2021 September 14-16. A training event for staff in the Erasmus-funded project “Introducing Artificial Intelligence to Vocational Schools in Europe” took place in Turku, Finland. The aim of the training is to acquaint the teachers of the partner organizations with the prepared methodological material, which will be tested in three countries this school year.
The training program consisted of three parts, devoting one day to each of the topics of the methodological material: “Robotic Arm and Computer Vision”, “Autonomous Driving with Computer Vision” and “Machine Learning Agents in Game Design”. The methodological material was presented by its creators from three organizations: Robotics Schools (Lithuania), IT4Kids (Germany) and MCAST (Malta). According to the participants, the lessons prepared are high-quality lessons that introduce artificial intelligence perfectly and simply.
The program of the event was complemented by a visit to the Turku Vocational Institute, which made a great impression on the participants. The institute has a lot of equipment for practical sessions in order to best prepare students for professional activities. The Institute collaborates with local businesses to improve training materials.
This event was the first live meeting in the project, which was launched in October 2020. Timo Östman, the ICT department manager from Turku Vocational Institute, said at the beginning of the training event, that he was very happy that the training of the project was able to be implemented and they got to present the partners their own activities and training in the ICT field.
Helena Mikkola, the head of international affairs of education in Turku, agrees: The project has been running for over a year and previous project meetings have had to be held as remote meetings, and when things are only done remotely, the knowledge of the partner and also the important visits were not possible in partner schools. Now that we have truly met, cooperation is even smoother.
The training was attended by 12 IT teachers from partner organizations: Robotics Schools (project coordinator), Kaunas School of Information Technology, IT4Kids (Germany), MCAST – Malta College of Art, Science and Technology, Turku Vocational Institute and Sedu Vocational Center (Finland).
After the training, four partner schools will pilot the prepared methodological material with their students. Some schools have already included Artificial Intelligence topics in their regular curriculum, while others will offer a separate additional course to which interested students will be invited. End of piloting – 2022 February.
Project No. 2020-1-LT01-KA202-078015
