Mobile.schule: Online conference on contemporary education

Everyone is talking about the digital change in the education system. Corona has made pent-up problems in German schools, universities and other educational institutions visible and revealed for many years. Since March of this year, there has been an omnipresent media scolding from teachers. Incredible infrastructural conditions, uncertainties about digital change, political ignorance and a lack of skills in the field of teachers have ensured that German schools across Europe are doing catastrophically. The political path is clear, technology is needed.

The Hanseatic City of Bremen is buying 90,000 iPads for all students, and teaching equipment for 820,000 colleagues has already been announced by Angela Merkel. The application process for the digital pact billions will be simplified and accelerated. In perspective, many hundreds of thousands of tablets and laptops, digital boards and other gadgets will come into the classrooms during these months.

To this end, all schools are equipping with school servers, learning management systems, communication platforms, digital class books, etc. What has been neglected for years is now to be made up for by force. Technology is conquering schools and turning many things upside down in the process. So that this does not fly in our ears, one thing above all is needed, a qualification of the teaching colleagues. Operating skills, topics of media ethics, media education, youth protection, media skills, completely changing didactics and, last but not least, a new understanding of roles are now major construction sites that need to be implemented in a partially ailing infrastructural environment. A mammoth task that a complete school system can hit the wall if it is not proceeded cautiously but with big steps.

Andreas Hofmann, a young tech-savvy teacher in 2008, has already addressed all of these issues at his school, the Hatten Forest School near Oldenburg, and, after consulting his parents, has implemented a 1: 1 supply of his students with mobile devices. This has been expanded over the years and working with laptops and tablets has been standard across the board for many years. He wanted to pass on his knowledge, his experience and above all his mistakes very early on and started open training days for other teachers in the region, invited the companies that provided the software and hardware with which he worked and built a workshop program for that time 30 curious visitors. The mobile.schule was born. Over the years, interest grew and, for technical reasons, in 2014 you had to move to the University of Oldenburg, which quickly attracted 500 people who could visit all the relevant technology players in a trade fair, choose from 80 workshops over two days and deal with topics such as ” Creating explanatory films ”,“ podcasts in class ”,“ VR / AR ”or“ 3D printing ”could be shown and explained by other teachers and were allowed to actively participate.

In 2020, the 1000 tickets for the mobile.schule were sold out within 90 minutes and Rammstein would have been proud to see such a run on the tickets … for a teacher training course, mind you! 160 workshops were now planned, 50 exhibiting companies were on board, which largely secured the financing and a colorful supporting program was also available: joint cabbage tours, rotating dinners, etc. are part of the event. Networking beyond national borders, networking of all those involved in the education system, networking regionally and even in neighboring countries such as Switzerland, Turkey, Austria.

And then Corona came…. mobile.schule (#mololdigital) was canceled one week before the start and nothing worked. It took 3-4 weeks for the paralysis to dissipate and Hofmann, who has been self-employed since 2018, quickly relocated the conference to the Internet. The main cooperation partner Adobe has already met 7 times online … an infrastructural backbone of a large video conference solution ensured the necessary performance, the Twitter community for the expertise and Hofmann brings these threads together and thus reaches 600-1000 people every time, networking colleagues now online and ensures that the supporting program is maintained: Wine will be tasted online, cooked together and currently many of the participants of the next #molol on December 2nd are baking. to the bet.

Networking, a community feeling, a pool of teachers from all over Germany and a lot of passion achieve what is now so necessary: ​​a WE feeling, qualification and fun learning. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote “Hofmann makes training sexy again” and that mobile.schule casts shadows and not only Hofmann is constantly expanding and improving online formats, but new training formats are springing up everywhere.

In this breath I would like to point out a new offer that is currently being developed, “mobile.schule for beginners”, in order to reach those colleagues who may be overwhelmed by such conferences (more information on mobile.schule soon) and another offer that aims at two groups of people who are unfortunately often forgotten, the pupils and parents (http://kompetent.digital). The digital change must be considered comprehensively and these offers should help. Something’s going on…

Interested parties can take a look directly in on 2.12. I have you here once the program attached. About the You can log in on the homepage.

Contact A. Hofmann or mobile.schule via: www.hofmann-medienberatung.de, http://mobile.schule or on Twitter at #mololdigital