<< Background >>It is true that technology contributes to reduce the carbon footprint of other industries, making them more efficient, but the global carbon footprint of the overall Information and Communication Industry (ICT), including main consumer devices, the data centres and communication networks, could exceed 14% of the 2016-level worldwide Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGE) by 2040. Electricity used by computer centres will increase to account for more than 14% of all emissions globally, and nowadays, only a small portion of the energy currently being consumed is generated sustainably. As a result, the environment would be more polluted by the Information Technology Industry than by cars or motorcycles, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.Now the most damaging devices to the environment are smartphones as 85% of their emissions impact comes from production: natural resources consumed, energy consumption and the transport of materials to the factories as well as the finished devices to the points of sale. According to a study by the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences of the University of Surrey (2015), a single smartphone produces 95 kilos of CO2 in its useful life, which is estimated to be two years. For every text message, for every phone call, every video you upload or download, there’s a data centres making this happen. Telecommunications networks and data centres consume a lot of energy to serve you and most data centres continue to be powered by electricity generated by fossil fuels. It’s the energy consumption we are not aware.It is expected that in the next twenty years the carbon footprint of these devices in the world will represent 14% of the total. A worrying figure since it represents half of the entire transport industry emission today, which is one of the main responsible for the CO2 emission into the atmosphere.In this context, the project seeks to provide an educational and awareness-raising response to the problem identified, which is becoming increasingly pressing and for which we have not dealt with until now. The project will seek to propose beneficial habits, especially in relation to young people, who are the ones who usually consume the most data.<< Objectives >>Specifically, the project seeks to achieve the following three fundamental objectives:- Awareness-raising of digital pollution: In contrast to physical and visible pollution, on which much remains to be done but where we are making progress at an increasing pace, digital pollution is virtually invisible. It is not visible to the naked eye and, moreover, there are very few news items about it. One of the aims of the project is to raise awareness of the environmental impact of excessive data consumption and propose simple and accessible measures to reduce it.- Self-assess knowledge about digital pollution: Closely related to the previous objective, once one is aware of the existence and impact of digital pollution, the following question can be raided: how much am I contributing right now? How badly am I doing? The project, essentially through the App, will provide a gamified self-assessment experience to encourage the participation of the younger audience.- Online training of users for responsible use of technology: the next step up the ladder would be, after raising awareness of the problem and assessing it, the proposal of measures aimed at tackling it. To this purpose, the GreenCo project will develop a MOOC on digital pollution that provides young people with training in sustainable practices that can be incorporated into their daily habits.<< Implementation >>Two fundamental kinds of activities are foreseen within the GreenCo project:A) Key implementation activities (Project results): GreenCo envisages the production of four project results:- PR1: E-Book as an information compilation on green computing developed in four topics- PR2: A Mockup which contains the definition of app features based on background and objectives, and establish gamification processes. - PR3: Green Computing App development. Its aim is to inform and give knowledge on digital pollution to raise awareness on it, to promote efficient energy consumption and e-waste recycling. - PR4: Multilingual training Mooc, an online training on how to reduce digital pollution, for final users of the app – students from 15 to 29 years old, but also open to general public. B) Transversal activities (communication, management and multplier events) :- Communication will be adapted to the main target group and will comprise the creation of a website, social networks, press releases and networking with intermediate organizations. Project partners have agreed in keeping communication activities as green as possible, so physical materials will be produces in a very limited scale and only when necessary.- Multiplier events: GreenCo envisages the organization of 4 multiplier events (one per country) aiming at presenting the project, its objectives, its activities and the main results produced, specially, the Green Computing App and the multilingual training MOOC. These events will be oriented towards the sustainability of the results.- Management: GreenCo foresees the organization of regular follow-up meetings (virtual) and 5 transnational project meetings (one per partner). In addition, the project will prepare an online repository of documents and materials for financial and activities monitoring.<< Results >>The main expected result is an application which helps to increase the awareness on digital pollution in users between 15 to 29 years old. In that framework, the project will produce the following project results:- An E-Book as an information compilation on green computing developed in four topics: Energy consumption, e-waste recycling, initiatives and legislation.- A Mockup which contains the definition of app features based on background and objectives, and establish gamification processes. - Green Computing App development. Its aim is a self-assessment of awareness on digital pollution, inform and give knowledge on it, and promote efficient energy consumption and e-waste recycling. - Multilingual training Mooc, an online training on how to reduce digital pollution, for final users of the app – students from 15 to 29 years old, but also open to general public.In addition, communication activities adapted to the project's target audience are foreseen, such as the development of a website, social media campaigns, press impacts, multiplier events, etc.Finally, project management activities are also foreseen, with the aim of complying with the programme rules and ensuring adequate internal communication.

Many children lose their natural curiosity for how things function and interrelate to each other along the way into their lives as young adults. The Educational Robotics for STEM (ER4STEM) project aims to turn curious young children into young adults passionate about science and technology with a hands-on use case: robotics. The domain of robotics represents a multidisciplinary and highly innovative field encompassing physics, maths, informatics and even industrial design as well as social sciences. Moreover, due to various application domains, teamwork, creativity and entrepreneurial skills are required for the design, programming and innovative exploitation of robots and robotic services. Children are fascinated by such autonomous machines. This fascination and the variety of fields and topics covered make robotics a powerful idea to engage with. Young girls as well as boys can easily connect robots to their personal interests and share their ideas through these tangible artefacts. ER4STEM will refine, unify and enhance current European approaches to STEM education through robotics in one open operational and conceptual framework. The concept is founded on three important pillars of constructionism: 1. engaging with powerful ideas, 2. building on personal interests, and 3. learning through making (or presenting ideas with tangible artefacts). The ER4STEM framework will coherently offer students aged 7 to 18 as well as their educators different perspectives and approaches to find their interests and strengths in robotics to pursue STEM careers through robotics and semi-autonomous smart devices. At the same time students will learn about technology (e.g. circuits), about a domain (e.g. math) and acquire skills (e.g. collaborating, coding). Innovative approaches will be developed to achieve an integrated and consistent concept that picks children up at different ages, beginning in primary school and accompany them until graduation from secondary school.

The skills required to achieve technological innovation are crucial in developing Europe’s competitiveness and innovative capacity. The modern economy depends on individuals with the ability to design new business models and to seize opportunities making best use of new technologies. High-tech talent is scarce and the number of vacancies for high-tech leaders or e-leaders is increasing drastically. Open Educational Resources (OER) and online learning have the potential to reduce the “time to market” for e-leadership education and training, allowing also for greater accessibility by different user segments, such as adults at work.The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the digital transformation of education that raised the major need to enhance the digital readiness of institutions and imposed some immediate responses to be given. On one hand, the crisis emphasised the potential of online teaching and learning, but it also revealed huge gaps in the delivery capacities of educational institutions as well as gaps in the capacity of individuals to actively participate and take up what is being offered. The e-Leadership Trainer Accelerator project (acronym eLead Speed) upskilled educators to improve their ability to exploit innovative teaching methods and design e-leadership curricula based on digital learning materials and tools, including OER, collaborative online learning and the e-CF. eLead Speed applied the e-leadership concept itself to speed up the spread of innovative educational practices on e-leadership in the era of the e-leaders – the digital era. The project built on the results of several EU initiatives and projects such as Le@d3.0 Academy knowledge alliance and the family of EU initiatives on e-leadership skills. The consortium was composed of three Bulgarian institutions, being respectively a HEI (NBU), an Excellence Centre for ICT industry competitiveness (ESI CEE) and the National Coalition for Digital Jobs in Bulgaria (DNA), plus two HEIs from Croatia (Algebra) and Germany (MUAS), a business school (ISTUD) and an SME specialised in digital learning (Gruppo Pragma) from Italy. As such, the partners represent both the Higher Education (NBU, MUAS and Algebra) and the tertiary Vocational Education and Training (ESI CEE, ISTUD and Gruppo Pragma) sectors. This ensured synergies between the different fields of education and training (HE and VET) and complemented expertise with the ultimate goal of upskilling educators, so they can better help learners to acquire e-leadership skills. The primary target group was educators from both HE and tertiary VET institutions teaching those technology and business related disciplines particularly included in e-leadership programmes (i.e. Strategic Management, Project Management, Digital Transformation, Technology & Innovation, etc.). The secondary target groups, which benefited indirectly were: HEIs and tertiary VET providers of e-leadership programmes, learners (both students and professional trainees) willing to acquire e-leadership skills, associations of educational institutions, businesses, their HR managers and in-company trainers and professional associations. The eLead Speed project provided a set of highly usable and directly applicable outputs. A set of 15 short e-leadership courses, modules or course outlines and other practical and reusable resources (IO5) were developed by the educators based on the e-Leadership Observatory data (IO1) and the e-Leadership Competences Framework (IO2) and facilitated by the Community of Practice (IO3) and the Trainers’ Toolkit: How to Design, Deliver and Evaluate e-Leadership Curricula (IO4). The trainers worked collaboratively online to design the teaching materials making use of OER and e-tivities. The courses are stored and rendered available inside the OER repository (IO3) for free use by all trainers who are registered to the Community. The implemented methodology covered the entire cycle from industry requirements through occupational profiles to innovative educational content that provides relevant skills and competences and this way creates new opportunities for the industry but also creates new industry requirements for new training and courses. It followed the principles of incremental development and continuous improvement. The selected transdisciplinary, holistic approach guaranteed transferability and scalability of the results and secured high levels of sustainability. The areas of impact of eLead Speed can be summed up as: • Increased knowledge on e-leadership skill needs and occupational profiles • Increased availability of OER and content for e-leadership teaching • Increased capacity of educators to develop training programmes in consistency with market needs and occupational standards • Increased skills of educators to use and develop open learning materials and digital tools • Increased access to e-leadership education and training • Improved quality and relevance of education.

"<< Background >>Digital era is advancing through every facet of social, economic, and even biological life, driving major personal and professional changes and the way people interact, work, learn, and create knowledge. The concept of digital competence has emerged concurrently with the technological development and as society has recognised the need for new competences. The digital competence is now acknowledged as one of the eight key Lifelong Learning competences sought in Europe and one of the essential resources for the recovery of economy and society after the pandemic.Alongside, digital transformation is steadily moving about and reshaping one industry and sector after another. Education is not an exception. Digital technologies are expected to have fundamental impact on all segments of business and society. For educational institutions, it is an opportunity to process curricular, methodological, technological, and organisational changes by absorbing new digital culture and approach to the strategic redesign of all aspects and structures of the sector. There is a recognised need for HEIs to integrate and effectively use digital technologies in order to achieve their core mission: to educate students to be successful in a complex and interconnected world that faces rapid technological, cultural, economic, informational, and demographic change.In Europe, recent work on capacity building for the digital transformation of education has focussed on the development of digital competence frameworks for educational organisations (DigCompOrg) and for educators (DigCompEdu). DigCompOrg pinpoints the main factors enhancing digital readiness that are structured in seven thematic elements and are common to all education sectors. DigCompEdu is a scientifically sound background framework which can be directly adapted to implementing tools and training programmes.The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the digital transformation of education that raised the major need to enhance the digital readiness of institutions and imposed some immediate responses to be given. On one hand, the crisis emphasised the potential of online teaching and learning, but it also revealed huge gaps in the delivery capacities of educational institutions as well as gaps in the capacity of individuals to actively participate and take up what is being offered.Notwithstanding exceptions, many institutions were not prepared for this radical switch. They found out that infrastructure was lacking, the digital skills of lecturers were not up to the challenge, and that even the familiarity of students with digital tools and platforms was lower than expected. There was no time for instructional design and conceiving a new format of lectures and assignments. As a result, the quality of the educational delivery and the learning experience of students suffered. A tremendous effort was and will be still required to ensure that education needs are met in a satisfactory manner using virtual means as a main mode of delivery.In fact, the digital gap, and the lack of preparation for online teaching have actually increased educational disparities and created social distress, especially among vulnerable students. Goal 4 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals states, “Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”. In order to achieve this goal, there is the need to embrace modern digital learning methods that provide effective ways to increase access to quality educational opportunities.The COVID-19 crisis revealed major needs and indicated what can aid the transition to online education. The needs analysis conducted during the proposal writing revealed the main difficulties for this transition in terms of digital strategy, digital pedagogy, and digital competence. The DigiTransformEdu project will rely on DigCompOrg and DigCompEdu in order to foster the digital transformation of educational institutions and promote effective digital-age learning.<< Objectives >>The DigiTransformEdu project aims to foster the digital transformation of HE and tertiary VET institutions. This objective will be reached through a six-step approach (operational objectives):1. Mapping the digital readiness and resilience of educational and training institutions in response to the COVID-19 crisis (project results 1 & 2)2. Promoting the development of a digital culture by supporting institutional leadership to pursue digital strategy at institutional level (project result 3)3. Encouraging the digitalisation of educational processes and promoting effective digital-age learning by integrating the DigCompOrg framework (project results 3 & 4)4. Based on the DigCompEdu framework and the concept for the different roles of educators in an online environment, defining the knowledge and skills needed by the digital educator (project result 5) 5. Raising the digital competence of educators by organising training activities and preparing training materials (project results 5 & 6) 6. Enhancing international networking and cooperation and contributing to the EU Digital Education Action Plan (project result 6 & four multiplier events).The primary groups that the DigiTransformEdu project will target involve:• Institutional leaders responsible for the digital agenda• Programme managers responsible for the digitalisation of pedagogy• Digital educators who belong to A2 and B1 levels of DigCompEduThe secondary target groups are:• HEIs• Tertiary VET providers• Associations of educational and training institutions• Businesses and their learning departments• Professional associationsStudents, participants, and learners in general are the main beneficiary of the project. They will profit from the enhanced digitalisation at institutional level and at individual level from the improved digital competence of their educators.By achieving its objectives DigiTransformEdu will impact the target groups and the relevant stakeholders. Thanks to the project, institutional leaders of both HE and tertiary VET institutions will have better capability and vision on how to lead their organisations through digital transformation, programme managers will be equipped with guidelines and operational tools to be able to make the transition from a traditional class-based pedagogy to a blended or pure digital one while educators will see their digital competence improved.The expected achievements of the DigiTransformEdu project can be summed up as follows:1. Increased knowledge about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the transition to digital education2. Better comprehension on how to deal with the digital transformation at strategical level3. Increased familiarity with approaches and operational tools on how to design, deliver, and assess digital education4. Better understanding of the new roles of the digital educator and the knowledge and skills needed for their implementation5. Increased capacity to design training starting from profile descriptions6. Increased digital competence of educators.In the long run, the desired achievements can be summarised as: 1. The overall quality of education is increased because by becoming more digital it becomes more relevant and able to better develop students’ capabilities and practical skills, as required in a digital world.2. The development of virtual culture is enhanced by supporting institutional leadership to pursue digital strategy at institutional level.3. The digitalisation of educational processes is accelerated by assisting educators and administrators in the design, delivery, and assessment of digital education.4. The framework for the digital competence of educators is enriched by complementing it with analysing the different roles of the digital educator and looking for similarities with the T-shape model for e-leadership.<< Implementation >>The activities leading to R1 and R2 correspond to the achievement of the first objective that is to map the digital readiness and resilience of educational and training institutions in response to the COVID-19 crisis. In R1 first HE and tertiary VET institutions will be shortlisted. Then potential respondents will be identified and invited to participate. The survey participants will be from institutional management and enabling services in R1 and educators, students, and ICT staff in R2. The survey methodology will be defined, and the surveys will be administrated. The data will be first analysed and collected in national reports, then compiled and further analysed to produce a synthetic report.The second objective to promote the development of a virtual culture by supporting institutional leadership to pursue digital strategy will be achieved through R3. Starting with currently available concepts on digital transformation in education, the analysis will be taken further to study the institutional reactions to the pandemic from the strategic perspective. The study results will be presented in reports and examples of best practice will be selected. Using the exploratory and analytical work, a blueprint to guide HE/VET institutions in the development of a long-term digital strategy will be developed.The third objective to encourage digitalisation of educational processes and to promote effective digital-age learning by integrating DigCompOrg will be pursued through the accomplishment of both R3 and R4. Once digitalisation is taken at strategical level (R3), the activities in R4 will look at the digitalisation of pedagogy. Building upon the exploration done so far, successful practices, approaches and tools, used for the design, delivery, and assessment of digital education will be analysed. The insights will be used to define a set of guidelines and operational tools to support educators in making the transition from a traditional class-based pedagogy to a blended or pure digital one.The fourth objective defines the knowledge and skills needed by the digital educator and will be achieved through R5. Starting from a range of sources, including DigCompEdu, and relying on identified learning needs, R5 will further explore to reach a better understanding. For each role of the digital educator, the components of skills related to methodology, technology and tools will be studied and defined. This analysis will lead to a model that can be used to design training. In this respect, a role will be selected to design a training programme to be put into practice in R6. A learning and collaboration platform will be also designed and maintained to serve training and collaboration.The fifth objective is intended to raise the digital competence of educators by organising training activities and preparing training materials. R6 is meant to achieve it by first organising a three-day joint staff training event. 16 master trainers will participate and get familiar with the training programme, its facilitation and the use of the online learning and collaboration platform. Then 60 educators will work together in collaboration sessions to improve their digital competence and develop self-training materials for the digital educator.The sixth objective is intended to enhance international networking and cooperation and contribute to the realisation of the EU Digital Education Action Plan. The sessions organised in R6 will expose the participants to new international contacts. Networking and cooperation opportunities will be encouraged through the organisation of four multiplier events and by promoting involvement and active participation in the existing eLeadCommunity, a collaborative knowledge building community of practice devoted to digital education and e-leadership.The achievement of the six operational objectives will foster the digital transformation of HE and tertiary VET institutions that is the main objective of DigiTransformEdu.<< Results >>DigiTransformEdu will result in a comprehensive and complementary set of outcomes that cover the seven thematic elements of DigCompOrg (i.e., Leadership & Governance Practices: R1 & R3; Teaching & Learning Practices: R2, R4, R5 & R6; Professional Development: R5 & R6; Assessment Practices: R4; Content & Curricula: R4; Collaboration & Networking: R3, R6 & 4 ME; Infrastructure: R2, R3 & R4)The project follows a logical sequence and starts by mapping the digital readiness and resilience of about 30 HE and tertiary VET institutions in response to the COVID-19 crisis that will help identifying best practices and learning from failures. These institutions will form the core, on which the exploratory work will be based. In Result 1, the survey will target people able to evaluate institutions’ response at the level of governance and enabling services. The findings will be collected in national reports that will be further analysed to produce a synthetic report compiled with the findings from Result 2.Result 2 will study the perceptions of educators and students. At teaching level, the use of digital pedagogy and assessment as well as digital competence will be explored. Students will be targeted to dip into their perception in terms of effectiveness, adaptation to online provision, digital inclusion, engagement, quality of communication and collaboration. The picture will be complemented with mapping digital infrastructure. This mapping will trigger tangible changes in digital strategy (Result 3), digital pedagogy (Result 4) and digital competence (Results 5 & 6) thanks to the provision of guidance, tools, and resources.Result 3 will focus on the strategical aspect of digitalisation. Starting with qualitative research, the team will also analyse the survey results. Based on that, examples of best practice will be selected and included in a collection of case studies. Using the exploratory and analytical work, a blueprint to guide HE and VET institutions in the development of a digital strategy will be developed.Result 4 will address educators and managers and guide them in the successful operationalisation of effective digital instruction. The project team will map successful practices, approaches and tools used for the design, delivery and assessment of digital education. The data and insights will be used to define a set of guidelines and operational tools in the form of a blueprint to assist in making the transition from a traditional class-based pedagogy to a blended or pure digital one.Starting from a range of sources that reflect on the different roles of the digital educator and relying on the conducted analyses and identified learning needs, Result 5 will explore further to collect inputs about the knowledge and skills needed for each role and ways to assess them. The analysis of the different roles leads to a model that can be used to design training. Within this result a role will be selected as a basis to design a training programme. A learning and collaboration platform will be devised and maintained to serve the training.Finally, result 6 will implement the training programme and inspired by it will develop self-training materials to assist educators in implementing the different roles. Sixteen educators will be selected to participate in a three-day joint staff training event to get familiar with the training programme and its facilitation. They will later lead 60 educators through the training programme by using the platform designed in Result 5. In addition to improving their digital competence, they will work together to replicate the training designed for one role and turn it into a comprehensive range of solutions applicable to the individual training objectives of each role.Four multiplier events ""Foster DigiTransformEdu"" gathering about 140 participants will be organised in Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, and Italy with the aim to promote the project results and foster their up-taking."

Last year, in the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study (Center for Cyber safety and Education, 2017) a survey was carried out with 4,001 young people from the UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Israel and the Netherlands. Among the results of that study, a 1.8 million information security worker shortage by 2022 was forecasted. On the other hand, nearly 90% of the global workforce is male. According to the results of the aforementioned study among the reasons why there are a lack of women in cybersecurity careers are that there are no female cybersecurity role models for girls to follow, and the cybersecurity stereotype is not what they want to be in the future. In fact, according to Janice Richardson, Senior Advisor of European Schoolnet: “Most young people (69%) haven’t met anyone who works in cybersecurity at all and even fewer (11%) have met a woman working in cybersecurity. But when they have, their opinion of the role skyrockets, with 63% of women thinking more positively about cybersecurity after meeting someone who works in the sector.” But there is a wide variety of different positions in cybersecurity industry: from security architects building a company's security system, to Digital Forensics analysts and researchers analysing data and evaluating its relevance to a case under investigation, or Chief Security Officers (CISO) in charge of aligning security with business objectives. Industry is calling for women within the cybersecurity industry to step up to give more realistic role models for girls. IT security sector is characterized for a need of continuous innovation which requires creativity, flexibility, and out-of-the-box thinking, which may be stimulated by diversity (Mannix & Neale, 2005). The low proportion of women in the field represents for the industry a lost opportunity. According to Janice Richardson, Senior Advisor of European Schoolnet, “schools and families hold the keys, since career choices are both contextual and cultural, efforts to influence them need to be made at a much earlier age. Any steps taken by employers and universities alone, will have minimal impact”(Kaspersky Lab, 2017). Schools have a big role to play in the mission to become cybersecurity attractive as a career path. And families play an important role too, and need to be informed not only about cybersecurity paths, but too about the talent shortage in the field which is expected to increase, and about the competitive salaries in the area. The low proportion of women in the field represents a lost opportunity to harness the perspectives and experiences of women in developing new solutions and approaches.The aim of this project is addressing the gender gap cybersecurity industry is facing by pairing with private sector firms and academic institutions and working with schools to foster cyber security careers and address the gender gap. Better information about cybersecurity careers could positively impact more young people choosing this path, and female models can motivate girls in cybersecurity education by: (1) the development of problem-solving skills by means of cybersecurity challenges; (2) using a cyber environment that combines problem- game-, and virtual reality learning methods; (3) based on female positive roles in cyber security careers; (4) giving useful information to schools about cybersecurity industry so they can inform students and their families.Resources and outcomes of the project will remain accessible at the Be@CyberPro Website: https://www.beacyberpro.eu/.Some relevant outputs of the projects are:•Educational platform on cybersecurity: A platform of open educational resources (OER) for training and awareness-raising for students and teachers, as well as an awareness-raising strategy and resources for families.•Be@CyberPro Videogame: An immersive multi-language experience to explore various cybersecurity professional profiles and challenges•The E-Books: One of them with didactical and methodological guidelines for teachers and families including best practices and associated educational material to use the Be@CyberPro videogame in the classroom. Another one is for inspiring young girls to learn more about cybersecurity and cybersecurity professions through role models. The consortium partners have already conducted interviews with amazing women from Ireland, Spain, Hungary, and Bulgaria working in cybersecurity, which are featured in the eBook as well!Universidad Europea de Madrid (Spain) has coordinated this project, along with all the participating partners: PROMPT-H (Hungary), Irish Computer Society (Ireland), European Software Institute – Center Eastern Europe (Bulgaria), Számalk-Salesian Post-Secondary Technical School (Hungary), 125th Secondary Comprehensive School “Boyan Penev” (Bulgaria), Munster Technological University (Ireland), Colegio JOYFE (Spain), and Universidad de Alcalá (Spain).