iTech meets the requirements of the European standard Centre of VET Excellence. The educational opportunities offered by the “Berufliche Schule ITECH Elbinsel Wilhelmsburg” are diverse. “ITECH” offers dual vocational training in information technology, electrical and chemical engineering. Apart from vocational training, our school enables our students to prepare for future training, to gain the general higher entrance qualification (Abitur) or the subject-related entrance qualification on a full-time level. From 2021, we will offer a study-integrated training program in cooperation with the “Berufliche Hochschule Hamburg (Bachelor Computer Science)”. About 2,000 students are enrolled in our 3-year-programs of vocational training (software development / IT systems engineering / chemical engineering / electrical engineering). These programs are a combination of school and training embedded in a real-life work environment (companies). Up to 200 students take part in the full-time programs in order to prepare for vocational training or further educational programs. There are about 80 teachers and 10 non-educational employees. In addition to having many students with a migration background, since 2015 there has been a comparatively larger proportion of trainees with a refugee background especially in the area of information technology professions. Our students need, depending on their individual background:

• Intensive personal support
• Language support that also takes into account the job-specific requirements
• Instructional offers that enable close integration with the rapidly changing requirements of professional reality (keyword "digitalization")

Furthermore, we are in the process of building a support system for high-achieving students through scholarships and thereby allow them to take part in our exchange programs. We often work in projects or even offer the chance to take part in (international) hackathons or interdisciplinary design thinking workshops. The aim of these workshops is to promote design thinking, entrepreneurship and information technology and to integrate them into innovative business models. Design Thinking combines creative and critical thinking, making it possible to organize information, ideas and decision making, to improve situations and to gain new knowledge. Based on this model, students are challenged to solve problems according to customer needs and behaviour. These very special learning settings promote work-based learning in all its forms with special attention to apprenticeships, by involving social partners, companies and VET providers as well as stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship. As a school with about 1,400 IT students enrolled we do have a strong IT background. We use the learning management system Moodle as well as the e-portfolio platform Mahara and integrate further digital tools such as BigBlueButton, Trello, MindMeister, Padlet and LinkedIn Learning, but also Socrative, Mentimeter, Kahoot! and the like, in order to collaboratively exchange positions, collect statistics and check what has been learned - also in competition and playfully. We regularly evaluate the possibilities of the platforms and tools and adapt them in the sense of a continuous improvement process. To ensure that all systems relevant to our teaching/learning offerings can be used reliably, flexible, securely and with high performance, we offer a very well-developed WLAN and LAN with self-contained subnetworks for different user groups and provide the digital learning and work platforms in such a way that they can be used from any learning and work location. We use redundancy and protection methods to ensure high availability (24/7) and data protection. In fall/winter 2019, we brought all these measures together in our digitization concept "digITECH" and applied for the delina innovation award for digital education. We achieved second place in the "Education and Training" category. iTech is open for a partnership in following areas:

• Erasmus+ Partnership with Centres of VET Excellence
• Development of Teacher Training for Agile Workshop Formats
• Design of Hackathons for Education for Sustainable Development
• Testbed for the Evaluation of the Approach SkiL
• Development and Recognition of Micro-Credentials
• Level5 Recognition
• International Mobility of Apprentices
• Development of the Vocational University including IVET

For more information, please contact: ed.41sb-hcetinull@sewieM.okieH ed.etkejorp-tevnull@adniB.rannuG