The two and a half day meeting gave the possibility to experts and project partners to meet, exchange and discuss good practice on the third key area of the P2V project, new learning environments (the other two being digital competence and digital learning resources). During previous visits, the first one in Lithuania in June 2007 and the second one in Spain (Catalonia) in February 2008, the topics addressed were respectively digital resources and supporting innovation in schools using ICT. P2V (Peer to Peer networking for Valorization) is a peer learning project led by European Schoolnet.

A school VLE is one of the priority actions of the French Ministry of Education for the coming years: the French partners showed the P2V visit participants general policies and pilot projects already in place in this field.

Understanding the French system and policies fostering VLEs

The first day of the meeting was dedicated to a general introduction to the French educational system and the organisation of ICT, with a special focus on programmes and policies to develop and implement the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), which in French are called ‘Espaces numériques de Travail (ENT)’. Natahalie Terrades from the French Ministry of Education sketched a concise and detailed picture of the complexities of the French system, where a national and centralised organisation runs in parallel with a strong drive for devolution and decentralisation. The sharing of ICT responsibilities follows the same principle, making for many negotiations, before all actors agree.

In particular, two projects fostering the use of ICT at school and laying down the basis for VLE attracted the attention of the P2V visit participants. "A USB key for teachers", providing newly graduated teachers with a USB key containing teaching resources, an auto download mechanism, examples of use, tools and software as well as a tracking device to know if and how the key is used. The other one, "Videos", consisting of 32 best practice videos to show how ICT can be used, shot on the spot during classes and available online.

The ENT project

After this overview, Jean-Michel Leclerc from the French Ministry of Education addressed the main topic of the P2V meeting in Paris: how France is working for implementing the use of VLEs in schools through the ENT project. ENT is a unifying concept for the whole French educational system. In this starting phase it involves upper secondary schools, but when the project will be extended to the whole educational system, half of the French population will be involved (over 30 million children, teachers and parents).

The ENT consist of a personalised workspace with login and password, which can be accessed by teachers, pupils, parents and head teachers. Academies (regions) are providing personal identities to users (based on commercial solutions), which are different from the citizen’s identity. The ENT provides several services: emails, pupils' ICT assessment access, internal services from ministry, a diary, a resource booking system, working group access, private storage of files and other complementary tools. In addition, teachers can get access to online services such as contacts, courses, textbooks and timetables.

To date, as observed by Jean-Michel Leclerc, usage statistics indicate a relatively low take up of the ENT, with the digital homework book and local information from the press being popular services with parents. The problem seems to be the same in the UK, according to Gareth Davies from the Education ICT Service of the Cambridgeshire County Council. Jean-Michel Leclerc explained, there are in France three different ‘timescales’ in the ENT project: political, market and adoption time. The first is very short, the second a bit longer and the third very long. This seems to be the case also in Catalonia, according to Jordi Vivancos, head of the Knowledge and learning technologies unit at the Department of Education of Catalonia.

A further critical point is the issue of scaling up through training and technical support solutions to meet the target of three million users in four years, this in a system where teachers have considerable pedagogical autonomy and where continuing professional development is a voluntary choice not linked to pay. Means have to be found to increase the attractiveness of the system so that teachers decide to spend time on the ENT and not on something else. Measuring success and benchmarking (how to identify good use of VLE) is also a challenge. VLEs raise ethical questions as well. Roger Blamire from European Schoolnet, the coordinator of the P2V project, noted that this system in effect provides a dashboard giving unprecedented, possibly public, access to information about the performance of learners, teachers and schools. Therefore, people should reflect on to what extent classroom walls and the processes within them should become transparent to the outside world.

ENT and ICT on the ground

On day two, three visits were organised to see how ICT are implemented on the ground in the Academy of Versailles: the first one was to a pedagogical resource and training centre (CDDP of Boulogne), while the others to two secondary schools (Lycée Auffray of Clichy and Collège N. 4 of Goussainville).

Infrastructure and devices in use or to-be-in-use (IWB, laptops, IPods, VLEs, multimedia labs, USB keys, etc) as well as projects and partnership (involving also industry and publishers) were up-to-the-standards and forward-looking, as the visit at CDDP showed. At the lower secondary school of Goussainville, a brand new building and a pilot experiment of 'paperless school' lead by the local department, only newly graduated teachers were hired and given training before the beginning of the school year. Although a highly positive feedback from students and teachers after the first weeks of lessons, the teachers themselves wished for additional support to exploit at best the great potential of the new school's ICT equipment.

In the first school, Lycée Auffray, where ENT has been experimented, statistics show a huge increase in its use (from 80,000 hits of the first year to 160,000 of last year): the most popular functions are consulting timetables and checking grades, while it hasn't been well exploited yet the possibility to access documents.

Debriefing session: food for thought

During the debriefing session on the last day of the P2V seminar, several interesting issues emerged from the participants' debate, based on observations on the ground as well as on the presentation of policies and projects:

- France has a complex system but with several similarities to what is happening in other countries such as Spain and the UK, as highlighted by Jordi Vivancos and Gareth Davies. In particular, regarding VLEs, the vision is the same: every student, teacher and parent must have access to the system. However, each country tries to find out the best way for its own education system accordingly to cultural background, history and experiences, noted Asta Buineviciute.

- The visit was mainly focused on ICT actions in secondary schools. The French Ministry of Education would like to scale up the use of VLE in the next three years, Jean-Michel Leclerc explained. Primary schools are using the ENT in some cities but the results so far have been so local that it has been impossible to scale up and extract good practice. As a result, they decided to focus on services for secondary schools and on infrastructure for primary schools.

- The need for additional teacher training resources and support in the pedagogical handling of the new ICT tools, despite the actions already in place, are another major issue raised by all the P2V participants. The necessity and the way of bridging this gap will be one of the issues the French Ministry will reflect upon. Roger Blamire, warned about the risk of just moving from one medium to another one without taking the opportunity to change the pedagogical resources or exploit the potential of the new medium.

Actions to take back home from the French experience

At the end of the P2V peer learning meeting, several good practices in use in France have been considered worthy to be brought back home by all the participants, in order to be adapted and implemented according to each national context. For Gareth, the best practice observed was the way France has solved the problem of login for VLE. Jordi, given structural and administrative similarities between Catalonia and the region covered by the Academy of Versailles, expressed the will to establish bilateral relations. Asta found very interesting the USB key project as well as the way of solving the registration of teachers on VLEs and the protection of their private data.

The policy visit in France concluded the cycle of visits as part of the P2V policy strand. Others strands include peer learning visits between schools and inspectorates. Work of all three strands will be presented at the upcoming EMINENT Conference in Rome on 4-5 December which will be the occasion to wrap up more than four years of implementing peer learning projects in Europe with P2P (2004-2006) and P2V (2007-2008).

P2V policy visit in Paris report:
http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/pdf/p2v_paris_report_final.pdf

More on peer learning and the P2V project:
http://p2v.eun.org
http://p2v.wikispaces.com