We continue our “Meet Our Members” section with Elena Osés Urteaga from the Government of Navarra’s Education Department (GDN).

Could you tell us a little bit about your organisation’s mission? 

We are the Navarran Government Department of Education. Our mission is to ensure that every single person in our Autonomous Community has access to quality education through the public system from ages 3 to 16 in any of the two official languages of our region.

The Service of Educational Technologies and Information Systems is taking part in the H2020 CRISS project from January 2018. We are committed to ensuring that all our students finish compulsory education with a high level of digital competence in order to ensure that in the future they will be able to participate in society and to develop fully professionally.

Our service is in charge of providing the technology that the state schools need to develop their digital competence at school, teacher and student level. We are responsible for the maintenance of this technology and for the teacher training to ensure that it is always introduced in a pedagogical way to improve various aspects of the teaching and learning process.

Our target is to achieve a high level of digital competence for schools, for teachers by working actively with the Spanish Ministry of Education through INTEF, and for pupils by taking part in projects such as CRISS.

How does CRISS fit with this mission?

CRISS will help us develop students’ digital competence. Students will work on their own digital portfolio in which they will demonstrate evidence of their level of digital competence. Teachers will be responsible for providing the learning scenarios that they require in order to finish compulsory education with a certificate of this competence.

Ideally students will work through Primary and Secondary Education and through all the school subjects to achieve digital competence in an internivelar and interdisciplinary way.

What is your role in the CRISS project?

As a public administration we are responsible for the state schools in our Autonomous Community and we can provide schools to test the platform and the digital competence evaluation tool. By the end of the project we aim to have a very powerful platform within which students and teachers will be able to work on their digital competence.

We are also involved in the creation of learning scenarios that will be part of a repository and with which teachers will be able to plan the itinerary to achieve the final objective. We are extremely interested in the certification of this competence and we are willing to work towards creating a certification committee and later a certification body for this purpose.

In your opinion, which of the digital competences listed by the EU do you find most important? Why?

I would not give any Competence priority over any of the others. In order to be competent it is important to cover all the areas in depth. It is not a case of knowing how to do something, we are talking about being competent.

How can we make students more engaged with ICT education? 

Students love working with technology and it is very motivating for them. As teachers it is our role to make sure that the use of technology is pedagogical, innovative, and that it adds value to the teaching and learning process.

In order to engage students we have to provide a good teacher training service in  the integration of the technology in class so teachers are confident in the use of it and transmit this attitude to their students.

What is the most exciting aspect of taking part in CRISS for you and your organization? 

Being in a European project is always very exciting, working with partners from different countries enables you to grow, learn and open your mind to other ways of seeing education. It is very enriching for teachers involved in the project to be able to share and contribute to the development of a new learning ecosystem such as CRISS.