Virtual Spitfire

The project Virtual Spitfire has 4 partners from 4 countries; UK, Sweden, France and Greece all workiing with adult education in socialy deprived areas of post industrial decline. The project aims to support individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences for low skilled adults living in post-industrial areas. It will also focus on upskilling adult educators in the use of Virtual Reality in the educational process. This will be carried out by utilising the interest and local knowledge of the people and environments of post- industrial landscapes. We will encourage the often deep interest for the local area by using the context of old industrial factories, mines, harbours, agricultural production centres that once stood at the centre of local communities. The industries may have dissapeared or expereinced technological change such as automation leading to loss of employment Social inclusion is a process, which assists people to participate fully in life from an economic, social and cultural perspective. The idea is that every member of the society, no matter their background or situation, should be able to participate in the community and society and be encouraged to contribute to social, cultural and work life. The focus of the Virtual Spitfire project is the enhancement of intercultural competences of adults and the improvement of social inclusion capacity through the provision of continuous professional development courses to adult educators for diversity management and intercultural management. Virtual Spitfire project addresses the entrepreneurship, Civic skills, Personal, Social and Learning and Cultural awareness and expression, key competences as specified in Key Competences Recommendation for Lifelong learning (revision 2018). This relies on an awareness of how culture, as a collective social construct, shapes the views of the individual in return. It is important to highlight the crucial process of developing a sense of one’s own place or role in society – which may be understood as one's 'socio-cultural identity' - as well as a sense of the identity of others with positive open-minded attitudes towards diverse cultural differences in different contexts. This understanding of culture, based on the individual existing within particular contexts and communities implies interaction, inclusion and mobility as key issues and opportunities in society. Extending and developing educator's competences.High quality and well trained educators can help adult learners to develop key competences for the labour market and in everyday life. The project is based on a methodological approach designed to maximize impact through the production and sharing of OERs based on practical classroom and work based training activities and on the use of VR and digital media. A Continuous Professional Development course for the training of adult educators on th euse of VR is to be developed by the Virtual Spitfire project.