School Innovation Summer School 2022
3-8 July 2022
The “School Innovation” Summer School aims to familiarize participants with the open schooling approach that provides a powerful framework for school heads and teachers to engage, discuss and explore: how schools need to evolve, transform and reinvent; how schools facilitate open, more effective and efficient co-design, co-creation, and use of educational content tools and services for personalized learning and teaching; how schools can become innovation incubators and accelerators.
School Innovation is understood in terms of a school’s pathway to digital maturity (e-maturity) and its comprehensive relationship to the use of ICT, as well as a school’s pathway to openness demonstrated in its relationship with external stakeholders, in parental engagement, in fostering the well-being of its community as a whole, in its ability to combine the delivering of the curriculum with a study of local challenges, in its willingness and capacity to share its achievements with other schools and in its engagement with contemporary Responsible Research Innovation (RRI) challenges
The main aim of the Summer School is to familiarise participants with the Open Schooling Approach that describes and implements at scale a process that facilitates the transformation of schools to innovative ecosystems, acting as shared sites of learning for which leaders, teachers, students and the local community share responsibility, over which they share authority, and from which they all benefit through the increase of their communities’ science capital and the development of responsible citizenship.
The Summer School has been designed to promote the use of self-reflection tools as a vehicle to support innovation and systemic change in schools. It proposes an innovation support framework and a roadmap to schools seeking to introduce a change culture that ensures a meaningful uptake of sustainable innovation, with an emphasis on achieving improved learning outcomes as set by the Europe 2020 strategy. We will focus on the use of self-reflection tools as a valid way to support innovation and systemic change in education. Participants will explore how schools may move from self-reflection to developing a comprehensive plan of action that utilises the results of a self-evaluation exercise, but, crucially, in combination with fundamental principles and mechanisms of European educational policy for schools.
A key topic of the Summer School are Remote Schools and how to increase access to digital education in the EU remote areas and communities that mostly need such support. We aim to present how rural schools can become hubs of learning and innovation in their communities, how they can establish effective and sustainable partnerships and how they can offer innovative learning experiences to their students. The Summer School will also discuss the conceptual model for a ‘highly equipped and connected classroom’ (HECC) and its three scenarios
Furthermore, will discuss about computational thinking and initial programming skills that allow people to design, create and actively change the future living and professional environment. To be able to actively participate and foster creativity, it is necessary to create certain skills and attitudes from very early ages, such as: positive perception towards programming independent of sex or origin; problem solving in procedural ways; enable creative thinking; understanding and changing ICT-controlled environments. Α competence framework of Physical Computing linked to existing national curricula in Finland, Estonia, Germany and Greece and learning scenarios will be presented.
For School Heads
The Summer School adopts a learning in action methodology and offers you the opportunity to identify, explore and overcome the challenges of leadership and management in a constantly changing educational environment.
The provided lectures and material of our Summer School will offer you effective and systematic guidance and support at the school leadership level in order to facilitate the introduction of the Open Schooling innovation process in your school and transform it into an open schooling environment.
Through this course you will gain valuable insights on how to:
- Analyse the needs of your school,
- Create lasting supporting structures for your school
- Review your teachers’ education, including CPD available, to ensure it addresses leadership competences
- Develop the culture, structures and conditions to facilitate dialogue, collaboration and knowledge exchange among your school’s community and internal stakeholders
- Promote & Collaborate with other schools, parents, higher education institutions and research centres and other external stakeholders
- Develop a strategy for dealing with resistance to change
- Reflect on the progress of organizational changes
- Create your School Development Plan and be prepared for your Erasmus+ proposal
For Teachers
Register to the Summer School to enhance your repertoire of teaching and learning strategies, your ability to match these to your students’ needs and your commitment to continuous learning and professional development.
Our effective professional development approach will equip you with the competences you need to act successfully as a change agent, developing a terminology necessary to describe the dynamics of innovative change processes, and making you able to recognize different forms of resistance and addressing it in their own context. Through the provided course you will learn how to:
- become a pioneering teacher who leads the team of the participating teachers in your school
- Take initiatives in order to implement innovative practices that aim to have long‐term effect on the development of your school as a whole
- Develop a strategy for involving and disseminating the results of innovative practices to the whole school community
- Explain why innovation is important to ensure long‐term success
The Summer School will focus on a methodological & pedagogical framework outlining the key stages of the development of innovation support in your school by providing you with:
- Participation in online teaching and learning communities of Continuous Professional Development, relevant to your expertise and requirements.
- A guide on how you can become an author of educational content.
We would like to offer some ideas and guidelines for your preparation. The summer school will use the OSOS portal as a tool to develop innovative school projects that fit the needs of the society. We have prepared a series of webinars that include:
- The Open Schooling Roadmap
- The R4C School Innovation Model
- School Innovation Strategies
- Identifying the real needs of your school
- Using self-reflection tools to set up a roadmap and an innovation strategy that transforms schools to innovative ecosystems
- Introducing RRI Principles in your school projects
- Schools as learning organisations
- Building synergies around Europe with common projects
Course fee
The course fee for all ESIA Summer Schools is 480€ (80€/per day) and fully within the funding opportunities of the Erasmus+ Programme.
The course fee covers:
- Expert lecturers for lectures, seminars and workshops
- All materials and equipment needed for the course
- Participation in the social programme & excursions (e.g. Sunset and dinner at Cape Sounio, excursion to the Acropolis and visit to the Acropolis Museum and dinner in downtown Athens, traditional night and farewell dinner, etc.)
Subsistence & accommodation
The Summer School will be held at Golden Coast Hotel & Bungalows, an A-class/ 4-star sea-side hotel which stretches on the golden, sandy beach of the Marathon Bay, near the historic location of Marathon, at the outskirts of Athens.
ESIA has made special arrangement with the hotel and are happy to offer to all participants a single or double room with all-inclusive services (i.e. breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks and free of charge services for outdoors sports and recreational activities).
The costs for subsistence are also within the ceilings of the Erasmus+ programme for KA1 mobility actions.
The Summer School will be held at Golden Coast Hotel & Bungalows, an A-class/ 4-star sea-side hotel which stretches on the golden, sandy beach of the Marathon Bay, near the historic location of Marathon, at the outskirts of Athens.
It is the area of Marathon, that has hosted since the times of myths when Theseus killed the terrible bull of Marathon, to the times of the Persian wars and the Battle of Marathon, further on to our days and the marathon race and Marathon Run, the emblematic symbol of man’s quest for freedom and the will to defend his most noble deeds which constitute the foundations of the Human civilization. The plethora of natural, historical sites and museums of the area reveal in all details this unique historical voyage.
Participants are expected to arrive through the Athens International Airport, approximately 25 km (15,53 miles) distance from the hotel.
School Heads and Teachers participation in the summer courses can be funded by the ERASMUS+ Programme.
In case your school or organization does not have the funds to cover the costs of your participation in the Summer School, there is another option: you can apply to be funded by by the ERASMUS+ Programme.
Please note that the Erasmus+ KA1 application can only be submitted by the school or the organization – no individual applications can be submitted.
The deadline for application is 23 February 2022.
What is ERASMUS+?
Erasmus+ is the European Commission’s Programme for education, training, youth, and sport for the period 2021-2027. As an integrated programme, Erasmus+ offers more opportunities for the mobility of learners and staff and cooperation across the education, training, and youth sectors and is easier to access than its predecessors, with simplified funding rules and a structure that aims to streamline the administration of the programme.
Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (KA1) provides a unique opportunity for teachers, headmasters, trainers, and other staff of educational institutions to participate in international training courses in different European countries. Schools, universities, vocational education and training, and adult education organizations are all eligible to receive full funding to attend courses under a KA1 mobility grant. The Erasmus+ KA1 grant covers all the costs to attend teacher training courses: including travel, subsistence, and course fee.
For up-to-date information about Erasmus+ please check the Programme’s website. Your school will need to apply to your country’s National Agency, who is also the one who will evaluate the proposal. Therefore, your National Agency is also a very good point to start for more information.
Don’t forget to go through the the New Programme Guide and you will have all you need to know.
The steps to apply for an Erasmus+ KA1 School Education Staff Mobility grant are:
- Fill in the registration form to our Summer School with your details. This is an individual registration form, so if there are more than one participant from the same school, each one will have to submit a separate registration form. This way you have reserved a slot in the course in case your application for Erasmus+ funding is successful!
- Register your school/organization here: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-esc/index/ , if not already registered.
- Check the compliance with the programme criteria
- Check the financial conditions
- Fill in and submit the application form
- Respect the deadline
- Do not forget to inform us as soon as you get notified from your National Agency whether your grant application is accepted or rejected.
You can find all related information about submitting an Erasmus+ Application HERE.
We will be happy to guide you through the process.