Digital Practicum 3.0: Exploring Augmented Reality, Remote Classrooms, and Virtual Learning To Enrich and Expand Preservice Teacher Education Preparation

PRAC3 would be a pioneer initiative to test the efficacy of an online teaching practicum. Today’s operational online resources aiming at bringing in the ICT in the practicum are based on the web 2.0 (theoretical contents online, users’ interaction via forums, blogs, social websites, etc). However, the ultimate motivation for this consortium is to design integrated online teaching resources for the on-site school teaching training based on web 3.0, which its defining feature is the possibility to access more personalized information according to the user’s experience (e.g., Elaboration of mentors’ and preservice students’ profiles, and virtual personalized school practices).
The relevance and necessity of an online teacher practicum is recognized globally as a key indicator of future professional performance. PRAC3 is a European initiative aimed at designing technological products and solutions for the online practicum to be used by mentors and pre-service teachers in the participant countries. Its usability will be based upon two major aspects: a management resource and a professional exchange interface for practice. For the first aspect, the tool will help to globally administrate the schools’ network available for the practicum in each participant country, to visualize the collective agreements between the universities-schools- educational authorities and select the optimal mentors for the preservice teachers according to designed professional features. In relation to the second purpose, the PRAC3 will allow pre-service teachers to become immersed in the practicum experience through simulated teaching (e.g., Augmented Reality) and virtual practices (e.g., face-to-face teaching or Live Remote Classroom System -LRCS-) which, in turn, will allow for more capacity building and teaching accessibility as well as understanding different school contexts and environments.