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

AUTO 4.0 is an Erasmus+ project aimed at identifying industry 4.0 competencies for the automotive sector at EU level, and to develop training materials for a selected set of those competencies related to specific professional profiles. After having our kick-off meeting in Lanciano (IT) and attending a training action there to learn the methodology of technological road-mapping, this week the project partners from Italy, UK, Germany and the Basque Country have met in AIC´s facilities to compare some of the results already obtained in each country regarding competency needs from companies and to define the next steps of the project. These will include the construction of a standardised matrix to select and match the professional profiles and sets of competencies we are going to focus on and the organization of a training activity in AIC (end of March 2019) to share the results of our work and to provide participants with a methodology to take those findings for the construction of OER for training workers from the automotive sector.

Last Tuesday the results of the Erasmus+ project LAIT 4.0, coordinated by HETEL, were presented in the facilities of IK4 Tekniker, a key partner in the project. The event counted with the attendance of 14 VET teachers and around 60 VET students from different areas (mechanical manufacturing, automation, electronics…) who took good note about what industry 4.0 is, how is changing business models and how is affecting also the delivery of vocational education, from the curriculum to the methodologies, in order to prepare the new professionals of the future. The Progamme of the event can be found in the project Website: www.lait40.eu, in the “News” section. All materials produced by the project are also accessible in the Website under the section “intelectual outputs”.

Last summer we had the first pilot experience of our summer school MobiliTeach in Bologna (Italy). The school, intended to improve the quality of mobility management and the preparation of students for an international experience, received 21 VET teachers and mobility coordinators from Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Germany and France. After this first edition, the partners are gathering together this week in Ourém (Portugal) to assess the results based on the feedback from the participants and the trainers, in order to improve the next edition which will take place in France next summer. The programme of the first edition and some results can be consulted in the project´s Website: www.mobiliteach.net We will keep you updated there about the next summer school as well!