EmpowerED workshop in Austria
Together with our Member EdTech Austria, the EEA hosted a highly interactive EmpowerED workshop titled “Shaping Digitally Competent Schools” on 27 November 2024 in Vienna as a part of the Wiener Bildungsfestival.
The Festival is an event organised by the Hub for Education Innovation Vienna (HEIV), a non-profit organisation aiming to establish Austria as a leading centre for educational innovation in Europe. Now in its second year, the festival featured a mix of panel discussions, an exhibition area showcasing innovative education solutions, and a variety of simultaneously held small in-person workshop sessions.
The workshop engaged 10 educators in an interactive validation format of the roadmap report. All gaps in creating digitally competent environments that were presented during the discussions were unanimously recognised by participants as significant gaps in the ecosystem.
These topics included:
A clear overview of key skills needed for all stakeholders working with educational technologies, whether they are developing, selecting or implementing educational technologies, and simple ways to identify how to develop those skills.
Support for procurement decision-makers to make informed choices about EdTech purchases.
Plans that involve schools in defining their own digitalisation needs to address the digital divide.
Providing comprehensive training to staff in schools whenever new hardware or software is purchased.
Regular monitoring of schools’ connectivity levels.
The most pressing issue identified by the workshop participants is to provide comprehensive training for school staff when new tech is introduced. But support for EdTech procurement decision-makers was also considered an important gap in the ecosystem. One of the participants put it aptly:
“Lack of time is a big issue: When and how should we evaluate this overflow of products?”
Participants decided to discuss three of the topics in more detail in small discussion groups and agreed that the most critical step to addressing all of the identified gaps from the Roadmap Report is appointing a dedicated digitalisation specialist at every school. This role should not fall to a teacher managing digital tasks in their free time but to someone fully responsible for overseeing digitalisation efforts, organising professional development, and ensuring a structured and effective implementation.
