TEN Newsletter #7

27 September 2022

Workshop in Malmö

On the 4th – 6th of May the network gathered in Malmö for its third workshop. The topic of the workshop was ‘How can we (TEN) best support schools in how to tackle challenges regarding school laws and GDPR but also resistance from other adults in school?’ Our goal with the workshop was to increase the knowledge of GDPR and school law in the Nordic countries in relation to telepresence and produce an information folder regarding how telepresence complies with the school law and GDPR.

Later during the workshop we also had a presentation about GDPR. Hans Flenstad-Jensen from No isolation talked about GDPR in general, Jennie Ingelsson from Malmö stad also gave us some insights about it from the perspective of a municipality and Ina Lober from No Isolation told us a little bit how it works from a suppliers point of view.

GDPR and School law
Before starting any discussions we had presentations of the school law in Norway

(Hans Flenstad-Jensen, No Isolation), Denmark (Sofie Skoubo, phd. student) and Sweden (Dominic Summerton, Göteborgs Stad). Some conclusions were that there are differences between the countries that must be considered when thinking about using telepresence in schools. It is also not crystal clear how telepresence solutions comply with the school law as it is quite a new phenomenon. We are unaware of any cases where the use of telepresence solutions has been audited according to school law in the Nordics.

Connecting disconnected learners
We also got to listen to Nina Bergdahl, PhD, MSc Lecturer didactics and digitalisation.

She talked about strategies for effective hybrid teaching, the social dimension of it, how to launch an effective intervention, success factors etc.

Students, teachers and school management
During the workshop we also got the perspective of students, teachers and school management. Three students talked about their experiences using telepresence and how that has helped them but also what challenges they’ve had.

Hanna Enochsson told us about her experiences working as an assistant to a child who’s using a telepresence robot and Caroline Sjölin gave us the perspective of a headmaster. Caroline has been using telepresence robots in her school for many years and had a lot of experience to share.

Group discussion and case work
Throughout the three days we worked in three groups, a Swedish, a Norwegian and a Danish group. In these groups we worked with different cases that could occur when you want to use telepresence in school. We discussed the cases, tried to find out different solutions for them and also did some role playing presenting some of our solutions for the other groups.

In these groups we also started to look further into the school law and GDPR to find material for the folder.

Product development
At the end of the three days the different groups documented their experiences and knowledge into three different folders, one for every country, with information about GDPR and school law and how we (TEN) think it may comply with the use of telepresence in schools.