European Schoolnet Living Schools Lab

The LivingSchoolsLab project is a 24-month Coordination Action with 15 partners, including 12 Ministries of Education (MoE) or organisations nominated to act on their behalf. It is coordinated by European Schoolnet (EUN) that has extensive experience of demonstrating and showcasing best practice involving ICT use in schools and in coordinating large-scale, pan-European school pilots and validations both within EC-funded projects and for industry partners.Showcasing innovation in schools in the network will be based on systematically observing and documenting classroom practice and teachers in the network will be upskilled as a result of continuing professional development activities.Rather than reprising previous models for school networks involving only eMature schools, EUN and its supporting Ministries will put in place a new, multi-layered network or ecosystem involving, not only 'vanguard' schools, but also schools, classes and individual teachers at very different levels of ICT implementation. This will support the development of whole school approaches to ICT deployment and the mainstreaming of innovative practice that is increasingly seen as critical by both MoE and the Commission.The project will improve the coordination of research by: producing 'baseline' validation methodologies, a validation manual and running workshops so that existing projects can more quickly design, cost and implement their own validation pilots; offering a fully costed, turnkey validation service to different stakeholders that, after the end of the project, will be sustained as a core service activity within the EUN Future Classroom Lab. Key to this will be the development of a new economic model for an expansion of the network which recognises that, if we wish to involve large numbers teachers and schools in Europe as action researchers, we must start to provide them with a system of recognition, rewards and incentives that adequately compensates them for their work.