Fátima Hospitality School organises International Workshop on Vocational Education
On the 29th and 30th of April, more than forty participants from Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain debated various topics that cut across vocational education, as part of the TEF - Tourism Education of the Future project, supported by the Erasmus+ programme.
So, after the opening session, attended by Isabel Costa, Vice-President of Ourém City Council; the President of ACISO - Ourém-Fátima Business Association, Purificação Reis; and Elisabete Marques, EHF's Technical and Pedagogical Director, the first speaker was Stefano Tirati, Managing Director of Learning Digital, an Italian company specialized in the use of Artificial Intelligence in VET. Besides showing its potential in practice, he showed how to issue Microcredentials, the new form of skills certification advocated by the European Commission.
Virginia Lacarra, from the Spanish VET and Polytechnic HEI CDEA, reported on the digital skills accreditation project for teachers in the Basque Country, promoted by that region of Spain, and also demonstrated various digital applications that teachers can use in their daily teaching.
The use of Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality tools in the classroom was developed by Gonçalo Freitas and Jorge Alexandre Pereira, two teachers from Rumos Educação, a VET schools’ group.
The inclusion of young migrants and refugees in the community and in education was addressed by António Castanheira, from Social Services of Ourém City Council. Burnout and well-being in VET students and teachers was the subject of a lively interaction between José Carlos Gomes, from the School of Health Sciences of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, and the participants, focusing on prevention, diagnosis and intervention.
The day ended with a guided tour of the medieval town and castle of Ourém, followed by a much-appreciated tasting of wine and local products at Ucharia do Conde, the former prison of the Castle, organised by CMO.
April 30th began with a detailed presentation, followed by dynamic group work among the participants, on project design, management and impact assessment, organised by Isabel Joaquim and Ana Cunha, from Portugal's Erasmus+ National Agency.
Bringing young people from VET closer to the labour market and integrating companies into this process was the interactive talk that followed, where participants gave their views on these dimensions, led by Mónica Vieira, from the Teresa and Alexandre Soares dos Santos Foundation's Education Initiative programme.
Prizes in hospitality education: a tool for developing competition between classes and schools, was what Tiago Braz, from Fórum Turismo, worked on with the participants, in an approach focusing on each of the countries that were present.
The work ended with the presentation of the guide "How to organise and implement hybrid – physical and online - skills competitions", by Mariëlle Derksen-Steen and Hayo van der Kamp, from the Dutch VET school Stichting Landsted, a product developed by the "TEF - Tourism Education of the Future" partnership, supported by the Erasmus+ programme, under which this workshop was organised.
A guided tour of the Museum of the Shrine of Fatima and the Shrine itself was the social activity organized in the afternoon. Fátima Hospitality School would like to thank the participants and the speakers for an excellent time of learning and networking.
