In January 2017, the CRISS (Demonstration of a scalable and cost-effective cloud-based digital learning infrastructure through the Certification of digital competences in primary and secondary schools) project began, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program.
The first year of the CRISS project is dedicated to developing a theoretical model for acquiring students' digital competencies and developing the CRISS platform. The way digital competencies to be developed in the project should be evaluated and certified is currently being defined. Therefore, all primary and secondary school teachers in the Republic of Croatia are invited to complete online questionnaire to contribute to the development of the theoretical model with their knowledge and experience.
The purpose of the CRISS project is the development and pilot implementation of a digital platform for acquiring, evaluating, and certifying the digital competencies of primary and secondary school students. The CRISS platform will be tested through a large-scale pilot with over 490 schools, including 25,400 students and 2,290 teachers in several European countries.
The European Commission has recognized the importance of developing digital skills among its citizens and has launched a series of initiatives aimed at improving them. While many consider students to be digital natives who use digital technology with ease, it is questionable whether they are using it in the best way, and research has shown that students use digital technologies differently at home and at school. In this regard, teachers and educators face a challenging task - to guide students in using digital technologies appropriately.
Croatian teachers will have the opportunity to participate in the project through the Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNet, which is one of the project partners of CRISS. As many as 1000 Croatian students and 60 teachers from a total of 20 schools will be included in the pilot project, which will take place during the 2018/2019 school year. Croatian teachers will apply the CRISS platform in teaching activities for various subjects, during which digital competencies will be developed and evaluated.
The CRISS project started on January 1, 2017, and will last until December 31, 2019. The total value of the project is around 6 million euros, of which the European Commission will finance up to 4.87 million euros. The coordinator of the CRISS project is the British company EXUS Software LTD, and a total of fourteen partners are participating in the project, including public institutions, non-profit institutions, universities, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as large companies.
Project activities can currently be tracked via Twitter, and the official CRISS project website will soon be published, where all information will be available. CARNet will inform all users and other interested parties about the project in a timely manner, and the CARNet CRISS team can be contacted via e-mail CRISS@carnet.hr.