After the corona-related school closure, educational institutions throughout germany had to move classes home. At the vocational school center in kronach, the staff very quickly succeeded in creating a new everyday teaching routine by means of a comprehensive digital learning program.
"Our teachers have done a great job in the past weeks", rudi schirmer, head of the vocational school, and ursula lieb, a member of the school’s administrative staff. Already on the weekend after the school closing, teachers came together to find solutions for the continuation of the lessons through home-learning.
In order to quickly and securely manage the transition to distance learning and the establishment of a digital learning platform, schools can use microsoft’s office 365. At the lorenz-kaim school, this was already introduced in february 2019, so that they were prepared for such a crisis situation. IT system administrator stefan konig quickly succeeded in setting up the necessary communication structures and making teaching materials available to the schoolchildren. All classes received a link or QR code to a password-protected area where they can access the folders they have been given access to.
Interaction with the schools
It was important to the staff not to simply give the students tasks to complete. Instead, from the very beginning, the focus was on interaction with the schoolchildren. They not only report back the solutions, but can also ask questions and give feedback. Although face-to-face teaching is naturally lacking, the commitment of the students is nevertheless high, as evidenced by the very good feedback, according to the teachers.
Three "lighthouse projects the e-learning offerings for the subject areas of electronics and mechatronics, respectively, can be found under the link https://bit.Ly/2ww6f8s, says school principal rudi schirmer. Here the trainees get to the industrialization 4 projects via the surface.0, the preparation for the journeyman’s examination for electronics technicians and the project planning of an emergency ventilator for people suffering from covid-19.
Behind the industrialization 4 project.0 is the government’s "industry 4" program.0", the vocational school center in kronach was included in the program together with its partner school, the vocational school in lichtenfels. The pilot project aims to use a highly intelligent 4.0-production plant bringing company reality into vocational schools, making it tangible and tangible. The individual components are located at the BS kronach; both sites are digitally networked with each other.
An intelligent factory
The heart of the system is an intelligent factory with communication between the product and the production plant, as well as between suppliers and customers. "The challenge was now to represent the complexity of the system in purely digital form and to "train" the trainees using digital twins, explains tobias kuhnlein.
For the electrical engineering department, his colleagues thomas bohm and florian bruckner designed an online program in which the second-year apprentices can expand and test their knowledge for the journeyman’s examination due in the summer.
A real "lighthouse project the projecting of a ventilator has also become more difficult. The mechatronics engineers are currently creating a prototype for an emergency ventilator in exchange with the medical university of hannover and in cooperation with the company MF automation gmbh in hallbergmos and stephan ulrich from wegard gmbh in hamburg.
Italy gave the impetus
"The project was not originally planned as such", clarifies oliver neuperth. In fact, the idea for this was born in the bad phase of the coronavirus spreading in italy. "The project was initially an idea to help people in need", informs neuperth. The decisive factor was the pictures of sick elderly people on hospital beds with ventilation masks and those who did not have them. The idea of creating a ventilator consisting of the simplest components to perform the basic function of ventilation on a permanent basis was therefore obvious. In the meantime, the situation has eased somewhat and the call for ventilators has died down. "However, the coronavirus is currently still on the rise in africa and india, for example. So it’s quite possible that these devices are actually still needed there", emphasizes principal rudi schirmer.
The ventilator was intended for use in an emergency situation, but without being a medical device. It is intended as an alternative when adequate ventilation options are no longer available. The aim was to develop a device whose components are available or can be obtained quickly. Users should be able to adjust and operate it easily and almost intuitively.
Within a very short time, a ventilator has been developed that can be operated with a compressed air supply alone and – if necessary – an additional oxygen connection. It consists of a small number of components available on the market that can be assembled without special expertise – such as a pneumatic stroke valve, a pressure relief valve, a ventilation bag and a special gripper finger.
According to anja konig, supervisor of the hotel/tourism vocational school, the challenge for the teachers lies in the very different ways in which the students are taught. Not all trainees had the opportunity to learn at home, so some of them had to complete their tasks in the evenings or on weekends. The task was to find a mab that would satisfy everyone and at the same time not overtax anyone.
Since monday, the trainees, who are due to take their chamber examinations this year, have again been taught in compliance with the distance and hygiene regulations. This concerns the eleventh and twelfth classes, i.E. More than half of all students at the lorenz-kaim school.