European Education Technology Testbeds

There is an urgent need to boost digital competences in Europe and to improve the uptake of technologies in education. The European Commission adopted in January 2018 a Digital Education Action Plan which includes 11 initiatives to support technology-use and digital competence development in education. Among the 3 priorities in this plan, the first two relate to competence building : 1. making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning, and 2. developing digital competences and skills. The scope of the project is to develop new cross-sectoral Education technology value chain across the EU, by building upon the innovation potential of SMEs. Education technology is a relatively new industry and there is a need for testbeds where actors from different stakeholders - academia, SMEs, established corporations, public bodies, schools, teachers and the general public - engage and test the potential of technology to transform lifelong learning. A testbed is seen as a physical or virtual environment where companies, academia and other organizations can work together in the development, testing and introduction of new products, services, processes or organizational solutions in selected areas. It is important that testbeds are available for all players on all levels of the education space. Project goals: Ensuring a secure, interconnected and innovative EU internal Market for education technology. Identifying necessary decision and implementation structures through the participation of organisations combining public and private participation Clarifying best-practice methods for defining and implementing innovation test beds for education Standardisation within the EU and Scandinavia of a number of education interfaces and models Create complementary testbed structures so that each participating country can profit from the knowledge and experience of the others