Abstract:

A major characteristic of European societies is the rapidly growing differentiation of educational, vocational and occupational opportunities, pathways and biographies. As a consequence there is a wider recognition of the importance of providing support to young people on their way into employment and increasing interest in the potential of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) to provide support for the challenges of transition. However, this area of learning remains in its infancy and poses a series of issues for policy makers, researchers and practitioners alike.

The G8WAY (Web 2.0 Enhanced Gateway To Educational Transition; http://www.g8way-eu.net) project is therefore investigating how Social Software and Web 2.0 applications can be used to support young people before, within and beyond these transitions because the increased complexity requires in turn increased efforts into initiative taking, creativity, problem solving, risk assessment and decision making.

G8WAY focuses on two transition scenarios, which are: a) school to work and b) Higher Education (HE) to work. An additional horizontal scenario tests the latter ones in an intergenerational learning setting. In order to understand the variety of transition processes and experiences of young Europeans a story telling approach has been applied in order to develop transition scenarios and so-called ‘personas’ of learners. Personas are fictional, but archetypical characters created to represent different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behaviour set. G8WAY identified three ‘personas’ with their goals, expectations and limitations in order to guide the design of the Web 2.0 enhanced learning environment.

The G8WAY learning environment will enable learners to reflect and develop creativity potentials and transitional skills in the light of self and others' learning experiences, made visible through a variety of media sets and Personal Learning Environment (PLE) applications designed to meet the requirements of transition envisaged and mapped into one single pedagogy framework.

This paper will summarise the activities of G8WAY up-to-date and will focus on:
• Challenges of Transitions between School and Work and between University and Work;
• The Role of Technology in Transitions;
• The Role of Supporters.

Keywords:

Educational transitions, social software, Web 2.0, Learning 2.0, intergenerational learning, career guidance, mentoring.