Category: News

VET organization´s representatives from Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland are these days in Durango in the Cyvetsecurity Erasmus+ project meeting. The aim of this project is to contribute to a safer Europe, trying cybersecurity to be a transversal digital competence in all VET programmes.   The increasing number of social networks and mobile apps, the security of the information shared and the personal data, must face frequently cyber attacks. In the business world, especially in those sectors that manage sensible data, the risk increases exponentially. In this context, the objective of this second project meeting is to identify the learning outcomes related to cybersecurity for the different job profiles. The next step is to develop materials to acquire these competences in the VET schools during next course. More updates in the project Website: www.cyvetsecurity.eu

Last week teachers and students from HETEL´s Vocational Training schools La Salle Berrozpe, Egibide, Somorrostro and Zulaibar were in the Netherlands to present the project that, for 2 months and in cooperation with ROC Da Vinci college, have been designing in the framework of Diseinua International. This year, the project consisted of the design of a plastic injection machine. The students, working in international teams (Netherlands-Basque Country) presented their projects in front of 60 people (students, teachers and companies from the Netherlands), being the presentations in English and answering to all technical questions about their work. At the end of presentation, a ranking with the 3 projects was made, attending to various criteria (presentation, quality of plans or manufacturing possibilities). This experience, possible thanks to the support of BBK Fundazioa and Fundación Vital, has been very enriching both for students and teachers, not only from the point of view of technical competences development but also for their personal and social development. We are very glad to be able to keep alive this experience, which started 3 academic years ago and we hope to keep offering this opportunity to our students in the future!

Last week an HETEL team met at Roskilde Technical College (Denmark) with VET teachers from Norway, Finland and Denmark in order to set the basis for a coollaboration in the framework of Erasmus+ KA2 2020. In the meeting we defined the fundaments of a European project to define the contents of a European curriculum in robotics. During our stay in Roskilde we had the opportunity to exchange very interesting ideas in this regard, as well as to visit the facilities of the Roskilde Technical College and the company Aplika. Thank you very much for your warm welcome, it has been a very satisfactory exchange! Abantean!

Last week the SIMPLE team met in Elazig (Turkey) as part of the exchange of practices we have been carrying out to compare how migrants are received, assisted and integrated in the partner countries (Germany, Spain, Turkey, Sweden and Slovenia). To do so, we visited Elazig vocational school and we had the opportunity to meet with 2 students, from Afghanistan and Iraq, who shared their story with us. Furthermore, we were also received by the Education Department from Elazig, where we were told about how the public authorities assist migrants so they will feel welcome and part of the Turkish society. During the meeting we had the chance to wrap up what we have learnt during the project until now and to discuss about possible next steps together, making good use of the knowledge gained with SIMPLE.

New academic year and new opportunity for Diseinua international, a cooperation between HETEL and ROC Da Vinci, following e-MOTIVE´s methodology, counting once again with the support of BBK Fundazioa and Fundación Vital. In this new edition, the HETEL´s VET schools taking part are Egibide, La Salle Berrozpe, Zulaibar and Somorrostro, together with the Dutch college ROC Da Vinci. Students have met this week in the Basque Country and the teams are already working to solve the challenge proposed by their teachers this year: to design a machine to produce filaments to be used later on, for example for 3D printing, using plastic as raw material. The participants in this project, apart from learning collaboratively solving a project, acquire other skills and competences, as the use of English as foreign language, working in multicultural teams, independence and self-management. The solution of the challenge will be presented to a jury of teachers and employers in March in the Netherlands. In HETEL, we are greatly satisfied to see that this working methodology keeps going one more year.

HETEL launched a competition among its associated VET schools to design the logo for CyVETsecurity European project. VET organizations from Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, the Basque Country, Estonia and Finland take part in this project coordinated by HETEL. The aim of the project is to increase the awareness of digital perils and the necessity of information and data protection across all kinds of professionals, using the training materials developed within the project. In the first place, we want to thank the participation of all our schools and to recognise the high quality of the received proposals. In the second place, we congratulate Aitor Muriel, student in La Salle Berrozpe, for winning the competition. Congratulations!

We use to link the term “entrepreneur” with a person who decides to set up his/her own company. However, nowadays the meaning of the word is much more extensive and does not necessarily refer to someone who starts business. In an industry 4.0 skills context, an entrepreneur must be understood as someone who gathers a defined set of skills, being these applied starting a business or not. In the context of “Entrepreneurs Anonimous”, an Erasmus + project where HETEL takes part as a partner, under the coordination of Colleges Partnership from Scotland, we have identified those skills as: productivity, adaptability and creativity, based on descriptors developed by an EQF working group. One of the challenges we want to address with this project is the need to embed this entrepreneurial set of skills in any VET curriculum, as they are essential features of industry 4.0 professionals. During our first meeting this week in Glasgow, we have started to plant the seed to do so and in the next months we will start nourishing it in order to harvest good resources to be applied in our VET colleges.

This week HETEL international has met in Brussels with the EIDE partners, an Erasmus+ project which aims to reinforce entrepreneurial education of VET learners by focusing on the development of their emotional intelligence and their digital competences. Being the starting point of the project, the discussion went over two of the four results that EIDE will produce: an on-line course divided in modules for self-learning on emotional intelligence and digital entrepreneurship and a workbook and a teacher´s guide to implement in class different activities to complement the self-learning path. In the upcoming months we will be working in these 2 products. Keep track on us through HETEL´s Website!

VET organizations from Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, the Basque Country, Estonia and Finland, coordinated by HETEL, have met these past 2 days in Tallinn to launch the CyVETsecurity project. CyVETsecurity, co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme from the European Commission, aims to increase the awareness of digital perils and the necessity of information and data protection across all kinds of professionals by developing training materials addressed to VET teachers in order to increase their own knowledge and competences (and those from their students) on cybersecurity, counting also with the collaboration of technical experts and companies. From HETEL´s side, Maristak and Egibide VET colleges are taking part in the project, being 2 of their teachers part of the team developing the training materials and in charge of the transference of the collaborative methodology to the rest of the teachers in the project. We have just started the project, but we came back from Tallinn with a very good feeling about what we will be able to do in the next 2 years!

DELTA is an Erasmus+ project coordinated by Dundee & Angus College (Scotland) which counts with partners from Germany, Romania, Italy, Sweden and the Basque Country. Along the first year of the project, this team developed a tool addressed to VET teachers and VET students, based on the use of Google sites, to create professional digital portfolios in order to present the VET learners´ skills and competences in a more attractive way to companies. The second half of the project starts with this meeting in Berlin, where partners discussed about the development of a toolkit addressed to companies, to attract them to dual VET and also to improve the quality of the work based learning (WBL) provided by them, and also exchanged experiences on the use of collaborative schemes for WBL, which will be gathered in a final document with some conclusions/recommendations for policy makers, companies and VET colleges themselves. The tool to elaborate digital portfolios and the rest of the results of the project will be accessible in the project Website: www.deltaproject.eu