competence and knowledge fields, levels of skills to be acquired at the beginning of an educational activity, enabling the definition of type, quality and specificity of teaching aids, appropriate to that kind of educational training;

2)   the realisation of an “author” interface able to supply references and classify the heritage of teaching material, of editors, university, school and vocational training  centres, in order to be able to put into relation specific material “requests” with “real availability”(organisation of data bases related to information and publishing products, specific for the vocational training);

3)   the realisation of a user-provider communication model, able to create the publishing product as quick as possible and through a targeted and logical of the available materials (virtual book);

4)   the ideation and realisation of three prototypes of teaching aids On CD-rom and on the project portal, to be tested in three different contexts (school – professional and technical education, vocational training centre, distant learning environment – small and medium enterprises).

The NUVOLA experimentation involves schools, universities, editors, vocational training centres, small and medium enterprise, associations; the presence of associations ensures a widespread diffusion of the initiative, meant to test the effectiveness of the model on a large scale. Associations are expected to create a data base of the experimentation, containing the most relevant data, starting from the stage of initial information, to the identification of the subjects interested in experimenting, through simulation, the aspects related to the planning, distribution and implementation in local contexts of the prototypes of  the created teaching aids, to the evaluation of the outcomes.

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 PARTNERSHIP

Italy:

• FENICE, Professional Association of teachers;

• ANICIA, publishing house in Rome;

• SINTAGMA S.r.l., small enterprise in the field of information technology and telematics services;

• ITI “S.Mottura”, Technical industrial high school in Caltanissetta;

• SCIENTER, enterprise of an association dealing with planning, development and evaluation of experimental actions in the educational and formative field;

• UNIVERSITY OF ROME III, Department of educational science;

• CUNSA, co-operative enterprise dealing with electronic and educational toys; EKO GROUP, enterprise in the field of information technology.

Belgium:

Spain :

• FBCG, University of Barcelona.

Ireland:

• DEIS-CIT, Department of educational development - Cork Institute of Technology who will give a contribution to competency and experience in point of planning, development and evaluation of innovative transnational experimental actions in the educational and training sector.

The partnership’s composition is representative of all the subjects (public and private) which, on different level, work on the European field of vocational training, thus offering guarantees of quality in terms of innovation, as change of existing practices ( “books on demand”, “teleordering”…), of ability to find new answers to new or already existing needs, of coherence to the aims planned , of relevancy as to the priorities of the Community invitation, of importance as contribution to the regional, national and Community political and economical strategies, of transferability considering the different characteristics of vocational training in the partner countries of NUVOLA project.

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 PROJECT MANAGEMENT: The responsible agency for the national and European diffusion is FENICE. The project, to be realised in two years, will be divided in macrophases (yearly), phases (periods related to specific set of actions), actions ( single specific activities). The management and related program of the project will be divided as follows: Macrophase 1 (1ST year): Phases: 1.1 promotion of the NUVOLA Project within European community- State of art in the publishing market for the vocational training with new technologies (1st month); 1.2 transnational research about relevant needs and experiences in the fields of teaching aids in vocational training- Creation and set up of a portal dedicated to the project (1 month); 1.3 Planning of  the NUVOLA model - individuation of the conditions and of the integration ways between the worlds of school, of the vocational training and of the enterprise (4 months); 1.4 implementation of the user model of vocational training- Individuation and gathering of materials and their implementation on  the portal (5 months); Macrophase 2 (2nd year) – Phases: 2.5  implementation of the author model of teaching aids for vocational training- Creation of an experimental model (6 months); 2.6 Analysis of the outcomes and validation of the model (2 months); 2.7 Realisation of three prototypes of specific products for vocational training - Experimentation in 3 sectors: vocational training centres, schools, Small and Medium Enterprise. Creation of CD-ROM and a portal dedicated. Implementation of results on the portal and CD(5 months).

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