Jaione Santos Miguel

It is almost impossible to imagine our world today without the thousands of images that reach us daily. From an advertising spot to ad on the street, or even a photo on Facebook or Instagram, audiovisual communication invades us in different formats and through all kinds of channels. Every day we receive memes on our mobile phones, download videos or use podcasts, without even being aware that we are using a new language that has entered fully into our lives and that, most importantly, is here to stay.

But are we able of generating our own audiovisual content? Do we know how to create, share or understand how these messages work? Are we trained to extract all their potential?

Smartphones, tablets, notebooks, computers… are tools that can provide and support people to live their lives better, but there are skills and competences needed to really seize all their potential. There are some illustrative statistics, outlining that:

• 80% of Internet traffic is video consume,
• 10 million videos are watched in Snapchat every day,
• more and more companies, public bodies and other institutions are basing their communication and marketing actions on audiovisual elements (videos, infographics, images, illustrations…),
• but not only them, but also people make their own creations (videos, gifs, memes….) to express their ideas, enjoy or even ask for a job (e.g. through video curriculums or infographicCVs).

Empowering European adults to understand, create and share audiovisual messages and stories

The Com ON project seeks to provide a training programme to empower European adults to unleash their potential and be active part of this reality. The Com ON training will make them able to understand, create and share audiovisual messages and stories by:

• offering an integrated and innovative programme that boosts adult collective digital socialization and inclusion,
• favouring the developement of a social competence (communication as basic soft-skill), but also creativity and critical thinking,
• promoting digital literacy skills, corresponding to the EC DIGCOMP framework for digital competences. More precisely, the project results take into account this reference on the area of Digital Content Creation (Area 3), and 2 of the key competences included in this area: to create and edit digital content in different formats, to express oneself through digital means; Integrating and re-elaborating digital content: to modify, refine, improve and integrate information and content into an existing body of knowledge to create new, original and relevant content and knowledge,
• reducing the existing inequalities for this target group to access and actively participate from the new technologies in non-formal education.

The ability to understand, in a critical and informed way, as well as to express oneself and share audiovisual messages, is directly related to media literacy and the ability to actively participate in the digital world. And Com ON partners want to support adult learners in Europe to do so.

Com ON is an ERASMUS PLUS KA2 action, supported by the European Commission.

More information about the project can be found at www.comon-project.eu

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“Adult learning: it is never too late to learn” communication from the EC outlined that adult learning is a key issue to handle as the “essential contribution of adult learning, through the acquisition of key competences by all, to employability and mobility. Aligned with this idea, Eurostat recent data1 on “Adult Learning Statistics” remarks the fact that “adults with a low level of educational attainment and a lack of skills are more likely to earn lower than average wages and are more vulnerable to the precarious nature of the labour market. These individuals often suffer from a lack of basic skills that are increasingly considered as essential for a modern-day economy: literacy, numeracy and technological skills (‘digital literacy’).”

Within this context, the App4Skills project was designed to contribute to the development of adult learners´ basic skills (mainly numeracy, literacy and digital skills) through the implementation of a set of proposed activities. The core approach of App4Skills has to do with the use of a webapp that offers adult learners the opportunity to engage on leisure activities in three specific areas: cooking, gardening and environment protection, and DIY – “do it yourself” and handcraft.

More than 60 activities on those areas are published, based on 3 levels of difficulty. Each activity is explained in a step-by-step format, and includes reference to the specific area, competence(s) addressed, language, difficulty level, additional examples and estimated implementation time. Users can select the preferred area, language and activity, and respond to the proposed challenges to gain points in an international competition. The best performers are listed in the leaderboard section. But App4Skills counts on also with some interesting features. Users can rate activities, share them through the social media, take the challenge or add their own activities. The webapp is a very versatile tool that can be used both by the professionals that work in adult education, who can use it to reinforce in a playful way the knowledge and competences they work with in their classes; as well as for those adults who wish to improve their basic skills on their own. App4Skills webapp contributes to:

• Improve creativity, solve real problems in different contexts and develop in students the ability to create new activities and share relevant ideas.
• Improve the perception of adults towards the learning of math, improve their literacy skills and promote their digital skills.
• Prepare adults for continuous and autonomous learning, developing critical thinking, and promoting equity, social cohesion and an active citizenship.

The tool, which is free, was tested by more than 30 adult trainers and more than 120 adult learners in the project partners´ countries. This testing phase provided very useful feedback, so improvements are implemented in the final version. App4skills final webapp is available in 5 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Finish, Turkish and Polish) at http://app4skills.fundacionjuandelostoyos.org from August 2019.

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Linguistic adaptation is a central theme in the different stages of education, but especially in secondary education and initial vocational training. Improving the linguistic adaptation process of immigrant students can contribute to improving not only academic outcomes but also social inclusion, both within and outside the center. However, it requires the design of suitable environments and teachers prepared to face the challenges of multilingualism, which are summarized in:

The CV Plus project aims to build a bridge between the world of business and education through Corporate Volunteering initiatives. It was designed to train managers from companies and educational centers, employees and teachers, in the development and management of this type of programs. CV PLUS is a Strategic Partnership, funded by the European Commission in the framework of the ERASMUS + Program.

AGROPOLY is a new online game, a virtual place which reunites the fun of playing with games and usefulness of learning entrepreneurial skills and competences for students in the agricultural sector. Those who are planning to start their own business, can play the game to get an idea about real life situations and competences to be developed.

MENTORING is the tool of staff improvement in which the experienced worker agrees to take the responsibility and agrees to help to build a relationship and to facilitate the professional growth of one or more colleagues. The idea behind the MENTOR project is to adapt and use this tool for induction and development of a specific group of workers – the teachers.

“We encountered the benefits of mentoring in adult education with other projects that the members of our consortium implemented” explained a representative of the MENTOR project. “Also, we are aware that in the countries like the USA or New Zealand there are well-developed programs of teachers mentoring that can be good practice for us to deliver a model adjusted to national and European contexts”.

The MENTOR project is designed to prepare teachers experienced in their profession to become mentors for beginning teachers. Moreover, school leaders, other teachers and personnel in secondary and high schools, and last but not least – students - can also benefit from the mentoring program, which is supposed to result in improvements in efficiency of teaching, students’ achievement and teachers’ job satisfaction.

The PLENTIS project is developing a set of online educational minigames on the topic of agricultural entrepreneurship, in order to develop the entrepreneurial skills and competences of vocational students.

According to the Lisbon Strategy, one of the 8 key competences is the ability for entrepreneurship. As entrepreneurship cannot be identified as one competence, but as a set of competences, the PLENTIS project aims to develop an online educational platform, which is basically a gamified competence development land (literally), with actual content (knowledge base) and individual games to help teachers and students develop those skills and competences essential for entrepreneurship.

The Plentis project is funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus + programme. The project started in September 2014 and lasts for 2 years. The main field of the project is to develop an online game based learning platform and a supporting teachers’ handbook in the topic of agricultural entrepreneurship development.

The TIM project develops an on-line collaborative learning environment to develop creativity among workers in the metal industry so that they will be the drivers of the introduction of innovation in the metalworking companies. The steel industry is one of the key sectors at European level, not only for being one of the main generators of employment, but also for being one of the most profitable of all European manufacturing industries. This is recognized by the Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission in its publication “Spotlight on Europe’s invisible sector”, pointing to Germany followed by Italy, France, UK and Spain as the largest producers.