18: Implementation Plan Utrecht

1. Introduction
Target of the implementation scenario of the Utrecht based projectpartner in the PRONETT project is to:
a) contibute to the Project Targets as defined in the project definition (See Annex A)
b) contibute to the realisation of the ICTrich Teacher Education Provision as benchmarked by the Dutch national EPS-ICTnetwork and as adopted by the federation of Dutch ITTproviders ADEF (see figure 1, in Annex B).

1.1 Impact of the PRONETT Project
Archimedes Lerarenopleiding will implement this project as it is seen as a support for competence based teacher education and constructivistic pedagogy.
The Pronett portal is expected to offer a virtual infrastructure that supports teachers educators and trainees and inservice teachers in the (co)production, execution and evaluation of pratice based ILT-rich learning. Access to concrete learning objects will facilitate reuse of educational content and stimulate the dialogue between educational organisations and actors (teacher educator, teacher trainee, schoolbased coaches and inservice teachers). This dialogue is seen as preconditional for the development and sharing of knowledge related to ICT-related methodology in subject teaching.

1.2 Pronett and the International dimension in this EU Project:
It is expected that collaboration between Portal members will start at a local level between regional organisations (Archimedes Learenopleidingen + affiliated professional development schools). After this pilot implementation a scaling up of a similar model at at national level seems feasible as the Dutch national EPSproject has initiated comparable innovations in all ITT institutions in the Netherlands.
Collaboration between individual portal members at an international level is expected to be most likely and particularly useful in the domains of Modern Languages and for schools with an explicit international focus and a dual language curriculum. Specific computer applications will also trigger reuse of content and information exchange related to catalogued projects.

In analyzing the context in Utrecht in which Pronett is supposed to be implemented we will look at the key users in the core Pronett partners context viz: students, teacher educators, schoolbased coaches. We focus here on the students perspective as she (increasingly it is a she!) is the key user.

The organogram of the Faculteit Educatieve Opleidingen in Utrecht: the Faculty has 3 TT-units (primary, secondary/vocational, special needs) Each of them headed by a manager and the managers collectively form the the board of the Faculty.

Each manager has a management team. These management assistants are in charge of certain operations/themes (personell, curriculum, innovation projects). My unit (secondary) has 12 departmental teams (english, science, history etc) headed by teamleaders (middle management). Currently a major operation is taking place: redesign of curriculum (dual, ICTrich, demand-driven, flexible). A thinktank designs blueprints for these new curricula; decisions for implementation are taken by the collective meeting of teamleaders. These then are supposed to get individual teacher educators in his team to adopt the changes and redesign their teaching modules.

Traditionally the dominant culture has been rather autonomous. However as the current innovation of TT is a grandscale, national operation as well, more effect on individual educators style is expected.

5 departments have started a dual mode 4 year curriculum in 2001. All others () start in september 2002. The curriculum provides schoolsubject specific training and preparation for the profession. Dual mode means that the learning enviroment of the student consists of training activities and course modules at the TT-institute and coaching at a workplace/job (increasing in size from one to 4 days per week) at various (at least 2) schools.

In the current full time standard curriculum (4 years) there is a ICTcurriculumline in which students –among other things- in their third year (usually as part of a subject methodology course) are supposed to plan and execute, individuallly (!), an ICTrich lesson/project.

There are plans to offer a training programme for students interested to become ICT assistants (they would help carry out support activities, workshops, etc both in schools and in the department)

We also have an ICT specialisation option (subject specific ICTcoach or ICT coordinator) in year 4. Subjects of study here are: further development of ICTskills, Use of VLE’s in education, ICT implementation strategies in schools, projectmanagement, school internship.

The pronett portal will be one of the many digital study facilities that students are supposed to work with. They can have a personal workspace (MSTools, Mail) on the local network. Currently the department is introducing First Class Client (groupware). Goals here are to provide teacher educators with facilities to support their courses (it is seen as as a viable alternative to VLE’s as Blackboard). And to make personal Webpages and an operational Portfolio system available for educators and studens. Furthermore it is expected to support the communication with school based coaches and mentors.

Questionmark Perception will be used for webbased testing.

With specific respect to ICT-related curriculum tasks a variety of generic (Frontpage) and some subject specific tools and templates are being used for ICT educational application development and Webpublishing. Results will be published on students’ personal webpages or the pages of the school they are working at (dual mode) References to these products will be in students’ portfolios.

<Possible threat for pronett here is: Doubling in functionality>

For the ICTmodule and some other courses students are currently registered in FCCconferences. To fulfill the ICTrelated coursetasks students choose their own tools and locations to develop and publish ICTmaterials. They will appeal f2f to fellow students for help on their tasks. Some asynchronous communication in this respect might take place on FCC. They use their FCCbased portfolio to link to their final webproducts and to publish development logs and evaluation reports. Teacher educators and schoolbased coaches assess on the basis of these results and –where possible- through observation of teaching practice.

The current redesign of the general curriculum for the dual mode approach is the responsibility of a member of the management team of Archimedes Lerarenopleiding (Jorien Vollaerd) and –operationally – of a projectgroup headed by Gerrit Huisman. Proposals for the ICTcurriculumline within this curriculum are being developed by 2 colleagues of the ICT-team I am a member of. They are facilitated for this work. Year one has been developed and evaluated. Year 2 is under construction

They are important because Training of Pronett portal must be implemented in the ictcurriculum (they must adopt it and develop training materials).

Another person in the managementeam is responsible for the EPScentre, a project organisation for the development of a group of regional professional development schools.

Analysis of the organisation, its culture and present state of development has led to an implementation approach based on a combination of topdown and bottom up strategies.

Acquisition of management support (FEO and affiliate schoolmanagement) for the pilot implementation.

Management as initiator of the full implementation: integration of Pronettbased activities in the curricula of all subjectdisciplines.

Middle management (ICTcoordinator) to function as leader of implementation team.

For try outs in the pilot implementation specific, potentially successful teams and individual teachers will be approached

Just in time support will be given to individual teacher educators and students

The plan consists of 4 elements:

1. Integration in the ICT-curriculum line and coursemodules introducing local study Tools and/or aimed at development of basic Educational Technology Skills.
2. Development of schoolbased elements of the EdTech curriculum, a.o. development of ICTrelated competencies of mentors, procedures for definition and publication of school related ICTneeds. A working group with ICTcoordinators of affiliate schools has started its work.
3. Integration in subject discipline curriculum-line. Departments that will be approached to cooperate are: English, Spanish, History, Science, ICT-specialisation (optional module to become an ICTcoordinator)
4. Scaling up to all teams as from september 2003.

Expected results of the pilot implemtation (jan – june 2003):

• A scenario for a demand driven curriculum where ICTrich education is concerned.
• Materials for the implementation of and an evaluation of the feasibility of using schoolbased defined needs as input for curriculum activities.
• A contribution to the evaluation of Pronett Portal: Datacollection of user experiences

The ITT-corepartners will implement the Website-functionalities  by integrating the use of the placement monitoring tools and lessonplan-database into their work-routines, course-modules and continuous professional development services. It is expected that ITT-providers (n= >10) outside the projectnetwork will use the PRONETT-facilities. (see also Annex 4, Sheet 4: Key Users)

The work of the networked community of shared professional practice supporting ICT in teaching and teaching practice placement will have an impact on the professional practice of teacher trainers (n= >50), schoolbased teacher trainers (n= >100), inservice teachers (n=200), trainee teachers (n= >400), students and pupils (n= >1000). The workprocedures and learning opportunities of handicapped persons, learners in remote areas and autonomous learners in the mentioned groups of teachers and trainee teachers will be directly affected and enhanced as the projectfacilities support time- and place independent activities.