Reading all these contributions made me reflect about the importance of empowering adults to become more conversant with the digital dimension.  During the current pandemic, when schools closed the doors for health reasons, it clearly emerged the divide among adults who had a good command of digital tools and those who did not even had the basic skills.  It was really challenging to ensure equity in terms of the teaching and learning process, but this has highlighted the need to focus on the parents' digital competence to be able to support their children at home in case of a future lockdown.  

Un’esperienza interessante di apprendimento a distanza si sta concludendo a Barga, per UNITRE. Mentre gli altri corsi, per forza di cose, sono stati serrati per il confinamento coronavirus, Adulti Ancora A Scuola ha predisposto con rapidità gli strumenti per proseguire gli apprendimenti on line per i corsisti di Informatica Base UNITRE_Barga. Molti particolari si possono ricavare dal sito www.inclassemia.eu. Un anno formativo straordinario è giunto alla fine. Abbiamo fatto quello che nessuno, neppure noi ci saremmo sognati di fare. Ne siamo contenti, ed anche un po’ fieri. ADULTI ANCORA A SCUOLA (www.adultiancoraascuola.eu) abbiamo affrontato la crisi del coronavirus rafforzando le nostre conoscenze (know-how) imperterriti e attivi nello studio anche in situazione di confinamento. Lo abbiamo fatto in grande autonomia e in autogestione, abbiamo appreso molto, ma molti nostri pari li abbiamo persi per strada. La prospettiva dovrebbe essere, sarà, quella di recuperarli e di cercare collaborazioni ed aiuti affinché la esperienza di Adulti Ancora A Scuola per Informatica di Unitre_Barga possa essere accolta e sviluppata nelle nuove possibilità che il settembre del “dopo” coronavirus renderà fruibili. 

It has been really interesting to read all your contributions today and we hope that you will continue sharing good practices, concerns and wishes for a better and wider accessibility of learning opportunities in adult education. 

I would have thought that there was a whole field of possibilities for adult education centres to offer digital skills for retired people. There is such a lot of new tools and possibilities that younger people take for granted but the elderly do not use, simply because they do not know how. 

Hi guys, I am an educator and a member of the Czech EPALE team. Just a brief reflection of what i percieve is happening right now regarding digital inclusion - or rather exclusion. Yesterday I had the possibility to talk to representatives of Czech parents who were dealing with the need of taking care of their children during the lockdown. It seems that those adults with fine digital competences and good internet connection recorded a step forward both in mastering higher levels of their competences but also in social inclusion with their counterparts, schools and mainly with their own families via online. The others - adults with limited digital competences and generally lower education and lower economical status have recorded quite the opposite. The were not able to establish the online facilites for their kids and themselves. It seems the lockdown has caused a substantial gap between the two groups. I believe this has been the case of many more EU countries...?

In the beginning of this year, according to “Digital 2020: Portugal: global digital insights”, Portugal presented 83% of penetration of internet and about seven millions of users (6,6% more than in April 2019). In regard to the percentage of the population with mobile connections, Portugal was included in the study with 155%, which means that there are more connections than population, due to the fact that many people have more than one mobile phone. Despite the existence of this technological investment, Portugal has shown a weak performance concerning the domain of digital skills. The government programme Portugal INCoDe2030 revealed (data from 2016) that the percentage of individuals with basic digital skills or more than basic skills was only 47% (the EU average was 56%). However, we believe the COVID-19 outbreak accelerated the domain of digital skills, because suddenly people had no choice to interact and to contact with their families, to deal with health and social programmes and all the governmental structures created programmes to help people to deal with this new situation using new technologies. Adult learner providers and Qualifica Centres (Centres that assure recognition and certification of adult prior learning) reshaped their methodologies and used new technologies to guarantee that adults could keep learning and get their certification. Government agencies have also made many tutorials and tools available to help education and training professionals readjust their practices to the new reality of coronavirus. Adult education is likely to change in the future and adults will be able to benefit from new opportunities for distance education that are more inclusive and more adjusted to the reality of adult life, avoiding travel or even providing learning at times compatible with their professional and family life.  

Hello Benjamin,

Dear all, 

Dear all,

Dear all, greetings from Slovakia.

Hi everyone, movies are a consistently overlooked resource in language learning. With record numbers of people now joining Netflix,Amazon Prime, etc, isn't it time we incorporated this existing 100 year old technology into learning? I'm an English teacher based in Germany. For almost 10 years, I've used feature length movies as the central component on my language course. I send students weekly homework 6 days in advance of a movie screening. The homework contains a plot summary, list of characters, key dialogue, 30 word gap fill exercise, idiom/phrasal verb exercises, background information, and any available youtube links containing interviews with the director,stars,etc. On average, students spend over 125 mins on homework every week. Before the current lockdown we met weekly to check homework, watch the movie and discuss it later in pairs. Now, we meet via Zoom (to check homework in pairs) watch the movie (Netflix/Amazon) before meeting up again via Zoom to discuss the movie in pairs. In my experience, the best use of online learning is to create courses that bled both aspects Online (individual learning) and Physical (group learning) Frank Mc Girr

One of system support for helping teachers in Serbia to adapt to working in new online environment comes in the form of online trainings developed by the Institute for the Advancement of Education and Upbringing (IAEU) of the Republic of Serbia.

Hi  I'm finding the discussion so far really interesting.  From my experience of taking part in online training in the past and engaging in meetings and learning activities during lock down I'm interested to know your thoughts about the extent to which tutors can respond to the needs of individual learners in an online situation.  I feel that it is difficult for tutors because they have to prepare the content in advance and can't divert from their plan as easily s they can face to face.  Also it is easier for a learner who is struggling to understand or is not engaged to switch off (maybe literally) or to escape the tutor's notice in an online situation.

How to transform adult education in Covid-19 times?

In order to strengthen the public opinion that digital skills are very important in the future labor market, we in Latvia, in cooperation with EPALE regional coordinators, created an article on the set of digital skills, which is definitely needed. Here it is: https://epale.ec.europa.eu/lv/blog/epale-latvija-regionalie-koordinator… (sorry, but in latvian language)

Unifying the theory and practice of tomorrow The initiative originated as a necessity to reflect the current state of the education environment and to directly foster ability of graduates to succeed in the labour market of today. At the same time, with unforeseeable future of technological progress in mind, it is necessary to change the paradigm of the educational process so as to guide the children towards the basic skills and attitudes. Namely, creativity, emotional intelligence, analytical thinking, development of thinking with active learning, decision making, judgement, communication skills, leadership, cultural intelligence, technological skills, and the ability to accept change. In order to achieve such a major change, these basic preconditions are to be met: 1) accessibility of technologies both for the children and the teachers, 2) methodology uncovering basic logics of creation of ideas and concepts and their use in efficient tasks for the students, 3) teacher staff ready to adapt their attitude towards the education centred on close cross-curricular collaboration, and 4) rationalisation of relation diagrams in environment of the involved authorities, i. e. ministries, school founders, employers organisations, and schools themselves. Presently, we are at the first point, in the stage of “levelling out the technological inequality”. By this we mean a process, where a school suggests creation of a partnership with a leasing company that can provide service of the following type: providing hardware according to the parameters required by the school, insurance, service and internet connection. It is inevitable that the service pack is without the need of initial down payment and its payment would be due 48 or 36 months. By this, we shall have a relatively favourable height of monthly installment, which in case of direction towards children should be (negotiation process is underway) covered by the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family and that in the range 25-75% of monthly installment, exceptionally 100 percent. The reason is that with this measure we want to involve parents in more intensive communication with the school and increase their interest in the quality education of their child. In the case of a teacher, the logical step is to request a salary supplement from the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport (negotiation process in progress), as a laptop is a basic work tool in the education process and the teacher should receive 100% monthly payment. For easier communication, we have set the name "digital contribution". The procedure of the whole step is very simple, the school determines the minimum hardware requirements according to the most demanding software tool, which it informs to those interested in studying with a recommendation. The parents of the children can decide whether to provide the facilities in their own way or to use the set service for this purpose.

Dear all, greetings from Serbia. I wanted to mention that EPALE NSS Serbia continues to provide support to adult education sector in Serbia, this time by organising online training entitled “Development of digital competencies and use of ICT tools in working with adult learners” that is taking place this week. 

Hi there! 
I am an Austrian Erasmus Student who has been spending the last few months in Riga, Latvia. Due to the Coronavirus situation it was no longer an option for me to stay, so I flew back home to Austria.
Despite the fact that I am home already, I am still registered as an Erasmus student at the University of Latvia and I have continued to attend all the online lectures and seminars. 
At first it was quite a werid situation to adapt to, but since the student platform as well as the University coordinators have always provided good and decent information, it wasn't difficult at all to switch to online courses.
However - and I assume I am not alone when I say this - I do prefer face-to-face communication and human interaction, especially because I am studying to become a teacher and in this field I can't imagine working and interacting with my students only online.

Hi, my name is Arndís Harpa and I am a study- and career counselor at the Center for Lifelong Learning in Suðurnes (MSS), Iceland. I am also a project manager at the „Elementary School“, which is a study program for adults who did not complete primary school. It gives them the opportunity to start their studies again. This is a very sensitive group and requires great restraint. Therefore, Covid was not the best choice for the group. The most inportant goal of the „Elementary School“ is to ensure day-to-day functioning and that while assignments and other things are not much, it is an important part of the program to follow instructions and follow rules. When we had to send the whole group home, at the end of March, we decided to continue to follow them closely. We did it with all the methods we could use and had to go far beyond the comfort circle in technical skills.  We talked to the group every morning at 8:15 am, through Facebook-live and urged them along with telling them about the day's agenda and what was ahead. We taught through Zoom, Skipe and Teams. We used E-mail and facebook-messages for communication, and last but not least, we called each student three to four times during the period 3/26 - 5/4 when the assembly ban ended in Iceland. We are very proud to say that all 23 students returned to school and completed their studies.Next Friday, 5/29, we will graduate them from the „Elementary School“ and most of them will continue their studies. Everyone is active and has the confidence to deal with studi and work of the future.