Digital Balance project kicked-off virtually on 9 June 2021
The Balance Digital Project, co-funded by the Erasmus plus program (KA2), was launched through a virtual kick-off meeting on 9 June 2021. The meeting was hosted by Vanna Vadivan Gopal (Education Mobility Grid – EMG).
This digital innovative project will have a duration of two years and developed by 6 partners from 5 countries: Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Greece and Belgium.
The aim of this Digital Balance project is to raise awareness of the benefits of Vocational Education and Training across Europe. Also, to provide educators with the knowledge, skills and confidence to engage in pedagogic innovation, helping them to create inclusive, innovative and genuinely engaging learning experiences for all their students.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transition within VET, leading to a steep rise in online/remote teaching. Despite the many positive aspects of this catalytic change towards digitalization, the speed of the transformation has left little time to address the risks involved. Teachers in particular face a higher risk of digital overload or burnout than ever before. Long hours sitting in front of artificially lit screens, improvised home settings, the challenge of communicating effectively online and the constant flow of communications from bosses, colleagues and students present them with a radically new set of challenges.
Growing scientific evidence from workers in digital environments has shown that unconstrained use of devices can have strong negative consequences. Multitasking and constant notifications are associated with lower levels of creativity and concentration, the difficulty of effective interpersonal communication causes higher stress, while heavy screen use is linked to eyesight problems and headaches. Collectively called “technostress “these issues are caused both by the technology and by organisational expectations, and lead to deterioration in productivity/performance and in employees’ mental and physical health.
During this day, partners got the project officially started, they discussed next steps and they were informed that the consortium will adhere to the timelines as submitted in the project proposal.
EMG coordinator partner gave an introductory presentation about the project Intellectual outputs and project management roles and responsibilities.
