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[File] Digital education at the start of the 2022 school year: an overview of current projects and new initiatives

ForewordAs every year, the back-to-school circular of the Minister of National Education describes the priorities and new features that will come into effect in September. With regard to digital education, the circular states that each school or institution must "update the educational continuity plans developed and implemented since 2020" . It announces, in this regard, that a " permanent and sovereign solution of virtual classrooms accessible to all teachers will now be guaranteed throughout the year". "Faced with the challenge for our students to understand the digital world, and in particular to know how to analyze, sort, and distinguish between information that everyone can now be the sender as well as the receiver ", the circular provides for strengthening the effort in media and information education: "All teachers, especially those in charge of documentation, who are the pivotal point in secondary education, must sensitize and train students in this necessary distance, the first quality of an informed citizen. In this spirit, an experiment will be implemented in the sixth grade as of next fall via a digital awareness certificate.The health crisis and the implementation of educational continuity have made it necessary to set up a "basic digital foundation for schools, colleges and high schools". Within the framework of a "partners' committee" associating representatives of associations representing local authorities and the State "in the respect of the competences of each one", three guidelines for basic digital equipment in schools, colleges and high schools were discussed and then made public.This fall, we have a first evaluation of the program " Digital educational territories (TNE), launched in 2020, which should allow for large-scale testing of the implementation of educational continuity.As part of the " Numérique Inclusif, Numérique Éducatif" program launched in June 2021, 80 selected projects support the fight against digital and educational divides.As part of France 2030 (which takes over from the stimulus plan), a considerable investment effort (594 million euros) is devoted to the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy. Contents State and local authorities agree on digital equipment bases for schools, colleges and high schools Digital education and inclusion: 80 projects to "reshuffle the deck What lessons can be learned from the "digital education territories" experiment? France 2030's education and digital strategy Towards a generalization of media and information literacy in schools The General Assembly on Digital Education, one year later, what is the interim assessment? "What do we know today about the place and use of digital in schools?" State and local authorities agree on digital equipment bases for schools, colleges and high schools Despite significant combined financial efforts, the deployment of the digital education public service has been very disparate and uneven across the country. " To remedy the persistent inequalities in access to the public digital service," the Cour des Comptes in its July 2019 report To remedy the persistent inequalities in access to digital public services," the Cour des Comptes recommended "providing schools, colleges and high schools with a basic digital foundation.The health crisis and the implementation of educational continuity have made it necessary to set up a "basic digital base for schools, colleges and high schools".Within the framework of a "partners' committee" associating representatives of associations representing local authorities and the State, "while respecting the competences of each", three guidelines for basic digital equipment in schools, middle schools and high schools were discussed and then made public.These guidelines detail, for each type of establishment (school, college and high school) a basic foundation: basic classroom equipment: a group viewing system and a classroom workstation; mobile equipment that can be shared for each school pack of touchscreen tablets (middle and high schools); equipment allowing the hybridization of courses in schools (high schools); equipment for "specific" classrooms (middle and high schools); the equipment of the establishment (documentation and information center, multimedia room, space for a media studio, duty room, teachers' room, "free" Internet access points for students (middle and high schools); support and training for teachers and educational teams in the use of new materials; the computer network ; access to the internet. These guidelines " are intended to help local authorities make their investments according to the level of equipment expected in their schools, colleges and high schools. They are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to serve as a reference that can be adapted to the educational projects of the schools and the realities of the field. It is understood that the State, in its own areas of competence, will ensure, in particular, the training of teachers in the pedagogical uses of, and through, digital technology. Digital education and inclusion: 80 projects to "reshuffle the educational deckThe call for projects "Numérique Inclusif, Numérique Éducatif" (Inclusive Digital, Educational Digital) was launched by the Banque des Territoires in June 2021 to support projects to fight against these two divides: digital and educational. After two selection rounds, one in the fall of 2021 and the second in the spring of 2022, the 80 selected projects now cover the entire country.80 selected projectsTwo-thirds of the selected projects are led by associations, and a quarter by EdTech companies and local authorities. When the SSE structures are not themselves carriers of these projects, they are most of the time partners.40% of the target audiences are students, including 20% of disadvantaged youth. Parents and education professionals represent 19% and 16% of the target audiences respectively.In addition to providing financial support for these projects, the Banque des Territoires is also setting up a system of close support for the winners, which aims to assist the projects in their transition to a larger scale.Three convictions at the origin of the call for projectsThe Banque des Territoires emphasizes three beliefs that underlie this scheme. The first is that " the solutions already exist and, above all, that they come from the territories. France stands out because of the heterogeneity of its territory, and therefore the plurality of its challenges. It is often useless, or even counterproductive, to model a solution on a territory. The second is that "the players in the ecosystem are already working together. (...) . The players want to pool and create synergies, to have a better visibility of what exists so as not to reinvent but rather to act in a complementary manner. The call for projects was also intended to bring the players together and have them talk to each other - whether it be to carry out projects together or to share their good practices. The third is that " without working on the issues of inclusion, it is not possible to build effective and sustainable educational solutions. What lessons can be learned from the experimentation of the "educational digital territories" for pedagogical continuity?The program " Educational digital territories" program (TNE), launched in 2020 by the Ministry of National Education and the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI) and implemented by the Banque des Territoires with partner local authorities, in association with the Réseau Canopé and the GIP Trousse à Projets, was intended to allow for large-scale testing of the implementation of educational continuity, the need for which had been revealed by the COVID-19 health crisis.The TNE evaluation report draws the first lessons from the experiments conducted in the departments of Aisne and Val-d'Oise during the 2020-2021 school year.Read more France 2030's education and digital strategyFrance 2030 is in line with the France Recovery Plan. This 30 billion euro investment plan is designed to make up for France's lag in certain historical sectors. It also aims to create new industrial and technological sectors.Endowed with 594 million euros as part of France 2030, the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy must meet two imperatives: strengthen the skills and competencies needed to prepare for lifelong learning foster the development of a high-performance French digital education ecosystem It has several objectives: Increasing the efficiency of our education system by strengthening guidance tools, skills portfolios, labelled educational resources, assistance in personalising courses, and actions to reduce digital divides, strengthening the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy. Transforming and strengthening the EdTech economy: "EdTech (Educational technology) represents a dynamic economic sector with a strong competitive edge in which major countries are investing massively (...) The health crisis has confirmed the need for many players to scale up to meet future demand. Provide a framework that preserves sovereignty and the ability to influence: "Beyond the immediate economic impact for French EdTech, the use of foreign digital solutions is synonymous with data capture. The protection of personal data and the sovereignty of our national education system are essential issues that must be preserved with sustainable and secure solutions. Actions launchedA "Priority Equipment and Research Program" (PEPR) for "Education and Digital Technology" with a budget of €77 million over 10 years will make it possible to create an educational data warehouse (Education Data Hub) capable of contributing to the data-driven management of schools and academies, as well as to the fine-tuning of teaching based on learning records and EdTech for existing and future resourcesDemonstrators that will test, accelerate and identify best practices to accelerate the use of digital in education: Territorial digital demonstrators" have been deployed for three years in schools (12 Educational Digital Territories) and in higher education (17 demonstrators covering 70 French higher education establishments) Demonstrators common to both school and higher education, such as Avenir(s) with a budget of €30 million, piloted by the ONISEP and the Savoie-Mont-Blanc University Educational solutions based on digital tools through Educational Challenges and Innovation Partnerships in Artificial Intelligence, or support for the deployment of E-FRAN projects. Initial and ongoing training in digital technology for teachers and staff who are accompanying the educational transformation with innovative training courses as part of the Skills and Professions of the Future call. Towards a generalization of media and information literacy in schoolsInscribed in the July 8, 2013 orientation and programming law, included in the Common Base of Knowledge and Skills and Culture in 2015, media and information literacy (MIE) has officially entered as such in the new National Education programs, after having long camped in its margins.In a analysis notethe Conseil national d'évaluation du système scolaire (Cnesco) observed, however, that the educational institution does not seem to " fully support young people in a changing information universe marked by strong debates around social networks and the infoxes that are propagated there. Thus, media education, as an object of study, is only addressed in half of the middle and high schools. This seems to be limited, most often, to education through the media (using information supports such as newspaper articles or television documentaries), even if, at school, students largely consider that moral and civic education courses (EMC) allow them to better understand current events.The Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports announces new initiatives to strengthen and generalize media and information literacy.Read more The General Assembly on Digital Education, one year later, what is the interim assessment?The Ministry of Education organized on November 4 and 5, 2020 the "Etats Généraux du Numérique pour l'éducation" (EGNé).These Estates General had been prepared in three stages: Development of feedback (from lockdown to end of regular school year); Organization of an online consultation (from mid-June to mid-September); States General in the territories (mid-September to mid-October). The digital education strategy defined at the end of the Etats généraux was based on three pillars: training, equipping and tools.Read more [Feature] "What do we know today about the place and use of digital in schools?"The Department of Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance (DEPP) of the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports has undertaken to take stock of "what is known today about the place and use of digital technology in schools ".This summary is based on a decade of studies, on recent publications by the DEPP and on evaluations of several schemes set up to develop the role of digital technology in education (D'COL, the Collèges connectés, and more recently the Plan numérique).Read more

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• Innovation

Published on 15/09/22



A state of the art of digital education research.

In the perspective of the Etats Généraux du Numérique pour l'éducation, the Direction du numérique pour l'éducation (DNE) of the French Ministry of Education publishes the work of the digital thematic groups (#Gtnum).These thematic groups groups, nine in number, were set up this summer with the aim of To take stock of the state of research To identify elements of strategic orientation and action levers to support digital practices in the field in the academy; To propose prospective scenarios and concrete actions to exploit digital technologies for educational and pedagogical purposes The digital theme groups (GTnum), led by university laboratories and other public operators, are coordinated by the Digital Innovation and Applied Research Support Office of the Digital Education Directorate. New learning spaces, connected objects, robotics (GTnum 1)Transformation of school spaces and support for stakeholders State of the art, issues and recommendationsScientific works as well as the opinions of practitioners converge today on the idea that the school form has remained globally very fixed in France since the 19th century. There have been attempts to modernize the building since the 1980s and 1990s, with sometimes daring architectural gestures. But this building approach has essentially concerned the envelope of the establishment and very little the classroom and the other functional spaces of the establishment. A reflection is however in strong development, notably during the last three years, on the necessary transformation of the building and the installations of the schools, in connection with the development of the equipment and digital uses and with a certain number of pedagogical evolutions at work.Summary note on the challenges of robotics in schoolsThe use of the "robot" object at school appears explicitly in the programs as early as cycle 2. At this stage, the robot is cited as an example of a resource contributing to the development of the mathematical skills necessary to locate and move in space. But it is well beyond these relatively modest and circumscribed pedagogical objectives that we must look for the origins of the recent development of meetings and other robotics competitions in schools. Thus, the robot, as a member of the large family of "technical objects", naturally finds its place in the framework of the first science and technology lessons from cycle 3, contributing to the development of the computational thinking of the pupils through problem solving situations by computer programming, which is a pedagogical context naturally favourable to exchanges in the classroom and thus finds its extension through events gathering different school audiences from kindergarten to higher education. Let's add to this a significant dimension linked to the design of recent programmable robots which, often associated with ergonomic and accessible visual interfaces, make their use from the youngest age much easier, more playful and mobilizing than before. The competitive form of certain initiatives offers an additional motivational lever for participants and undoubtedly a visibility event considered relevant by the organizers, just like traditional sports meetings. Experts and stakeholders agree that this is a strong global trend that is becoming increasingly popular in Europe, Asia and America, and that has been gradually taking root in France in recent years, thanks to academic, regional and association-based initiatives. Learning analytics (GTnum 2)Evaluating learners' ability to abstract, detecting their loss of attention, adopting a differentiated pedagogy, drawing up a personalized assessment updated as the learning process progresses: these are all tasks that rely on the teacher's ability to observe, analyze and reinvest the behavioral and cognitive traces of learning. In spite of himself, this professional only captures a small part of this data, which limits his possibilities of interpreting a gesture, an unfinished exercise, or an error of re-appropriation. As in other fields, non-instrumented human observation is limited and fragile.With the shift of learning activities towards digital devices, these traces change status: in real time or deferred, at a distance or in a classroom, they have never informed, in such a fine and massive way, the gap between saying and doing. Digital boards, computers, tablets, e-readers, smartphones are likely to capture more and more data on what is being played out, on a verbal and behavioral level, in a learning process. Producing, collecting, analyzing and reinvesting these digital traces would help the actors of the educational community - learners, parents, educational staff, teachers, managers and administrators - in the challenges they must respectively face, in the perspective of the Common Base of Knowledge, Skills and Culture, which now requires to evaluate in equal parts the mastery of language, disciplinary knowledge and the capacities of autonomy and initiative. (...)The transition from experimentation to industrialization of these technologies has been disrupted by the sudden arrival of the giants of the digital economy.As it stands, experimental research is tinged with a certain amount of scepticism. Safeguards are more necessary than ever, since we are dealing with a public that is in part minor and with sensitive cognitive data. The multidisciplinary teams of public research advocate responsible, transparent, sober, confidential and accessible devices.The future of digital learning analytics is an equation with three unknowns: first, will policy makers (governments, institutions, firms) take the measure of the funding and projects still needed to adapt research to field practices and to disseminate a culture of data analytics among faculty?Second, will these decision-makers succeed in developing a viable, flexible but fair legislative framework that respects the right of users to suspend data collection and that preserves their confidentiality? Finally, will these decision-makers manage to go beyond a mercantile logic and proprietary technologies to promote standards and open projects?Educational and research institutions, politicians and researchers have a hand in the future of data analytics resulting from digital learning: the face of the digital school will depend on the knowledge of this field and the awareness of its societal impacts and challenges. Digital practices and uses of young people (GTnum 4)When we talk about the digital uses of young people, we notice that it is very often approached from the angle of the impact of technologies on the organization of their daily lives (offline and online).While the creative and educational potential of technologies has been highlighted on many occasions, the practices of young people, which are sometimes seen as having "specific characteristics", are often evoked through the prism of the dangers incurred.Faced with the risks of addiction, de-socialization inherent to "screens" or harassment, and potential bad encounters, children and young people can be considered as a population at risk. Some psychiatrists, psychologists, experts and scientists, coming from various disciplinary fields, call in their publications for an action of vigilance and protection, individual and collective, on behalf of all the family, education and care actors. Evocative titles, such as Children and adolescents facing the digital (...)The examination of the possible dangers and risks linked to digital practices among young people, especially when connected, is very often based on social representations, which are not without techno-centric and techno-determinist elements.When research questions digital tools from the point of view of their effects and impacts, it focuses on technical objects, on what they do to users, and most often assumes that users are affected by the technical objects used. Other works, more in line with a research perspective in human and social sciences rather than expertise, invite the description and the analysis of the diversity of the ways in which the users deal with the technical objects, with regard to the environments and the social times in which they can be formed, deformed, reformed.(...)Although this review is far from having evoked all the questions that run through the work of the field, we can nevertheless identify specific avenues of reflection which, in the wake of the elements discussed here, could feed the next exchanges of WG4.In particular, it would be possible to deepen the analysis of the forms of (dis)continuity between personal digital practices and school digital practices, from the following entries:the diversity of uses by very young children with regard to the social, cultural and educational conditions that give them form and the way in which domestic contexts and family mediations contribute to early digital learning (ordinary and school). the role of the social, educational and digital territory in the way in which digital practices and uses take shape, particularly in the school environment. Indeed, if statistical surveys show a continuous growth of individual and collective technical equipment levels over the last fifteen years, we can observe a still fragmented diffusion of equipment according to socio-cultural spaces and territorial anchors (...)In addition to these technical disparities, there are also disparities in terms of pedagogical possibilities. Indeed, from one school to another, there are clear differences in the way principals grasp the potential of technology for teaching, integrate it into school projects and support teaching teams in the development of digital teaching methods. Thus, depending on the region, access to digital resources (whether they be network, media or software) and the way in which these resources are mobilized vary. Digital cultures in schools (GTnum 5)The schooling of digital techniques, i.e. their appropriation for school learning purposes, is one of the central issues of the use of digital technology in schools, its usefulness and its effectiveness. The question is complex and can be approached in many ways. The cultural angle is not the least important. The school is a cultural institution in that it is part of a given cultural area from which it inherits norms and because it contributes, along with other institutions including the family, to the acculturation of the young people entrusted to it. This is why digital technology puts in tension the school form, that is to say the set of explicit or tacit norms that govern the relationship to knowledge, the investment of time and space, the social relations and the activities within the school (...)A few salient points stand out. Digital culture, which is only our culture in the digital age, is a total social and cultural fact that goes beyond the school and that the school cannot ignore. Schools have a considerable responsibility to ensure that students' digital education is equitable, whether it involves developing their skills in the use of digital techniques or understanding the ethical, social and political issues at stake in the context of personal, civic and professional development. The digital acculturation of the school does not imply the abandonment of its educational goals, but a transformation of its organization, its functioning, the means it uses, the formats of its action and its relations with all the other actors in education. It is indeed the question of the transformation of the school form that is at stake. Taking digital cultures into account in schools calls for a positive consideration of the way in which they have transformed the representations, values and behaviors of all members of the educational community, starting with students. The heritage dimension of digital cultures must also be considered. Thus, the skills related to digital technology but also all the practices and achievements related to these techniques and in particular digital arts must have their place at school. (...) The cultural dimension of digital technology invites the school institution to go beyond the utilitarian or technical vision (learning code) that it most often develops, even if it may be relevant (learning with digital technology), to engage in a true acculturation in which digital technology is considered for what it is, a set of practices but also and above all a renewal of the relationship of each person to the world in order to rebuild commonalities that respond to the values of equity, solidarity, ethics and citizenship that are the foundation of the school's mission. Digital and educational resources (GTnum 6)Characterizing the supply of digital educational resources: An attempt at classification Digital textbooks: resources related to academic or school teaching covering the notion of a textbook, integrating several disciplines or focused on a single subject, over one or several years. Multimodal resources: used at different levels in a relatively independent way. They can be tools associated with a particular discipline, collections of tools, e-books or resources, or portals giving access to a plurality of resources: videos, infographics, animations, podcasts (audio), websites, blogs, wikis, games, slide shows, augmented reality applications, virtual reality, Learning platforms (spaces for teacher-student interaction): resources used via a platform that may offer additional services such as discussion forums, management of students' test results and achievements, offering new exercises or resources, a dashboard for teachers, etc. This includes MOOCs, social media and learning management systems. Two other categories are not directly relevant to students but to teachers: Digital tools for teachers, such as lesson plans, assessment and certification tools... Resources by opportunity, not initially designed to be used in a teaching context (Eduthèque, for example), and open data for education. Circulation patterns of educational resources. Teachers' choice and design of resourcesEducation has a long history of using a variety of media, tools, and resources (...)The multiplication of platforms - of content and scenario creation, of databases (with a question about the place of potentially exploitable and reusable public data in a pedagogical context if an organization envisages structuring them as such), etc. - as well as technological and technical changes concerning the modes of resource management invite us to (re)question teaching practices, especially if the processes and daily tasks around resources become more complex (rapidly changing environments, overabundance of information, training and transliterative skills...).We can then ask ourselves the question of the degree of autonomy of teachers, especially if they become dependent on a certain type of infrastructure (especially freemium models) or specific services associated with the resources (storage, cloud, management, scripting of pedagogical grains, distribution and validation...).(...) Elements observed in practices indicate important changes, such as the massive use of videos on YouTube in English, flipped classroom practices, the implementation of practical work around documentary research, the use of projection systems multiplying the visualization of video documents...What we should now look at in order to continue our reflection on teacher practices around resources is their organizational processes, that is, the way they manage their resources.A focus could thus be made on the life cycle of resources produced by teachers, both at the individual level - how the teacher himself manages his own collection(s) - and at the collective level - when there is mutualization between peers, either at the level of the school or within a network (social or professional networks, teacher collectives)What needs to be understood is the inter-relationship between the different levels (individual work, collective tasks, school establishment, collectives or networks, national offers and prescriptions of the Ministry of National Education) which can reinforce the dependence on the environment and the infrastructures proposed or developed by this environment. It is a question here of the teacher's autonomy and mastery of technical tools (forms of research and access to resources).

• Inclusion

Published on 30/09/20



Digital technology "reveals the novelties, fragilities and tensions that run through education", according to the Council for the Evaluation of Schools

Created in 2019, the School Evaluation Council is to independently evaluate the organization and performance of school education.The first national report of this new institution presents an initial assessment of the content that emerges from the evaluations, globally and through four themes: education for sustainable development, the fight against harassment, the place of digital technology and European and international openness.Nearly 950 schools have been evaluated for the 2020-2021 school year, i.e. a little more than 9% of all public and private secondary schools under contract (middle schools, general and technological high schools, vocational high schools).The national report of this first evaluation campaign is based on the analysis of a sample of 100 randomly selected evaluation reports using a list of keywords.With 443 items in the hundred institutional reports, the School's Evaluation Council observes "the regular, but not systematic, presence of items related to the place of digital technology. The themes associated with digital technology are communication, infrastructure and equipment, as well as pedagogy, which accounts for two-thirds of the items. There are also items related to digital uses, training and human resources, as well as the benefits and dangers of their use. "Digital tools are primarily approached through the lens of communication with families." The Council for School Evaluation identifies in these evaluation reports a question "about the most appropriate ways for parents to monitor their children's work, results and school life" . "Particular attention is paid to the families furthest from the school through the means of mitigating the effects of the digital divide and the risks induced by the increasing use of dematerialized procedures."Digital tools, particularly Pronote (advantages, disadvantages, competition from Twitter or Whatsapp), are also questioned."Financed by the communities, the ENT and its functionalities, " not always exploited, are valued in the evaluation reports as educational resources and means of communication".The infrastructure and equipment " are subject to a description of what is provided or a judgment as to their degree of obsolescence, which depends on the relationship between the institution and the community, or its unequal use by teachers and students."The pedagogical integration of these tools allows for the renewal of practices, collaborative work, evaluation by competence and differentiation, thanks to pedagogical diversification, personalized monitoring of students, their learning and their career paths.The uses show a discrepancy between the idea of students at ease(digital native) and a more contrasted reality, revealed by the health crisis, which can be remedied thanks to the ENT or the PIX certification.The school reports mention training needs, "with practices that do not always keep up with the resources and digital tools available, and a particular emphasis on the resource persons to be mobilized." "Digital technology is appreciated for what it allows as much as it is feared for its complexity, its influence and the questioning of practices that it imposes. The dangers, notes the School Evaluation Council, " are mainly related to social networks, with adults at a loss, the link to media and information education being insufficient for a situation that goes beyond the school and questions the role of parents. The benefits are to be found around languages and culture, with digital technology as a tool for exchange and rapprochement (eTwinning program, for example) .While the health crisis has allowed for the development of skills related to the use of digital technology, a harmonization of these uses and greater proximity between adults, students and families, "it has also brought to light the digital divide (dropping out of school, monitoring difficulties), cyber-violence and sometimes the perceived time-consuming nature of digital technology.In conclusion, notes the School Evaluation Council, " digital technology is appreciated for the simplification of presentation and exchange that it allows as much as it is feared for its complexity, its influence and the questioning of practices that it imposes. Diversely apprehended by the institution and its agents, it is as much a revelation of the new as of the fragilities and tensions that run through education. The School Evaluation Council The School Evaluation Council is responsible for the independent evaluation of the organization and results of school education.Its main missions are to : ensure consistency in national and international assessments, advise on the methodologies, tools and results of these assessments define the methodological framework and tools for self-evaluations and evaluations of institutions, to establish a synthesis of the various evaluation studies on student achievement, educational systems and schools The Council's work is public, and its purpose is to enlighten the public authorities and enrich the public debate on education.

• Inclusion

Published on 20/04/22