Innovative Technologies for Active Language Class is a three-year ERASMUS+ strategic school partnership. It involves eight secondary schools from Czech Republic, France, Greece, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and Turkey. All the latter cater for pupils of diverse ethnic and cultural origins. Most of these learners come from underprivileged families with low opportunities for learning, travelling and selfeducating. They often lack motivation and ignore the importance of foreign languages in the labour market. Therefore, our partnership will primarily focus on these learners. On the one hand, we first intend to enhance our learners’ motivation and investment in learning foreign languages and allow them to develop their oral communication competences. On the other hand, we want to offer them an opportunity to meet their European neighbours, discover European cultures in native place, put forward their own culture, broaden their cultural horizons, and thus, build their European citizenship. To emplement our partnership and hit our objectives we have shared tasks amongst us according to each other’s experience and expertise. We agreed to compare our teaching methods, exchange our practices and combine our know-how. Besides, a five-day ICT workshop will be organized for teachers as early as October 2014. Three teachers from each partner organization. They will learn how to use a variety of ICT tools (eg Evernote, Blendspace) and two digital skills training approaches: the creation of digital stories (Storybird, Storyjumper). They will also learn how to use pictures, videos, flash animation, smart phones and tablets, implement a flipped classroom model and place and share all created materials on the project website. Moreover, four transnational project meetings will be organized. These meetings will offer teachers the possibility to observe classes abroad and be able to compare, and grant them the opportunity to give innovative classes themselves to local learners and get their feedbacks. Finally, they will practice foreign languages and get familiar with European cultural diversity. As regards to our learners, we will first make preliminary assesments and rate pupils’ comfort/ability level on a number of skills. Based on the results we will purposefully create small groups that blend abilities and backgrounds, and incorporate team-building activities carefully adapted to their abilities and possibilities. Then, we will have them complete tasks that involve using and developing ICT and oral communication skills that they will likely use in their future professional life. Besides, we will incorporate learning activities around the use of new technologies to facilitate the group work processes. Moreover, we will choose assignment topics or tasks that are related to the real world, and can be connected to our learners’ lives. Finally, they will participate in three ten-day language camps which will be organized in three different partner countries. These meetings will put them in authentic communication situations amongst other European learners of their age, offer them extraordinary opportunities to develop team spirit and gain sense of responsibility, enlarge their culrural horizons, make new friends and foster tolerance. To ensure the efficiency of our strategy, various evaluation tools will be developed and used. Communication between partners via Skype and E-twinning space will be frequent to ensure the best follow up of the partnership activities. To disseminate our results we will create a Facebook page, a Yahoo group, publish articles in the local and regional press. All produced lessons and materials will be shared freely on the project website so that learners and language teachers in Europe and all over the world can use them and leave us their feedbacks. To sustain our partnership and its results we have agreed to continue our cooperation beyond the three years of the project via the E-twinning portal. As a result, this partnership will not only help our learners (about four hundred) to develop spoken skills in foreign languages and build their European citizenship, but will raise their future social inclusion opporunities as well. Teachers involved (around fifty) will be given the opportunity to develop their language skills and learn how to incorporate innovative digital and ICT teaching tools in their practices and make their classes more engaging and more challenging for their pupils.
Innovative Technologies for Active Language Class is a three-year ERASMUS+ strategic school partnership. It involved eight secondary schools from Czech Republic, France, Greece, Lithuania, FYR of Macedonia, Romania, Spain and Turkey. These schools were located in urban underprivileged areas where education and the fighting of failure was first priority. An important number of learners in these schools came from families with low opportunities for learning, self-educating or traveling. They often lacked motivation, were ICT illiterate and ignored the importance of foreign languages in the labor market. Therefore, our partnership primarily focused on these learners. On the one hand, we first intended to enhance these learners’ motivation and to allow them to develop their spoken English communication competencies. On the other hand, we wanted to offer them an opportunity to meet their European neighbors, to discover European cultures in native place, to put forward their own culture, and thus, build their European citizenship. To implement our partnership and hit our objectives, first we organized a five-day ICT workshop for teachers. They learnt how to use a variety of ICT tools. Then, we compared our teaching methods and exchanged our know-how. Besides, we organized four transnational project meetings which offered the teachers who attended them the opportunity to observe classes in the other partner schools and to compare. They had the chance to give innovative classes themselves to local learners and get their feedbacks. As regards to our learners, we first made preliminary assessments and rated their comfort/ability level on a number of skills. Based on the results we purposefully created small groups that blended abilities and backgrounds. Then, we incorporated team-building activities carefully adapted to their abilities and possibilities. Moreover, we incorporated learning activities based on the use of new technologies to facilitate the group work processes, and had them participate in video conferences and complete tasks using oral communication skills as well. Finally, learners participated in three ten-day language and cultural camps which were organized in different partner countries. These meetings put them in authentic communication situations amongst other European learners of their age. As a result, the partnership helped learners involved to develop oral communication skills in English and to acquire new competencies in ICT. It also helped them to broaden their cultural horizons, to foster tolerance and to build their European citizenship. Teachers involved were given the opportunity to develop their language skills and to learn how to incorporate innovative digital teaching tools in their practice to make their classes more engaging and more challenging for their students.