Odette project 

(Open and Distance Education for Teacher Training in Europe)

The Odette project is a 3-year Socrates/Minerva project, funded by the European Commission. The project started in October 2001 and will end in October 2004.

The project is a joint venture of 11 European universities, all belonging to the Coimbra Group: Edinburgh, Graz, Groningen, Joensuu, Leiden, Leuven, Padova, Poitiers, Toulouse, Turku and Uppsala).

The project is being supported by the Coimbra Group Office in Brussels.

At the heart of the project is the wish of the partners to give a substantial contribution to the training of ICT-literate teachers who will be fully prepared to perform the huge task of educating young European citizens to live, work and further develop themselves in a world permeated with ICT applications. The project partners hold the view that, to achieve this aim, it is necessary to carry out part of the teacher training programme of prospective teachers by making use of ICT. Thus, some tools are being developed and piloted, focusing on supervising practicing teacher trainees at a distance.

The main target of the Odette project is to develop and pilot an electronic portfolio.

A second main objective of the project is to explore the added value on professional development of ‘on-line discussion’  between teacher trainees.

Finally the project aims at presenting all sorts of information, documents, examples of good practice, etc. in ICT-supported teacher education, to a broad public. See Archives.

Electonic portfolio - WorkMates

The electronic portfolio and on-line discussion facilities are offered in an electronic working environment, WorkMates, hosted at the University of Turku. During the project period the electronic working environment has 3 main functions:

-         it will facilitate contacts between the project partners and the student teachers at the partner universities;

-         it carries the tools (to be) developed;

-         it will present the project and the (intermediary) outcomes to all those externals who are interested.

Archives

In the course of the project, the partners grew towards consensus about several key characteristics of effectively educating teachers, in line with developments taking place in various countries (cf. more extended document under ‘Archives’ or etc.): 

-         Competency based

-         Demand oriented flexible learning routes (tailor-made)

-         Learning at the workplace and responsibility shared between teacher training institute and school

-         Students documenting development in a reflection portfolio