
Digital Tools for Innovative and Collaborative Teaching
Every tool choice is really two decisions wearing one coat: what this technology does to the subject, and what it does to the way you teach it. TPACK separates them, and the week ends with the question that settles most of it — take the technology out, and what have you lost?
Why this is Erasmus+ eligible
Structured, multi-day programme (5 days) with a pre-defined schedule and learning outcomes — not a passive lecture format.
Built around interaction: participants engage directly with the trainer and with peers from other countries throughout the course.
Transnational by design — open to participants travelling from outside the host country, a core requirement of Erasmus+ mobility funding.
Aligned with the Erasmus+ horizontal priority: Digital Transformation.
The Erasmus+ Programme Guide names digital transformation as a horizontal priority, stating that "the Erasmus+ programme plays a key role in supporting citizens of all ages in acquiring the digital skills and competences they need to live, learn, work, exercise their rights, be informed, access online services, communicate, critically consume, create and disseminate digital education content" (Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Part A – Priorities of the Erasmus Programme).
Source: Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Key Action 1 — School Education Mobility.
Overview
A school can hand every teacher a tablet and a login for three different platforms and still not get a single lesson that looks different. The tools were never the bottleneck. Knowing which one actually serves a given lesson, and which one is just there because it is new, is a separate skill, and most digital-skills training walks straight past it.
TPACK — Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge — was built by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler in 2006 for exactly that judgment. It extends Shulman’s older idea that knowing a subject and knowing how to teach it are two different kinds of knowledge. TPACK sets out three: technology, pedagogy and content — and then the places where they overlap, because that is where the decisions actually live. Their own conclusion is the useful part: there is no single technological solution that works for every teacher, every course, or every view of teaching. What a teacher needs is the ability to move around inside those overlaps.
There is a piece most courses leave out. In 2019 Mishra revised the diagram, renaming its outer circle Contextual Knowledge — XK — because the surrounding conditions are not background noise. How many devices there are and where they live, what the school’s policy allows, who decides, what colleagues will actually adopt: these determine more than the three circles do. In his words, success depends not so much on knowledge of technology, pedagogy and content and their overlaps, but on knowledge of the context. That is why the tablets changed nothing, and it gets a full day here.
The week produces two things for one real class: a collaborative project, and the assessment method that goes with it. Assessment gets a day of its own, because it is where digital adoption most often goes wrong. A paper rubric is retyped into a form, nothing about what is being measured changes, and the result is called innovation. The week closes with a subtraction test: each participant takes the technology out of their own project and says what was lost. If the answer is nothing, that is worth knowing on Friday rather than in November.
Methodology
Every tool question in the week is split into what the technology does to the subject and what it does to the teaching, and answered separately. Most bad choices come from answering only one of them.
The project and its assessment are made for a real group you teach, with your real timetable, devices and school policy as constraints — not for a generic classroom.
Every technology in your project has to earn its place against the subtraction test on the final day, and some of them will not.
What you'll take home
Place any tool decision inside TPACK and say which overlap it belongs to, instead of arguing about the tool itself.
Answer the two questions that decide a choice separately: what this technology does to the subject, and what it does to the way you teach it.
Build a collaborative project in which the collaboration is a pedagogical decision made first, and the technology is chosen to serve it.
Design a digital assessment that measures something the paper version could not, and explain what that something is.
Read your own school as context — devices, policy, decision-makers, what colleagues will adopt — and say which of your choices that context rules out.
Daily programme
- Warm-up: each participant names one technology their school adopted and one that quietly died, without saying why. The reasons come back on Day 4
- The framework in full: technology, pedagogy and content; then PCK, TCK, TPK and the point in the middle where all three meet
- Why the overlaps are where the work is, and what it means that there is no single technological solution for every teacher, course or view of teaching
- Sorting exercise: a set of real classroom technology decisions, placed by the group into the overlap each one actually belongs to — including the ones that belong nowhere
- Working session: each participant maps their own current practice onto the diagram and marks the overlap they have never really thought about
- Warm-up: pairs swap subjects and try to choose a tool for a topic they do not teach — then compare what went wrong
- Technological Content Knowledge: what a given technology does to the subject itself — what becomes visible, what becomes easy, and what quietly disappears from view
- Technological Pedagogical Knowledge: what the same technology does to the teaching — grouping, pacing, who talks, who is seen to be working
- Collaboration as a pedagogical decision made first: what you want students to do together, and only then what would carry it
- Working session: the collaborative project takes shape for one named class, with the TCK and TPK reasoning written next to each choice
- What changes and what does not when a paper rubric is retyped into a form — and why that distinction is the whole of this day
- Assessment that the paper version could not do: process visible over time, drafts kept, peer contribution traceable, feedback that arrives before the end
- What gets measured when a group works together, and the problem every collaborative assessment has to solve: telling contribution apart from output
- The same framework applied here: which of these choices is a TCK decision and which is a TPK one
- Working session: building the assessment method for the Day 2 project, then trading it with another participant to be marked against
- What the data actually tells you, and what teachers routinely read into it that is not there
- Contextual Knowledge — the 2019 addition to the framework, and the reason most technology decisions fail without anyone making a bad decision
- Mapping your own context honestly: devices and where they live, network, policy, who decides, what your colleagues will actually adopt, and how much of your time is already spoken for
- The teacher as intrapreneur: how a change gets adopted in an organisation rather than merely proposed, and which of your choices needs someone else’s agreement
- Digital transformation, participation and who is left out: whose access, whose voice and whose data — the equity questions that sit in the outer circle, and what a single teacher can and cannot influence
- Generative AI and the limits of the framework: why an agent that produces content is not the same kind of thing as a tool, what its author says about that — the circles hold, what changes is what goes into them — and where the honest open questions still are
- Working session: the project is revised against your real context, and the parts that your context rules out are named rather than quietly dropped
- Each project is put to one question in small groups: take the technology out, and what have you lost? Anything that survives the removal unchanged was decoration
- The author defends the choices that remain, in the language of the overlaps rather than of features
- Two projects are taken to the whole group — ideally one that passed and one that did not, because the second is more instructive
- Revision time: participants amend their project and assessment before taking them home
- Course evaluation and reflection on learning
- Certification ceremony
Please note: sessions run from 09:30 to 15:00, Monday to Friday, with a break for lunch. Timings can shift a little to suit the venue and the group. If you'd like a specific topic covered, let us know when you apply — the confirmed day-by-day schedule is sent to registered participants ahead of the course.
Certificate: we issue the Certificate of Attendance to everyone who's present for at least 80% of the course — tracked with the daily sign-in sheet (see Certificate & assessment).
Equipment: a few of our courses ask participants to bring a laptop — check the day-by-day programme above, or ask us if you're not sure.
Need a formal invoice or proforma for your school's records? Ask us — we issue official invoices with the participant's name and course details.
Course page last updated: 4 September 2026
Materials & tools
Mishra and Koehler’s original 2006 paper introducing TPACK, and Koehler, Mishra and Cain’s 2013 summary of it — both freely available, and the reference the whole week works from
Mishra’s 2019 revision of the diagram introducing Contextual Knowledge — the source for Day 4, and the piece most treatments of TPACK still leave out
Your own timetable, devices, school policy and adoption history, which the Day 4 session runs on directly
A collaborative project for one named class, built across the week and revised on Day 5
A digital assessment method to go with it, traded and marked against by another participant on Day 3
Certificate & assessment
This is a Certificate of Attendance, not an exam-based qualification — recognition comes from completing the structured programme, not from passing a test. The real, lasting value is in the competencies listed above under What you'll take home.
Type your name above — clearly marked "SAMPLE" in the PDF, not an official document.
The real certificate is signed by your trainer and EMA's authorised signatory. Your own signature isn't on this document — it's captured separately, on the Europass Mobility document.
Need to verify a real certificate? Check it online using the serial number and participant's full name, or contact us directly — [email protected], OID E10304561.
Tracked using a sign-in sheet with one signature per participant per day (paper or digital). This record is used to issue your Certificate of Attendance and Europass Mobility document. View sign-in sheet (PDF)
Every participant leaves with a completed Dissemination & School Impact Plan — a step-by-step template for applying the course back at your school (see below).
An end-of-course evaluation form is sent to every participant after the course ends — a chance to reflect on what you've learned and how you'll apply it, and it helps us keep improving the course for future participants.
Keep your travel tickets, boarding passes and (if you used green travel) any related receipts — your school or National Agency may ask for these for their own Erasmus+ reporting.
How to prepare
Pick one class and one unit before you arrive. Both things you build during the week — the collaborative project and its assessment — are for that unit, and the version written for teaching in general is the one that stays in the folder.
Bring your context, in specifics rather than impressions: how many devices your students can reach and where those devices are, what the school’s policy permits, who decides whether a new tool is allowed, and what your colleagues have actually adopted in the last two years. Day 4 runs entirely on this, and vague answers produce vague projects.
Bring a laptop. No particular platform is taught and no tool is required in advance — what the week trains is the decision, and your school’s existing software is treated as one of the constraints on it.
Practical information
Registration & documents
Not sure how registering works or what paperwork is involved? See our full Registration & Documents guide — from applying to your Certificate of Attendance, in one place.
Invitation letter
Need a formal invitation letter for your school or embassy? Request one — we send it within 2 business days. See a sample (PDF).
Learning Agreement
Prepared by our staff and sent to you and your school once your registration form is submitted — see what it looks like. See a sample (PDF).
Billing & invoicing
We issue official invoices/proformas with the participant's name and course details — ask us. Payment is due in full by bank transfer before the course start date. See a sample (PDF).
Airport transfer
Guidance on getting from the nearest airport to the venue is included in your welcome information.
Accommodation
We can recommend partner hotels close to the venue in the host city — ask us when you apply.
School impact
After completing this Digital & Innovative Education course, the participating staff member can transfer outcomes directly to their school: a short briefing for colleagues sharing the key takeaways, applying relevant tools or strategies from the programme in their own role, and inclusion of the course materials in the school's professional development resources — turning one person's mobility into a wider institutional gain that supports the school's European Development Plan. Use the Dissemination & School Impact Plan below to fill in your own — it saves as you go and can generate a one-page summary for your coordinator too.
0/5 sections started
Write your answers in English — it keeps every teacher's plan consistent if your coordinator compares several.
Filling these in ties this plan to a specific mobility — useful if your coordinator collects plans from several courses/teachers.
Photos of the session or sign-in sheet are embedded straight into both PDFs — they aren't autosaved, so re-attach them if you reload this page. The link above IS autosaved.
If you're presenting, base it on the course materials — a summary slide for colleagues rarely needs more than 15–20 minutes.
Name the real class, year group or school process you'll apply this to — not the course topic itself.
Give the admin a one-page summary: what the course delivered, the cost, how it feeds into the school plan, and the expected outcome.
Your check-in date is before the planned application date in Step 2 — check-ins usually happen a few months after you've actually applied the course, so there's something real to report.
Saved automatically in this browser as you type — nothing is sent to our server. Nothing here is invented for you; leave a field blank if it doesn't apply yet.
Prefer a blank, course-independent version of this template? Get it here →
After the course
Participants will receive their certificates (Certificate of Attendance + Europass).
Participants will complete a general course evaluation and event survey.
Participants will receive course materials, videos, photos, and PDF documents in both digital and print formats.
Follow-up support: an email group is created for idea exchange, self-evaluation materials are provided, and participants receive a follow-up check-in after 3 months — by which time the project has met the timetable, the network and the colleagues, which is the only test that counts.
Frequently asked
This course is an eligible training activity under Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (School Education Mobility) — the course fee, travel and subsistence fall within the eligible cost categories. Whether it is covered depends on your own project's approved grant agreement and your National Agency's rules; we provide all the invoices, attendance records and certificates your National Agency requires for reporting.
B1 is enough — you do not need to be fluent. Trainers speak slowly and plainly, every session is built around doing something rather than sitting and listening, and groups are mixed by nationality so people help each other out. A rough test: if you could follow a staff meeting held in English and ask a question in it, you will be fine here.
Absolutely — group bookings of 3+ from one school receive priority placement, and we can schedule a dedicated session for groups of 12 or more.
Our courses run on request at our centres in Antalya, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin, Budapest, Bremen and Rome. Tell us your preferred city and dates and we will arrange a session.
Tuition, all course materials, both certificates (attendance + Europass Mobility) and a half-day guided tour of the host city with a local guide. Flights, accommodation and travel insurance are booked separately — we send a vetted hotel list.
You can move to any later session free of charge. Cancellations made 30+ days before the start date receive a full refund; a reduced refund applies closer to the date — see our full Cancellation & Refund Policy for the exact schedule.
The Erasmus+ Programme Guide names digital transformation as a horizontal priority, stating that "the Erasmus+ programme plays a key role in supporting citizens of all ages in acquiring the digital skills and competences they need to live, learn, work, exercise their rights, be informed, access online services, communicate, critically consume, create and disseminate digital education content" (Erasmus+ Programme Guide 2026, Part A – Priorities of the Erasmus Programme). Frame it in your own project's terms — your National Agency's current call will confirm exactly how it applies.
None, deliberately. Naming a set of tools would be us making your decision for you, and any list we wrote would be out of date within a year or blocked by your school’s policy anyway. What the week trains is the decision itself — which overlap a choice belongs to, what it does to your subject, what it does to your teaching, and whether your context allows it. That transfers to the tool that appears next term, which a tool list does not.
It is under real strain, and the course says so rather than pretending otherwise. An AI that produces content is not the same kind of thing as a tool you choose and apply, and several extended frameworks have been proposed in response — none of which has settled. The framework’s own author has answered the question directly: the circles do not fundamentally change, what changes is what goes into them, and contextual knowledge matters more than ever precisely because that is what an algorithm does not have. Day 4 works through that argument rather than resolving it for you.
Choose your session
+ 3 more planned dates
No payment now — we confirm your place first.
Plans change — we're here to help.
Don't see a date that works? Request a custom date
What's included
Not included
Aggregated across all EMA courses, not specific to this session.
+ educators from 19 more countries across Europe and beyond
Taking two courses? Book any two EMA courses on the same trip and save €150 off your combined price. Just tell us both course names when you apply — no separate booking needed.
Questions about funding or group bookings?
Write to us

