A proper policy in the permanent teacher’s training: Key impulse of the ICT Centre in Andalusia (Spain)

The Andalusian administration specified, from the beginning, a series of measures for the support of ICT Centres. Among them we want to highlight: the broadband connection and the equipment; the offer of educational programmes and materials to be used with free software; the necessary appointment of a coordinator; an up to 10% increase in working expenses for centres; the specific training and assessment for a better use of the information resources and their integration into teaching; publishing the experiences on the internet; publishing the produced educational materials; and the acknowledgement of the participation in the project as a specific merit.

The results of our research have shown us the faults and the possibilities to improve in the previous aspects, as we will later explain. Basically, it has proven that sometimes having a lot of material does not imply an advance in the methodology and in the teaching-learning process: the centre must set the limits about how far it can assume the process. This is why today every centre decides how to integrate ICTs in teaching practices according to different classroom organization models which have to be included in the curricular development.

Perhaps the most outstanding measure to foster ICT Centres is the use of platforms and webs as modulating elements. The educational administration, since the beginning of the project, offers the ICT Centres a resource which until then had been little used in public compulsory education: the E-ducational platform. Every centre is given the chance to develop this virtual space, which must be managed by the ICT coordinator, as a complement to the traditional methodology. Both methods require the internet but use it differently.