As a teacher at a VET organisation you might be interested to find inspiration on how to make teaching and training more inclusive with the help of ICT. The EICON project has developed some tools that may help you to explore the inclusion potential of ICT for your teaching.

Instructions

EICON has developed three lists of inclusion opportunities that are probably of particular interest to teachers. The first list is focusing on the potentials of ICT in the field of pedagogy and teaching / learning approaches, thus touching upon the essence of the profession. Particularly in VET, it may also be the teachers' task to create links to the world ouside the educational organisation, and to build bridges to employment. Hence, the second list of opportunities is focusing on links to employment / labour market, while the third list is focusing on the involvement of other stakeholders and the collaboration & partnerships with them. Use only those lists that are of relevance to your role and skip the others.

Ideally, these lists of inclusion opportunities are reviewed and discussed in a team consisting of you and some of your colleagues, e.g. teachers from the same or from different subject domains. For instance, you could invite them for a series of three workshops, each of them focusing on one of the tools below. In each workshop, you would go through one list of inclusion opportunities and select challenging, inspiring or promising ideas from it.

Once you have made your selection, you have two options to proceed:

1. Request from your management / ask for the selected type of ICT: If your team considers certain technologies to be useful, it is possible to approach the management of your VET organisation with the wish to procure ICT that will provide the desired functionality.
2. Experiment with the selected type of ICT: Sometimes it is difficult to assess in advance whether the technologies will prove themselves in practice. In such cases, it is advisable to start smaller experiments or pilot projects to confirm this potential or to work out additional requirements for the technology. Manufacturers may offer free trials on a case-by-case basis or, in the case of software, free trial periods, so that there are not necessarily costs for experimentation.