The learning process is best realized when students are confident and at ease. The quick attachment to new technology has changed patterns of young people´s communication and has affected face to face interactions. The virtual media challenges us, teachers, to develop our students’ skills in ethic communication. Throughout our project we intend to train our students’ abilities to socialize in both the virtual world and in reality. The aim is to educate students in inclusion and tolerance through participation in team activities shared with our European partners. Developing social skills will promote understanding of other people and in turn democratic acting. When students become aware of their abilities they experience the environment in school as a zone that encourages them as individuals. They can use all their capacity for learning. Well-being is fundamental for reaching good results and preventing drop outs. The participants are six schools in Turkey, Romania, UK, Poland, Spain and Sweden with pupils aged 12-18 years and their teachers. The activities in the project aim to develop social abilities and consist of exercises in communication, cooperation and teambuilding. Role play, case studies, discussions, acting and argumentation are some of the methods that will be used. The expected outcome is that the students become better achievers in all subjects. They will gain self-confidence and motivation for further studies and that is the best way to prevent dropouts and promote school attainment. We believe that the carrying through of the project will inspire not only the participants but also schools, authorities, organizations and other actors in society on both local, regional and national level.
Our project “Developing abilities to socialize. Teaching and learning new perspectives by sharing” aimed to create lifelong learning situations where students would build confidence and communication skills and furthermore, would be eager to challenge themselves and teachers would develop their teaching through collegial sharing based on up-to-date research and ICT. The participants were six schools in Turkey, Romania, UK, Poland, Spain and Sweden with pupils aged 12-18 years and their teachers. The quick attachment to new technology has changed patterns of young people´s communication and has affected face to face interactions and our way of teaching. The virtual media challenges us, teachers, to develop our students’ skills in ethic communication and to create interactive, authentic learning situations for our students. Throughout our project we intended to train our students’ abilities to socialize in both the virtual world and in reality and in addition increase their communicative strategies. Our approach was CLT, Communicative language learning, to encourage students to use English during all activities and have authentic, interactive tasks to work with. The aim was to educate students in inclusion and tolerance promoting intercultural awareness; to develop their social skills and abilities, promoting linguistic skills through participation in team activities shared with our European partners. All together this promoted a greater understanding of each other and in turn gave more democratic acting in real life and in the virtual world when using different ICT. The activities in the project aimed to, as mentioned before, develop social abilities and consisted of exercises in communication, cooperation and teambuilding. Role play, case studies, discussions, acting and argumentation were some of the methods that were used. We created a 9-steps model of activities based on the curriculums of each country with a common base in CEFR (The Common European Framework of Reference): We started with a get-to-know-each other activity. A treasure hunt, geocaching using GPS-Ipad/mobil to build teamwork and a feeling of belonging to a group; the Erasmusfamily”. (PE, geography, English, ICT) “I´m good enough” the students worked with their self-esteem building self-confidence through creating self-portraits and hand sculptures (art, English) ”Sing a song” the students made a music video getting the same instructions but having different outcomes. Aim to strengthen cooperation, tolerance. (Mother tongue,music, English,ICT, other languages) "Let´s solve Math together – a challenge where students worked with think,pair,share when solving mathematical problems from easy level to difficult level. (math, English, mother tongue, ICT) “Read a film” Using reciprocal teaching when watching a film we shared the same study guide and had group discussions on Skype about similarities, differences, religion, refugees etc. (English, ICT/Skype, mother tongue) "Role model": the students were inspired to write about an important person in their life. To inspire to and reinforce good behaviour regardless of background. Individual and shared work, writing (History, English, Social sciences, ICT) " I like my home town” The students took photographs of their towns, the bus stop exhibitions –discussions on similarities and differences. Aim to create security in identity. “What to do if….” The students were trained in taking a stand for and against through debates, cases and argumentation about values, consequences, conflict, moral courage, anti-discrimination. (English, mother tongue, Social sciences, Ethics) Forumplay: play another role, acting and improvising, discussion on how the stories (roleplay) continue. Case studies Subject: mother tongue, English - Social Sciences, Ethics The expected outcome was that the students would become better achievers in all subjects. They would gain self-confidence and motivation for further studies and that is, as we believe the best way to prevent dropouts and promote school attainment. Our European exchange project have inspired not only the participants but also schools, authorities, organizations and other actors in society on both local, regional and national level. Examples of this lifelong learning and dissemination are the widely spread ICT language tools KAHOOT and Quizlet (which was not known among the teachers until our workshop in Sweden), Skype, geo-caching, pedagogical methods such as reciprocal teaching when watching a film(reading strategies), think pair share- method/peer learning, technologies when making film (music video and claymation).