We live in connected societies and digital skills will be required in 90% of jobs by 2020. However, schools don’t reflect this reality for many children. Only half of 16 years old students are in “highly digitally-equipped schools” (recent equipment, fast broadband and high connectivity).
In order to face this digital challenge, the Commission launched this week the “Opening up education” programme, a joint initiative led by Androulla Vassiliou, The European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, and Neelie Kroes, Commission Vice-President, responsible for the Digital Agenda, Opening up Education. The programme focuses on three main objectives:
– Creating opportunities for organisations, teachers and learners to innovate
– Increased use of Open Educational Resources (OER), ensuring that educational materials produced with public funding are available to all
– Better ICT infrastructure and connectivity in schools.
Initiatives linked to the “Opening up Education” programme will receive funding from Erasmus+, the new EU programme for education, training, youth and sport, Horizon 2020, the new research and innovation programme, as well as the EU structural funds and investment funds.
Within this context, the portal “Open Education Europa”, one of the 24 “Opening up education” programme actions, is operational. The main goal of this portal is to offer access to all existing European Open Educational Resources in different languages in order to be able to present them to learners, teachers and researchers. With close to 38 000 registered users and an average of 55 000 monthly visits, it has become the meeting point for exploring change and innovation in education.