Spain – Distance teaching training exceeds all expectations: over 400 teachers trained in June

15 July 2020

(ANS - Madrid) - The "Training Plan for the development of online skills" coordinated by the Salesian Province "Spain-St James Major" (SSM) turned out to be a very interesting offer for educational centers. In the months of confinement, it was seen how teachers multiplied their online work with the students. For this reason, the request for this training path has arisen from the same school environments as an opportunity to bring order between what has been learned in these past months and to strengthen and acquire better digital skills.

This training project was attended by 386 teachers who attended the "Basic Training" module and 58 who followed the workshop on school organization of digital education for management teams.

The students of the courses participated in the training synchronously, divided into 12 groups with 9 tutors. “There were morning and afternoon sessions. We all worked together in an online environment divided into 9 'classrooms'. From time to time, as a coordinator, I went around the classrooms online to make sure there were no problems. I have been working on digital skills training for many years, but this was the first time we had organized such a thing. It worked perfectly," explained Charo Fernández, of the SSM innovation team, coordinator of this initiative.

The training proposal for the development of distance teaching skills aims to support teachers and school management teams by strengthening their skills in achieving quality online education, keeping the teaching and learning processes as faithful as possible to the Salesian educational style, and embracing not only the technological aspects of the issue, but also those relating to communication, teaching, evaluation, accompaniment and collaborative work.

"The confinement was an opportunity to launch this proposal and the response of the teams, centers and teachers exceeded all expectations. We were thinking of giving training to 3 groups and in the end, we configured 12 of them. We have 9 expert tutors with digital competence and Salesian Preventive System,” added Fernández.

"TECH Don Bosco" offered organizational support and a relationship with the administration. For its part, the State Foundation for Employment Training (FUNDAE, in Spanish) has made available a space for virtual presence, a shared video conference room - a method developed due to the situation created following the pandemic.

The "Basic Training" module included 4 sessions of 90 minutes each, structured in a very pragmatic way and where learning through modeling was proposed in 4 specific themes: communication through the screen, security, digital teaching and the accompaniment. The groups consisted of teachers from all stages, from kindergarten to bachelor's degrees and higher vocational training.

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