Abstract:

The initial challenge is to start connecting some selected secondary schools in some European pilot countries (Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal) using existing and established networks. Subsequent phases will then see the extension of Up2U to other countries. Our intention is to to serve secondary education in those countries.

Individual secondary schools and learning communities will be able to use the Up2U ecosystem, its tools, infrastructures and services as an alternative education platform to store their personal courses and educational projects according to their own choices and local needs and policies.

Up2U desired outcomes are seamless, interoperable intercommunication, broader education and an inspiring vision of a multicultural, connected society for all students.

To summarize, Up2U will interconnect formal and informal education through engagement with teachers and students by means of sharing tools in virtual classes using project-based learning and interaction with schools in their own, and other, countries. It will provide strong support for teachers and will aim to deliver personalized education in a safe and trusted environment, where students will be able to complete inspiring assignments and receive community rewards thanks to a digital recognition system built into the platform.

The project team will be gathering early feedback form teachers and students, following the rapid prototyping and minimum valuable product development principles. The platform will also need to be future-proof and saleable, with room for growth and development to seamlessly accommodate new schools and future commercial partnerships. Nowadays, the distance between a creative idea and a commercial product becoming shorter and shorter; our commercial partners and project partnerships will explore these opportunities from day one.

Up2U will also encourage “unschooling”. But what does this mean? Unschooling is an informal space where teachers and learners meet. It is defined as the natural way to learn and is based on the fact that children are natural learners who thrive if provided with the appropriate tools in the right environments. So the platform, by being readily accessible in a context external to school, will enable students to keep on learning almost without realising it.

Keywords:

Up2U, Learning, Technology, ecosystem, tools, Teach and Learn, Pilot Countries.