This section offers project specific news we want to highlight during the project lifetime. For more country specific information, please go to the news section of the respective country.
Final conference event celebrated
The REACH Final Conference event was held on 13th September 2013 in Florence, Italy, where information has been shared on development and testing results, as well as lessons learnt with other interested HR managers and VET staff dealing with young learners.
CEDIT, the hosting organisation, welcomed guests from Austria, Norway, Italy, Turkey and Spain, celebrating the final outcomes of the project.
Presentations at the REACH Final Conference (see Programme below:)
Final Plenary Meeting
A year after the midterm partnership meeting the REACH final plenary meeting took place in Florence Sept 12th 2013. Partners discussed feedback received from some hundred learners and educators who have been contacted in Austria, Italy, Spain, Norway and Turkey since the final products have been finalised and published. In national dissemination events, the project partners hosted conferences and workshops in those countries to offer hands-on sessions for potential implementation in other organisations.
Interesting feedback has been given and helped to open new exploitation ideas from language courses ranging from tourism and health care to generic language courses and numeracy learning just-in-time in restaurants, bars or catering and for workers selling, for example, food. Dropouts could benefit in becoming motivated to start learning a ‘second chance’ activity.
Announcement - Final conference event
The REACH project has elaborated the final Mobile Assisted Learning Units – available on major app stores (see also our products' section on this site) – and is organising its final event to share details on development and testing results, as well as lessons learnt with other interested HR and training managers, V/ET staff dealing with young learners. The event will be celebrated in Florence, Italy, September 13th.
Programme
| 09:30 | Welcome by CEDIT (Hosting organisation) |
| 09:45 | Introduction to the project, by Helmut Kronika (BEST, transfer partner) |
| 10:00 | REACH Didactic Manual and Mobile Learning Application in short, by Svein Nossum & Jone Johnsen (RKK, applicant) |
| 10:30 | What have test participants said about the products - Results of the piloting phase,
by Karin Kronika (BEST, transfer partner) |
| 10:50 | Coffee break |
| 11:00 | REACH in training - Hands’ on workshops in groups
led by CEDIT (Hosting organisation) |
| 12:00 | Summary of training practice by workshop leader(s) followed by group discussion |
| 12:30 | REACH so far and in the future |
| 13:00 | Summary of day |
| 13:30 | Lunch break & socialising |
Test results available now!
The partners included in the piloting phase of the project organised pilot tests in Norway, Italy, Spain and Turkey to see whether the tools are clear, attractive, useful and work well with the envisaged target groups. Teachers, trainers as well as HR managers were contacted in principle to test the mobile learning units themselves. To help the practitioners understand how they can use them with their young apprentices or learners, the project partners presented them the Didactic Guidelines. Having done that, the mobile apps were introduced in workbased learning or at schools.
As main results from these contacts and feedback the REACH partners have learnt that many participants felt the Didactic Guidelines are useful: readers found new information that they could use and were motivated to follow. In addition, many of the teachers rated the document as good in terms of contents, planning and presentation. At the end of the validation phase, the group who did not use this document did not benefit as much from the mobile learning units' implementation as their peers. This shows, even if they have not mentioned, that education experts may be more or less experienced in the use of ICT but not necessarily know best how to make their learners better benefit from it without reading basic introductory details. Particularly users without didactic know-how could benefit from it.
Most users felt positive about the technology the app is using. The majority of them were confident on how to use and navigate in the application. Generally, the REACH Mobile Assisted Leraning app is considered as clear, attractive and innovative in terms of structure, technology, presentation and methodology. The majority of the participants gave a good feedback related to the embedded interface used to present the different modules. They also scored quite high the criteria on the application being attractive and motivating. Finally, some educators pointed out that learners were much more motivated to learn than the traditional way. The reason is because it is a new and different way of learning; therefore the learners are paying more attention to it. With the use of the application, the learners improved their basic skills at the same time. Moreover, the teachers told that learners enjoyed learning with mobile learning applications.
Thanks to these results, the REACH partnership can organise the final app adaptation and will launch the material via the platform and app stores in spring 2013. Read more on where and how to find access to all materials in the section 'products'.
Mid-term meeting
The project partners held their mid-term meeting from 14th to 15th Sept. (2012) in Stavanger, Norway. They visited Møllehagen school that works with young deprived learners helping them despite learning problems to accomplish a basic school career. The REACH mobile learning units the partnership has elaborated for basic skills training in the construction, tourism, food production and health work sector will - among other organisations - be tested at the Møllehagen school center during the upcoming months. Didactic guidelines shall help educators and other learning facilitators to implement those mobile learning activities in a beneficial way for learners and themselves.
App stores accept REACH
The prototype REACH apps have been accepted by major app stores that will work as a platform for the first validation activities in the partners’ home countries. At the moment access is restricted for pilot participants.
Second international project meeting
The project partners met in Cambridge from March 5th to 6th 2012 to brainstorm about the structure and contents of the mobile assisted learning units they are going to develop in the next months based on needs and requirements found out in Norway, Italy, Spain and Turkey in previous steps. They formed work groups, discussed different approaches and agreed to consider two didactic approaches in their training materials: a pure mobile assisted learning/ teaching and a blended learning/teaching approach in which learners would use the units within other training measures in class e.g. Since one main outcome of the first research steps was that in the above mentioned countries most educators who were interviewed did not have experience in mobile assisted teaching, guidelines will be provided to help them and give them general ideas on what to consider and how to work with these new didactic materials in the future.
First international project meeting
The kick off meeting of the REACH project took place in Vienna on December 13th-14th, 2011. Project partners met to discuss the work plan foreseen and share ideas about the project’s implementation in Norway, Spain, Italy and Turkey. Intensive work was embedded by social and team building activities in a pre-Christmas atmosphere.
