Budapest was the location of a transnational meeting of European talent development professionals who came together in March, at a small boutique hotel overlooking the Danube sparkling in the spring sunshine. Under the leadership of the Centre for Talented Youth (CTY) at Dublin City University, the Budapest Talent Centre has been participating in an exciting, three-year cooperation with other European Talent Centres. Funded through Erasmus Plus, the EGIFT project aims to plan, assemble, pilot and produce a massive, online open course (MOOC) on five key aspects of developing talent programmes.
The aim of the project is to provide an accessible source of professional development to educators in Europe who are planning or are currently involved in talent education programmes. The course is designed to serve as an exciting and pragmatic teaching tool covering review of theory and research as well as hands-on best practices. Moreover, the content is structured to enable learning: useful introductory sections, extended further readings with links and references and even short quizzes are helping learners master the material.
The five themes, so-called Strands of the EGIFT project are allocated to one participant each. Talent identification and its literature, best practice and topical issues are mapped by Dublin City University; the lived experience of talented students shall be discussed by the Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen in Nurnberg, Germany. The social and emotional wellbeing of students and its focus in talent development programmes is at the heart of Strand 3, written by the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Teaching strategies for talent programmes is the topic for Scottish Network for Able Pupils (SNAP) at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, United Kingdom. Last but not least, the Budapest Talent Centre has been working on writing the content on programme design principles for school managers and administrators running (or planning) educational programmes for talented students.
The rest of this year will see colleagues gather in Dublin in July where the online course will be piloted: teachers and talent professionals will take the week-long EGIFT course at Dublin City University and their feedback will be incorporated into the evaluation and update of the curriculum, which is the aim of the second year of the project. Ljubljana is then the next stop in September, where EGIFT colleagues will meet to discuss the next steps in this multinational, exciting project. Finally, the third year focuses on producing workshop and blended events. The next two years will also enjoy involvement of the Westfaelische Wilhems-Universitaet in Muenster, Germany, the Anatolia Association of Post-Secondary Education and Vocational Training in Greece, the Italian Association for GIfted and Talented Students as well as the National Student Academy in Latvia.
2017 March 30
