With the establishment of the liberal education paradigm, more theoretical and practical considerations to develop and implement the innovative practice facilitating personalization by learners through proactive interaction, self-expression, and creativity in a learning community, have been appearing in the education of the 21^st century. The Law on Education in Lithuania provides for the aims, which also reflect global trends in education. It proposes: “to assist a person in internalizing the information culture characteristic of the knowledge society..., skills to shape life independently; identify a person’s creative abilities and upon this basis to help him acquire qualification and competence conforming to contemporary culture and technology” (LRS, 2011). This document creates prerequisites for formation of learners’ 21st century skills aimed at overcoming the challenges of the contemporary information society, thus empowering personalized learning.

Aimed at helping the prospective teachers at Lithuanian primary schools to promote personalization in the classroom, the two projects deal with promotion of the use of educational technologies, which are likely to have an impact on improvement of learners’ skills to work and learn in the creative society.

The first project “Computing Science in Primary Education” has been recently initiated by the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science together with the Education Development Centre at the national level. The plan is to teach information science in Lithuania’s all elementary schools in 2020, also aiming to integrate it with other subjects, such as Math, Lithuanian Language, Natural Science, Art, Music, and Foreign Languages. 

Prospective teachers learn to integrate the ICT in Primary Education during their higher education studies, including the ones delivered at the Faculty of Pedagogy in Vilnius University of Applied Sciences. During their studies, the prospective primary teachers learn how to apply ICT in education according to the following education fields of computing science, which are relevant to the aforementioned project: 

-Information;

-Digital content;

-Algorithms and programming;

-Digital engineering and technologies;

-Virtual communication;

-Safety, law. 

This kind of the content of the teacher vocational training integrates innovative educational technologies, as the ICT-related subjects are studied along with development of actual ICT skills and supported by the holistic methodology. Educators for prospective teachers explore the educational methods, which would enable the prospective primary teachers to be the learning designers for today’s learners who are the digital natives and are minded to play while learning, to perceive information through the media, and repeat, in reality, what they have experienced in a virtual space.

Another project is a pan-European iTEC project (EUN, iTEC: Designing the Future Classroom, 2014). The Learning Design Toolkit developed under the project made a great impact on further development of the Future Classroom Lab (EUN, Future Classroom Toolkit, 2019). iTEC’s general aim was ‘to bring about systemic change, not through radical technological advances, but through progressive adoption of innovative Learning Activities that effectively use and exploit both existing and emerging technologies in order to better equip the children of Europe for the challenges of work and society through the 21st century’ (EUN, 2014). Pilots of the Innovative ICT-based learning practice carried out during the iTEC project in Lithuania and multiple case studies conducted in parallel for the development of personalization affordance criteria have been described in the publication (Ignatova, Dagienė, & Kubilinskienė, 2015). Our further practical development that is based on the abovementioned research and its further process is the unified learning cycle of the generic learning activities improving teachers’ skills in development and implementation of innovative ICT-based learning scenarios, thereby encouraging primary school learners for proactive and creative learning.

The aim of the paper is to introduce primary teachers to simple practical insights on how to learn to design learning. The paper presents the experience of the Future Classroom Lab (FCL) model development and its implementation in Lithuania. Teachers are often focused on the content and knowledge construction, and this paper proposes to also focus on the process. How is the FCL model understood in this paper? The central unit of the learning process is a Learning Scenario – a short description of the idea of how to solve a real-life issue or create an object relevant for learners’ experience, or make an inquiry into a new subject-matter. Learning Stories are the model narratives showing how a collection of Learning Activities would feel like when brought into the classroom. In simple words, it is similar to a learning plan / one problem-oriented educational project that takes several lessons. Multiple case study conducted in Lithuanian primary classes have revealed that ICT-based learning activities proposed and described by the iTEC project (EUN, 2014) are acceptable for application as generic activities for the development and implementation of the Future Classroom scenarios. The research has revealed that the learners perceive the proposed innovative ICT-based learning activities as highly motivating and enabling to create learning resources and learning environment with technologies (Ignatova, Dagienė, & Kubilinskienė, 2015). The unified learning cycle has been developed and proposed for the university students (prospective primary teachers) implementing educational ICT-based projects with the primary class students. It was applied for the development and implementation of all Learning Scenarios approved by the learners and trending of the activities as follows: - Exploration of the environment outside the school; - Project design, - Storytelling or game creation; - Design of digital tools or resources; - Design and redesign of the learning environment at schools and beyond. The learning design toolkit “Educata” (EUN, 2019) was applied to the development of the unified learning cycle that was recommended for the abovementioned kind of scenarios and contained activities briefly presented further.

The same algorithm of ICT-based learning activities worked well in developing educational projects by the primary school teachers: 1. Dream – introducing, understanding and questioning a design brief. Classroom time: 1 lesson; 2. Explore (Benchmark/Observation) – collecting information in relation to the design brief (1-2 lessons); 3. Map – creating a mindmap to understand relations within the collected information (1 lesson) Reflect – reflections and feedback during or after the activities; 4. Make (Create) – creating a design (2-3 lessons) 5. Ask – performing workshops with people who may represent future users of the design (2-3 lesson) 6. Show – publishing and presenting story to the audience (2 lessons) Collaborate – forming ad-hoc collaborations with learners at other classes (performing learning activities mentioned above) Teachers’ story is an example of successful storytelling while integrating coding of the nature science curricula. It is called “Camaraderie” and encourages the learners to learn coding with robots as well as gaining social skills (communication, cooperation, respect, understanding, etc). The project was developed with the 4th graders by teacher Brigita Stankevičienė. When creating the educational project, the learners were exploring for the information, developing the tasks, communicating with each other, learning about the programming aspects of the robots, gave instructions to other children. Technologies used for the activities: Teamup, Popplet, Magisto, Edu.glogster, Jimdo, Google. The teacher reflected that the learners enjoyed themselves in creating, planning, discovering and delivering to other pupils. The success factor mentioned by the teacher is the purpose of this project – to unite and create a favourable environment for the learners, promote communication and cooperation among them. Teacher’s reflection: “A great activity. The pupils really enjoy themselves in creating, discovering, and creating. It is important to provide the pupils with this opportunity.”

EUN. (2014). iTEC: designing the future classroom. Retrieved from Evaluation and results: http://fcl.eun.org/documents/10180/18061/iTEC+evaluation+report+2014_LT.pdf/71ecb2e5-f3ad-4715-a89e-823a274d50c0 EUN. (2019, January). Future Classroom Toolkit. Retrieved from Future Classroom Lab: http://fcl.eun.org/toolkit Ignatova, N., Dagienė, V., & Kubilinskienė, S. (2015). ICT-based Learning Personalization Affordance in the Context of Implementation of Constructionist Learning Activities. Informatics in education, 14 (No. 1), pp. 53–67. Ignatova, N. (2017). ICT-based Learning Personalisation Affordance in the Primary and Basic School (Doctoral dissertation, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences). Vilnius: Lietuvos edukologijos universiteto leidykla. Lietuvos Respublikos švietimo įstatymas. (2011). Online access: http://www.kpskc.lt/planai/Lietuvos-Respublikos-svietimo-istatymas_svietstrat.pdf. McRae, P. (2010). The politics of personalization in the 21st century. ATA Magazine, 91, 1. Online access: http://personalizedlearningforum.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+politics+of+personalized+learning.pdf .