Development of digital competencies in education through staff training events and international schools

Digital technology has become essential in teaching and learning, thus requiring of both teachers and students the possession of digital competencies. In education, technologies and methodologies are intertwined, and, as a consequence, all the stakeholders need to be competent in the specific sense, which goes further than being confident with digital tools in a general sense. This prompted institutions to propose initiatives favoring the use of digital in education, such as the European project DIGICODE, devoted to the security and defence context, featuring the participation of both universities and military academies. In this paper we investigate the possibility of designing and implementing effective training activities in order to allow teachers, and subsequently students, to develop digital skills. We consider two events, namely a staff training reserved for teachers and an international school involving both students and teachers. By analyzing teachers’ and students’ questionnaires, we track the variation of their digital competencies, along with students' perception of effectiveness and appreciation of the activities proposed, which carefully combined the theory with more engaging aspects such as interactivity and practical applications. Furthermore, we discuss our findings in light of a framework including different dimensions (pedagogical, human, technological, institutional), which have proved to be strongly related to each other, allowing us to set a methodological base on which to build such actions. In this setting, we show as well the importance of collaboration and ideas exchanged, both at the interdisciplinary and the interinstitutional level.