Living Schools Lab shares best practice across European Schools

Innovative ways of using technology in education are being shared among hundreds of teachers as part of a project involving the University of Wolverhampton.

The Living Schools Lab (LSL) created a network of primary and secondary schools of more than 500 teachers across 12 European countries. The aim of the project was to understand how the use of technology can enable whole school change by building regional hubs to showcase and demonstrate practice.

LSL identified 24 Advanced Schools, where technology is used across the whole school, and 60 Advanced Practitioners, where technology is used in only one or a few classrooms, to work together with support from the University and European Schoolnet, an international partnership of European Ministries of Education.

Findings have resulted in increased resources for professional development, including online ‘learning snacks’ on various topics, including interactive technologies and one to one learning.

Schools can now access webinars and best practice videos which are ‌all available as outputs from the project and support increased use of technology.

Diana Bannister, Development Director for Learning Technologies at the University’s Faculty of Education, Health and Well-being has been responsible for the observation and documentation of innovative practice across all 12 countries.

Diana has developed a common framework for the teachers to use to support their school vision and professional development. 

“The outcome of the LSL project is the collation of some innovative practices and the development of some extremely useful shared resources for teachers. The framework for mainstreaming change will help others who are trying to understand how technology can be used to enable whole school change. Ultimately, this will lead to a Collaborative Schools Development course being established and assist with the improvement of whole school use of technology,” she said.

Diana has travelled over 45,655km visiting all the Advanced Schools, observing lessons and giving feedback, interviewing the senior leadership teams and working with the teachers and advisors from Ministries of Education to look at how the use of ICT can support whole school development. An observation blog has attracted more than 250,000 views.

The project was funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission - Co-ordination and Support Action.

Further information is available on the project website http://lsl.eun.org

ENDS

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