Long Tail: Increasing Accessibility of International Professional Development for Language Teachers

The three project partners Deutsche Auslandsgesellschaft e. V. (DAG, Germany), Euneos OY (Finland) and STEP Institut, zavod zu psihologijo dela in podjestnistvo (Slovenia) were brought together in the follow-up of a networking event organised by Germany's national agency PAD in Cologne. There had been a loos previous contact between Euneos and DAG. All three partner organisations look back on a long history of organising and implementing in-service-training for teachers of foreign languages (who mostly teach at schools). All three partner organisations have made the two-fold experience that a.) knowledge about/expertise in using EU funding tends to remain among relatively few teachers and b.) that profound professional use of modern digital tools isn't by far as widely spread as desirable - especially as participatory learning environments are concerned. The central addressed need was to bring teachers with EU project funding knowledge and teachers with profound knowledge in using digital language teaching tools in contact with teachers who lack the above mentionned expertise - in a positive and mutually respectful atmosphere.

Co-operation of teachers of foreign languages (mostly at schools) with comparatively little expertise/experience in using EU funding and comparatively little profundancy in using modern digital language teaching tools were to be brought in contact with other teachers who did have the above mentionned expertise/knowledge. The established networks of Euneos (reaching to many different EU/applicable countries), STEP Institut (reaching predominantly towards South Eastern EU- and other applicable countries) and DAG (reaching predominantly towards Northern and North Eastern EU- and other applicable countries) were to be brought together. We wanted to achieve a wide-spread enhancement of participatory learning for students (mostly at schools) - i. e. we wanted to empower participating teachers to organise their teaching/classes in a way that leads to a substantial increase in participatory teaching/methods.

The following activities were planned and implemented: - 2 virtual Best Practice Conferences on Digital Teaching of Languages (activities A1 and A6) - 3 on-line teacher trainings for limited numbers of participants (activities A3, A4, A5) - a transnational meeting of teacher trainers from different contexts in Lübeck, Germany (activity A2) - an eTwinning project (activity A7) [Activities A8 and A9 concerned evaluation and dissemination.]

- 2 virtual Best Practice Conferences on Digital Teaching of Languages (activities A1 and A6; recordings e.g. under (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDD8RP1cX2Y&t=7s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GK3mWRVCSQ&t=1s - 3 on-line teacher trainings with tangible results in April, June and July, 2022 (see attached material) - a transnational meeting of teacher trainers in Lübeck, Germany on May 11th through May 13th, 2022 - eTwinning activities (see below for details)