The use of digital tools is an important part of everyday life in all businesses. This means that there are also constantly new requirements for up-to-date competence in a number of subject areas for teachers and staff in the educational institutions. How can one then meet these new requirements, so as to ensure training that is in line with the competence requirements that the business world is demanding at all times?

The Erasmus+-funded project DigiVet (Digital VET readiness) aims to improve the interdisciplinary cooperation in the educational institutions, and thus facilitate a more positive attitude towards digitization and the opportunities this provides in training. The project partnership consists of schools from Portugal, Germany, Denmark and Norway, and the project is led by Prios from Steinkjer, Norway. Through visits to each other’s institutions, the partners have gained a good insight into how different countries and education systems use digital tools in their education to varying degrees and in different ways. Val (Norway) is an upper secondary school with training in aquaculture and agricultural subjects. Much of the teaching takes place outdoor in the school’s operational departments, where connecting theoretical knowledge with practical tasks is an important objective. With CV-19, training had to be rethought, and online teaching and assessment became everyday life for a period. The teachers saw that this also provided new opportunities to involve the students, and not least to work with the companies that the school collaborates with in a new way. The companies were certainly on board with this idea, and now, among other things, pictures and films that the companies themselves create and edit have become important teaching aids to give students an up-to-date picture of various activities and tasks. And through a close and fruitful collaboration, new ways of knowledge building and sharing are constantly being developed, such as the use of 360-camera, VR technology and multiple-choice tasks with pictures/films from the companies.

This means that the students can familiarize themselves with the company they will be working in, and the work tasks they will face, ahead of practical periods in a company. A picture (or film) often says more than many words, and the teachers points out that this also provides new opportunities for individually adapted training through different approaches and adaptation of the level of difficulty for different groups of pupils. Not least, they see great value in the fact that the pupils can use/look at the learning material when they want, and also easily access the material in connection with assignments, project work, preparation for tests etc. The pupils also give feedback that this is a good way to learn from, and especially when they themselves, together with the teacher, get to help develop their own teaching aids. For some students, it is much easier to express their competence through the use of film, which is a medium they are very familiar with through active use of social media. The content can often be more important than the quality itself, and the mobile camera is used frequently both to secure interesting and useful knowledge and to document one’s own learning and competence. In this way, the students also contribute to their own assessment, which also gives a new perspective to the training and the students’ learning outcomes. The use of digital tools gives educational institutions new opportunities for realistic training, and a dedicated collaboration with the business world provides mutual benefit in terms of giving students a competence that the business world demands. Here we see great opportunities for development in the future, and projects such as DigiVet give teachers and other staff in schools new impulses and ideas for how new technology can be used, and not least integrated into everyday school life.