Erasmus Policy Statement (Overall Strategy)

As suggested in the Erasmus application, we publish our overall Strategy as described in our proposal of May 2013.

1st Part: international strategy

Our High School wants to offer our students the possibility to have an international experience both as a host institution coordinating work placements in local companies and as a sending institution.
Both are important: receiving international students would be a way to expose all our ICT students and staff to foreign people. Offering a room in a student's or teacher's place can be a win-win option for both of them. We can say the same for the mentorship program. Our mobility coordinator has traineeship and working experience in most European countries and can help all of them to organise the exchanges.

- Partners: We choose partners with ICT experience and if possible countries where students can improve their English. Being able to work in this language is a must for our students. English should be the country's first or second language (as in Holland for example).

- Geographical area: It is not important. All areas following the previous requirements can be interesting. We are happy to receive students from any country as well. No restrictions.

- Our main target is students and their mobilities. When possible we can also participate in staff programs. Our main objective is giving our students the possibility to be prepared to work abroad when graduated. Being able to participate in international projects from our island is also interesting to help our local economy. As they study ICT and the main language in the web is English, e-commerce allow us to sell products and services in a global world. Physical products have geographical barriers from our island but they don't exist in the Internet.

At the moment our institution, offering only a short cycle, does not participates in the development of double/multiple/joint degrees.

2nd Part: strategy for the organisation and implementation of international cooperation projects in teaching and training in relation to projects implemented under the
Programme.

Not applicable at the moment


3rd Part: expected impact of your participation in the Programme on the modernisation of your
institution (for each of the 5 priorities of the Modernisation Agenda) in terms of the policy objectives you intend to achieve. 


We will divide the answer into 5 parts according to the 5 priorities of the Modernisation Agenda:
1) Our institution is located in the island of Menorca. Most of our young students have never been abroad. Receiving Erasmus students and also sending our young people abroad is a good way to open their minds and encourage them to continue travelling, learning and studying. At the moment it is easy for students to pass from the vocational studies we provide to the university degrees in ICT. And a significant percentage of our students go to Universities in the mainland of Spain, mostly Barcelona, Palma and Madrid. We can also expect that some of these students return to our island and help
improving their future employers work or even become entrepreneurs.

2) Only having a short cycle and our students being able to pass easily to the universities, one of our goals is to teach our students how to learn and how to keep their knowledge updated in an always changing ICT field as it is the web applications. Like this the idea of going to the universities is a wish for most students. There is a way to recognize at the University some of the subjects done during the vocational studies. This encourages the students to continue their studies.

3) Being a small High School offering a short Cycle in ICT we cannot help much in the cross-border co-operation, at least not as much as a University. Most of the decisions about these fields, hiring staff for example, are taken at the local government in Palma. The only think is to make our students aware of the international co-operation opportunities. Being an important tourist destination also helps to expose our staff and students to international relations. Having read the document we are happy to see that the proportion of students expending a traineeship abroad will raise to 20 %. This possibility will improve the quality of our studies.

4) At our High School we do not do any research at all but we can help our students to get into business. At their final module they do a project focussed in opening a company with the knowledge they get studying ICT. Besides, a lot of teachers have experience as entrepreneurs and try to transmit their knowledge to the students. At the moment, in our island some embryonic projects are being prepared related to increase the ICT industry in our island. As a ICT department we try to be involved in some of them. Maybe some spin-offs will appear in the future. As it is said in the document, “exploit the transformational benefits of ICT and other new technologies”, we try to produce knowledge workers.

5) As a small High School, we depend on the local government in Palma for funding, human resources management, etc. We cannot decide much about where to invest. The only think we could do is to cooperate more with private companies to get support. We already cooperate with institutions that receive our students to do traineeships and they come to our school to explain their work.

Information to foreign students willing to have an Erasmus ICT traineeship with us

 

In our High School we coordinate Erasmus and Leonardo traineeships in Menorca. Comming to Menorca can be interesting to foreign students as:

• We have agreement to interesting local companies.
• Students get full support from our mobility coordination
• We assign a mentor fellow local student to help him/her integration in local life.
• We search for a room with local students to practice Spanish/Catalan languages. Price to be agreed by them.
• We assign a tutor at the company. In you application you have to specify which languages you are fluent with, to assign the proper tutor.
• They can practice Spanish and/or Catalan. Linguistic support by us.
• Participating in High School life to get involved in our social activities.
• You can discover the beautiful Island of Menorca. More info and pictures: Menorcaapata 

Local companies that receive our students:

• Enginy web http://www.enginyweb.com   EnginyWeb is specialized in software development focuses to companies that want to get the most from the Internet oportunities.

• Mabrian https://mabrian.com  Their exclusive system uses artificial intelligence to analyze people's conversations happening in social media, detect those interested in products or services related with your company, and contact the best candidates to generate new real customers
• Sm2 http://www.sm2baleares.es/ SM2 is a company with its headquarters in Palma de Mallorca developing end-to-end enterprise solutions. They have Systems, development and infrastructures. In Menorca they are in charge of the main Hospital ICT (Mateu Orfila Hospital
• App Informatica web site   
  App informàtica is a known ICT franchise in Spain. They sells and repairs computers, laptops and related material.  
• 3webd www.3webd.com  3webd is a company located in Mahón that dessigns webs, develop programs, assess its customers and gives SEO and hosting services

The best time for us to receive students is from January until April. Other months can also be agreed with us.
For more information, you can contact with Kico Borràs: kborras@iesjoanramis.org 
To participate in the project we need to receive Letter of motivation and Curriculum Vitae of foreign students. We will send them to the local cooperating companies. More information about our institution: www.iesjoanramis.org

To the local companies companies: if you want to receive students please contact with with Kico Borràs: kborras@iesjoanramis.org 

Ramis student in Denmark

Our ex-student Loren Orfila is developping a traineeship in Copenhaguen since March 2013. This is a Leonardo project by CAEB in Palma and with our institution cooperation.

He is working at a company called Parlimer in a building belonging to one of the Copenhagen universities (CBS). There they have a companies incubator and about 30 companies share the space trying to develop projects that allow them to go into the market.

Loren is working developing websites using the JavaScript, Html and CSS languages with the goal to do video conferences.

Explaining our ECTs system for our Erasmus students

For ICT students of our short cycle of Web Application Development

• When you travel abroad to do an Erasmus traineeship it belongs to the "on company training" module (FCTs - Formació en Centres de Treball)
• This module has 22 ECTs and you are suposed to dedicate 400 hours. The whole studies have 60 ECTs. Every subject has each equivalent in ECTs. See table below.
• You can do two or three months abroad. Three months is recommended.
• If you stay abroad 3 months, you complete the whole module and get the 22 ECTs.
• If you travel 2 months then you get the proportional part of ECTs and you have to complete the 400 hours in local companies. To get the ECTs you need to succesfully pass both trainings: local and abroad.

ECTs table for Web Application Development

Module	hours	ECTs (European Credit Transfer System)
1st course: 3 terms--	---	---
Informatic Systems	170	10
Data Bases	170 + 90 in English	12
Programming	230	14
Markup languages and information management systems	120	7
Development Environments	90	6
Job training and work orientation	90	5
2nd course: 2 terms--	---	---
Web development in client environment	125	9
Web development in server environment	160 + 40 (all in English)	12
Web applications deployment	90	5
Web interfaces design	125	9
Project: web applications development	40	5
Business and enterpreneurship	60	4
FCTs (on job training)	400	22
Totals	2000	120