SPAIN Country Report on ICT in Education Available on http://insight.eun.org 2013
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Contact: Carlos J. Medina, Ministerio de Educación
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 THE EDUCATION CONTEXT ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Education Reform......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Key challenges/priorities for education ......................................................................................... 1 2. ICT POLICY ................................................................................................................................................ 1 2.1. Responsibilities ............................................................................................................................ 2 2.2. ICT policies for schools ................................................................................................................ 2 2.3. Specific ICT Initiatives....................................................................................................................2 2.4. ICT priorities...................................................................................................................................3 2.5. National characteristics (optional) ...................................................................................... ..........3 3. ICT in the curriculum ................................................................................................................................ 3 3.1. Curriculum framework .................................................................................................................. 3 3.2. ICT in the curriculum .................................................................................................................... 4 3.3. Students’ ICT competence ........................................................................................................... 4 3.4. Assessment schemes .................................................................................................................. 4 3.5. ICT-based assessment ................................................................................................................ 5 3.6. Quality assurance of the use of ICT in schools ............................................................................ 5 4. DIGITAL LEARNING RESOURCES AND SERVICE ................................................................................. 5 4.1. Content development strategies ................................................................................................... 5 4.2. E-content development ................................................................................................................ 5 4.3. User-generated content................................................................................................................ 6 4.4. Web 2.0 ........................................................................................................................................ 5 4.5. Content sharing ............................................................................................................................ 6 4.6. Learning Platforms ....................................................................................................................... 7 4.7 Access of SEN students.................................................................................................................7
5.6. 5.7
Incentives ..................................................................................................................................... 8 ICT supporting inclusion.................................................................................................................8
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5. TEACHER EDUCATION FOR ICT................................................................................................................6 5.1. ICT in initial teacher education ..................................................................................................... 6 5.2. ICT in in-service teacher education. ............................................................................................. 7 5.3. New initiatives .............................................................................................................................. 7 5.4. Assessment Schemes .................................................................................................................. 8 5.5. Training of Teacher Trainers ........................................................................................................ 8
1. THE EDUCATION AL CONTEXT
1.1
The following points are priorities in the draft of the new educational law that is intended to be passed this year:
EDUCATION REFORM
The most recent legal reform of education was the 2006 Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE – Law of Education), which is still in force. Currently there is a consultation process of a Draft Law to Improve the Quality of Education (Ley Orgánica de Mejora de la Calidad Educativa – LOMCE). The reform proposed by the LOMCE is based on evidence and compiles best practices. It aims at improving the quality in primary and secondary education by reducing early drop-out rates and improving educational results according to international criteria (both in the number of excellent students and in the number of students that complete Compulsory Secondary Education), by promoting employability and stimulating students’ entrepreneurship. The principles of this reform are mainly the increase of schools’ autonomy, the reinforcement of the administrative capacity of the school managing body, the external evaluations carried out at the end of each educational stage, the streamlining of the educational offer and the reduction in the offer of educational pathways.
To reduce the variety of requirements and demands of the educational system throughout the country.
To lower the drop-out rates in the compulsory educational levels (pupils under the age of 16).
To improve the rate of students achieving the level of Compulsory Secondary Education.
To improve students’ level of knowledge in basic subjects.
To establish a clear system of indicators of progress according to educational objectives.
To increase the autonomy of schools.
To generalise and spread the use of ICT for education.
To promote and update vocational training studies.
To improve the learning of foreign languages.
To streamline the educational offer.
2. ICT POLICY
1.2 KEY CHALLENGES/PRIORITIES FOR EDUCATION
2.1.
The following points are considered priorities in the current Law of Education:
The Spanish administration is a highly decentralised system where Autonomous Communities administer resources and legislate under the general umbrella of national law. In the case of education, all Autonomous Communities are fully responsible for the schools in their territory, including the promotion of ICT in schools. This provides a varied setting with as many plans as Autonomous Communities, addressing topics from connectivity in schools, software provision, school management software, open software adoption (with different customised Linux distributions) to teacher training plans, among other issues.
To lower the drop-out rates at compulsory educational levels (under 16).
To promote quality in education, while preserving an inclusive system with a strong emphasis on economic aid in order to compensate for social inequalities.
To promote vocational training through increasing its quality and social recognition and through flexible schemes that allow students to enter the system and transfer credits easily.
To enhance the use of ICT in schools.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport coordinates some initiatives at national level in collaboration
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RESPONSIBILITIES
with the Autonomous Communities through the National Workgroup for Learning Technologies. Until last year, these initiatives included the national repository for open digital resources Proyecto Agrega (agrega.educacion.es), which will evolve into a new collaborative site, or the now complete project Escuela 2.0. At present, the national initiatives, in coordination with the Autonomous Communities, are being remodelled and a new overall plan is being devised: Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela (Digital Culture in School Plan). The design and implementation of this new plan requires collaboration with the Autonomous Communities in order to articulate the new actions with the ongoing related regional plans, since the regional authorities are responsible for the allocation and administration of resources in all cases.
management systems of the different educational administrations and the rest of systems and tools of the educational ecosystem, especially virtual learning environments, to ensure easier interoperability between content repositories.
A collaborative site of open educational resources (OER), as a development of the already existing Agrega 2 platform.
A general catalogue of commercial educational resources, which will guarantee the viability of the publishing industry and the creation of educational resources while promoting the access of the education and training community to quality content.
Teachers’ digital competence, taking as a starting point the essential common points of the different Administrations and assimilating them to the training carried out in other professional spheres, taking into account a possible agreed regulation of the competences that teachers should acquire.
Each stage of action of the new plan is articulated through a committee of experts formed by the Ministry of Education, representatives from the Autonomous Communities and external experts. 2.2.
ICT POLICIES FOR SCHOOLS
As mentioned in Section 2.1, since 2012 the Ministry of Education has been working on the elaboration of a new ICT plan for schools: the Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela. This new plan comprises five main lines of action:
Connectivity and school internet access, taking advantage of already existing networks.
Standards and interoperability between the
2.3.
1.
SPECIFIC ICT INITIAT IVES
Interactive whiteboards, laptops/notebooks, tablets or other mobile technology
After the distribution of IWBs and netbooks, the Ministry is working on standards of digital resources for their best use. 2.
Bring your own device (BYOD)
Though BYOD is taken into account in the Ministry of Education’s new ICT Plan, this only recommends the establishment of a common reference of the requisites that these devices should meet for educational use.
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Since 2005, there has been an increased interest in Spain to promote a general collaborative setting between the different Educational Administrations at national and regional level for the development of the information society in the educational world. This interest is clearly seen in the project Internet en el Aula (Internet in the Classroom – 2005-2008, see Section 4.4.) and the project Escuela 2.0 (School 2.0 – 2009-2012). As a result of this latter project, 729,518 computers have been distributed, 29,867 digital classrooms have been equipped and more than 160,000 teachers have been trained.
3.
Cloud computing
No specific initiative, but efforts are being made to promote a more common use of school virtual environments provided by the regional educational administrations. 4.
Inclusion and special needs
ICT will serve to meet the requirements of special needs learners and promote inclusion. 5.
Connectivity (e.g. wireless internet, optical fibre connections)
Global School Connectivity. The aim is to advance in the objective that all schools in the country enjoy full access to internet. This should be done in collaboration with the regional administrations to improve the quality of connectivity in a viable and sustained way through agreements with agents in the telecommunications sector. 6.
Design of C21st century learning spaces
A framework of Virtual Learning Environments will be proposed in the National ICT Plan.
ICT PRIORITIES
Area
High
ICT in teacher training In-service teacher training Curriculum development ICT-based assessment Infrastructure and maintenance Digital learning resources School-home connections ICT for learners with disabilities/special needs ICT-related research e-Safety Reducing the digital divide Interactive Whiteboards Netbook/notebooks Tablets Developing key competences
X X
Developing 21st century skills (critical thinking, problem solving, communication, creativity, innovation)
X
Mid.
Low
X X X X X X X X X X X X X
2.5. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS (OPTIONAL) As mentioned in Section 2.1, the Spanish administration is a decentralised system where Autonomous Communities administer resources and legislate under the general umbrella of national law. In the case of education, all Autonomous Communities are fully responsible for the schools in their territory, including the promotion of ICT in schools. This provides a varied setting with as many plans as Autonomous Communities.
3. ICT IN THE CURRICULUM
3.1.
CURRICULAR FRAMEWORK
The Spanish Ministry of Education establishes a minimum curriculum for the different levels of compulsory education, which is shared by all Autonomous Communities. This curriculum represents 65% of the total cur-
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7. Any other ICT initiative Other ICT initiatives in the country are related to the “Interoperability among different education management systems and learning environments”, the evolution of a “Collaborative platform of OERs”, the creation of a “Catalogue of commercial educational resources and materials from the publishing sector” and the establishment of a model for “Developing teachers’ digital competences” at different levels. (See section 2.2)
2.4.
riculum, except in those regions that have another official language besides Spanish, where it represents only 55%. The regional educational authorities in each autonomous community develop the rest of the curriculum so that it expresses their preferences and local characteristics. The curriculum is arranged in subjects, with corresponding goals, content and evaluation criteria; it also references the European Key Competences Framework. 3.2.
ICT IN THE CURRICULU M
In primary and secondary education, ICT is considered to be a key competence and is covered in all subject areas of the curriculum. One of the main goals of primary education1 is to “begin to use information and communication technology and develop critical awareness of the messages sent and received.” As a separate subject, ICT is first encountered at secondary school level2 (7th to 10th grade); students study the subject of technology (which is partly devoted to computer science) for at least one year from the 7th to the 9th grade, and optionally in the 10th grade. Moreover, in the 10th grade, students can choose to study computer science as a separate subject.
technologies for conceptual analysis and the recognition of the properties of functions and graphs.” These goals try to make students competent in the use of ICT as a means of obtaining and processing information as well as a way of expressing themselves. 3.3.
Targets can be divided into two categories: subject related targets, such as those mentioned above, and more generic targets that coincide with the digital competence of the European key competences framework. See also Section 3.4. 3.4.
ICT competence is expressed in greater detail in the assessment criteria. For example, in Natural Science in secondary school the following capacities are assessed:
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Official detailed document (in Spanish) for the minimum curriculum
for secondary level: tinyurl.com/39fnv9e
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“the capacity of acquiring meaningful information from different sources, including information and communication technologies, and the ability to state conjectures about both naturally-occurring as well as induced phenomena, in experiments or experience, where the consistency of the reasoning process should be valued over finding the correct answer. Special attention must be paid to the oral and written expression of the results, whether on paper or in digital format, which
In secondary education it is established that students must “develop basic skills in the use of information sources to acquire new knowledge and basic training in the field of technology, especially in information and communication technologies.” Furthermore, goals related to the use of ICT are detailed within the curriculum of every school subject. In mathematics, for instance, one of the defined goals is that of “using information
Official detailed document (in Spanish) for the minimum curriculum for primary level: tinyurl.com/39m6abb
ASSESSMENT SCHEMES
ICT competence is assessed in all subjects, except when ICT becomes a subject itself. The national curriculum is organised in subjects, with specific content, goals, assessment criteria and their contribution to the European Key Competences Framework.
In post-compulsory secondary education, students can choose to study the subject of information and communication technologies, which is offered either in the 11th or 12th grade.
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STUDENTS’ ICT COMPETENCE
must be illustrated with images, tables, graphs, diagrams, summaries, etc.” Another example is Mathematics, where the following capacities are assessed: “the capacity of applying percentages and rates in order to solve everyday problems, as well as financial problems, where the ability of using a spreadsheet should be valued as a function of the quantity and complexity of the numbers used. This criterion is used to verify the capacity to apply percentages, rates, and percentage increases and decreases to problems related with frequent financial situations and to evaluate the capacity of using information technologies to carry out the operations when necessary.” 3.5.
ICT-BASED ASSESSMENT
Only those schools with Learning Management Systems that record students’ output can implement ICTbased assessment. 3.6. QUALITY ASSURANCE OF THE USE OF ICT IN SCHOOLS There are periodic national and regional surveys that estimate how many teachers use ICTs and what they use them for. Needless to say, all schools entering pilot plans are closely monitored and have detailed evaluation plans.
4.1. GIES
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT STRATE-
At present there are two main strategies regarding content development, one related to OER and the other to commercial resources.
Regarding commercial content, the aim is to define the technological structure and the functional design of a site shared by publishers of digital textbooks and other educational resources and their potential users (schools, teachers, students and their families). This catalogue will be connected to the platform with OER. 4.2.
E-CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
As mentioned above, there is a national initiative that involves the development of the Agrega2 platform. All the Autonomous Communities support this initiative and aim to promote the use of the OER that can be found in this platform. Moreover, some Autonomous Communities also have their own repositories with educational content available for teachers. Several Autonomous Communities are involved in different regional pilot plans for exploring digital resources and materials and how they work in the class. Moreover, all of the Autonomous Communities show an interest in integrating, optimising and disseminating among teachers the variety of materials offered in different platforms, both national (Agrega) and regional (Educamadrid, Educantabria, Aularagón, LliureX, Educarm, Averroes, Educa, Medusa, Eskola 2.0, etc.)
There already exists a platform for OER (Agrega2) providing shared access to digital content and modules
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4. DIGITAL LEARNING RES OURCES AND SERVICES
in all the Autonomous Communities. This platform contains a substantial amount and variety of content and it is planned to be developed further in order to increase its use in terms of access to and the creation of OER. Some strategies to achieve this objective include making the platform more user-friendly; defining simple actions to generate, catalogue, edit and access content; spreading its use to the whole Spanish speaking community; linking the platform to other sources; transforming the platform into a social network for teachers; and making it sustainable and adapted to different user profiles. There are also resources in the different co-official languages.
4.3.
USER - GENERATED CONTENT
There is a national contest through which the National Institute for Educational Technologies and Teacher Training of the Ministry of Education rewards the best digital content (as well as teachers’ blog, school ICT project, etc.). Most entries in the contest correspond to teachers’ material, though a few belong to publishing companies. Some Autonomous Communities also run similar regional contests.
4.4.
The Ministry of Education supports (funding, managing, hosting, etc.) two social-professional networks of teachers:
There are also a number of authoring tools that have managed to build a community of users supported by the educational authorities, the most relevant being JClic (mainly Primary School), Malted (English as a second language) Newton (Physics) and Descartes (Mathematics). Teachers who master the use of these tools regularly provide new digital content to these websites.
The Good Practice Network (recursostic.educacion.es/buenaspractic as20/web) is a monitored showroom of good practice for all pre-university education levels; it also provides a place for announcements, links of interest and tutorials.
Internet en el aula (Internet in the Classroom – internetaula.ning.com) is a community of 9000 teachers that is in some respects selforganised into 160 groups of interest focused on the use of ICT in a specific subject, author tools, teaching methodologies, etc. The functionalities of this social platform encourage peer interactions, offering webinars and workshops (see Section 5.5). The number of community members has rapidly grown since 2010.
In the future, it is intended that the educational social network supported by the Ministry of Education will be integrated in the Agrega platform. 4.5.
CONTENT SHARING
The national digital content repository, Agrega2 (agrega.educacion.es), compiles content from repositories from each Autonomous Community. The Spanish Ministry of Education is also associated with the European LRE3. Moreover, the project Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela that is being devised by the National Institute for Educational Technologies and Teacher Training of the Ministry of Education includes a work line related to interoperability and standards. One of the aims of this line
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agrega.educacion.es
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The latest tool whose use is being promoted by the Ministry of Education and several Autonomous Communities for the creation of new resources is eXeLearning (exelearning.net). The original project of this tool was developed in New Zealand and it has recently been developed by the Spanish Ministry of Education in collaboration with several Autonomous Communities and other organisations. eXeLearning is an Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the creation and publishing of educational content, without the need to be an expert in HTML or XML. Resources authored in eXe include multimedia materials, self-evaluation interactive activities, etc., that can be exported as IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained web pages.
WEB 2.0
is to establish standards related to exchange protocols and formats of the digital educational contents, so that it is easier to share them both within the country and with other countries. 4.6.
LEARNING PLATFORMS
Moodle is widely used for online teacher training and a growing number of schools have also adopted it for their own purposes. Most Autonomous Communities provide their teachers and schools with a virtual learning environment (VLE) to which they can upload resources and share them with their students. These VLEs are hosted centrally, not in the schools, and are often custom-made by software companies. This has proven to be the most successful VLE solution, since the systems are centrally administered and schools therefore do not have to devote their own resources (people and machines) for their maintenance. Regional support is also given to schools in order to have their own portal and intranet; in these cases, central servers host the school website, which the school manages through a pre-installed content management system. One of the objectives of the Ministry of Education through its Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela is to establish standards for the platforms used by the different Autonomous Communities in the educational field so that educational contents can be used in any VLE by teachers in all the Communities. ACCESS OF SEN STUDENTS
Various efforts have been made in previous years to provide schools and students with digital devices to ensure that learners with disabilities have access to technology, thus favouring their integration. This has included digital classrooms, IWBs and netbooks (mainly for students in 5th and 6th year of primary education). Moreover, teachers can access learning resources for students with special needs in repositories administered by the Ministry of Education (Agrega2) and in the repositories of the Autonomous Communities.
5. TEACHER EDUCATION FO R ICT
5.1. TION
ICT IN INIT IAL TEACHER EDUCA-
ICT is compulsory in initial teacher education. Primary teachers must take at least a one-semester subject covering ICT in Education. Secondary school teachers must take a specific master’s in secondary education, part of which covers the integration of ICT in the teaching of their subject of expertise. Initial teacher training tends to be a mixture of a theoretical and hands-on approach that tries to enable future teachers to use ICT in their classrooms as well as to reflect upon and investigate them. 5.2. ICT IN IN-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION ICT in in-service teacher education is not compulsory. Nevertheless, there is a reasonable offer of ICT teacher training courses both at national and regional level, which is positively welcomed by in-service teachers. Teachers sign up for those courses offered by educational authorities (online or face-to-face) according to their preferences and/or needs. See also Section 5.4. 5.3.
NEW INITIATIVES
Besides the formal online courses through which teachers receive certification for participation, one of the social networks of teachers supported by the Ministry (internetaula.ning.com) organises different training activities:
Learning workshops in which an expert designs a short ‘course’ that includes a set of activities on a certain topic, using a
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4.7.
The Ministry of Education includes among its priorities the need to use ICT in order to adapt to the different abilities and conditions of each student, which includes using them to adapt learning for students with disabilities or special needs. See also Section 5.7.
methodology that tries to encourage peer-topeer learning. Registration is required for these workshops (between 200 and 500 teachers register). The workshops run for just a few weeks and no certification is given.
cess training materials from other Autonomous Communities. Finally, attempts will be made to develop a shared system for the recognition of teachers’ acquisition of ICT competences.
Webinars featuring a chat session in which an expert answers questions from teachers (around 50) that register for the event.
5.5.
The subjects of these workshops and webinars are chosen by members of the network and by groups with a common interest within the network, in cooperation with Ministry staff. Subjects are mostly focused on the use of ICT, particularly the presence of web 2.0 in school; they sometimes address the use of a particular tool (e.g. podcasting in education, social networks in education, etc.). 5.4.
ASSESSMENT SCHEMES
There is no specific nationwide accreditation scheme, such as ECDL, for teachers’ ICT competence. Teachers are certified on a course-by-course basis according to the number of hours devoted to them. Courses need to be certified by the regional authorities to be taken into account in the teachers’ professional records and they are mainly taken outside school time and online. A teacher is required to take a minimum of number of hours (100 to 250 hours depending on the Autonomous Community) every six years in order to obtain a salary increase. These courses do not have to focus on ICT, but can be related to any aspect of Education. Nevertheless, the offer of ICT courses (especially online), tends to outnumber the offer of non-ICT related courses.
In-service training courses are mainly taught by expert teachers and occasionally by university lecturers. Initial training at universities is taught by lecturers in this area of expertise whose academic interests include the role of ICT in education. The Ministry of Education and most Autonomous Communities offer courses (mainly online) for teachers to become tutors in teacher training courses. This training course is compulsory for future tutors of online courses offered by the Ministry of Education. 5.6.
INCENTIVES
There is a national contest for the creation of Digital Educational materials (see Section 4.3), which includes different categories that recognise individuals as well as schools as a whole. The Ministry and Autonomous Communities take relevant actions in order to give visibility to the best projects and teachers using ICT at school. These innovative projects are labelled as Buena Práctica 2.0 in order to disseminate best practices as models for other colleagues. See also Section 5.4. – Salary incentives.
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On the other hand, some Autonomous Communities have recently explored schemas for the assessment and accreditation of teachers’ acquisition of ICT competences. Thus, in the Ministry of Education’s Plan de Cultura Digital en la Escuela one of the objectives is the elaboration and agreement with the Autonomous Communities of a common model of development of teachers’ ICT competences at all dimensions and levels, which would be valid both for initial and in-service ICT training. A common site for quality training resources will also be created, on which teachers can ac-
TRAINING OF TEACHER TRAINERS
5.7.
ICT SUPPORTING INCLUSION
The Ministry of Education offers an online course that addresses the issue of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): tinyurl.com/cvgjt7l Materials from previous courses related to students’ inclusion are also available for teachers. Course materials are available to all, both teachers and the public, whether they enrol the course or not:
SEN students: tinyurl.com/3bdykde
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Inclusive education from a broad perspective: tinyurl.com/3z72f9l
The Ministry has also developed materials on the subject of reading and writing for students with special educational needs; this content can be freely accessed at proyectos.cnice.mec.es/ales2 Among the different actions undertaken by the Autonomous Communities, the project developed by the Autonomous Community of Aragón, which focused on augmentative and alternative communication (www.catedu.es/arasaac), is of particular relevance and has grown to become an international reference for its useful materials and tools (see also Section 4.7).
Publisher: European Schoolnet (EUN) Author: Carlos J. Medina, Ministerio de Educación Editor: Anja Balanskat, Katja Engelhardt (European Schoolnet) Coordinator: Anja Balanskat (European Schoolnet)
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