The project Challenge as a Modern Pedagogical Tool was started by a team of teachers from five European schools that are enthusiastic about modernizing current ways of teaching and learning. Participating schools have successfully taken part in various innovative projects and each partner brings expertise in certain areas of implementing modern approaches and using modern technologies. The team of European teachers will work together to learn, develop and experience modern and attractive ways of teaching such as using challenges, ICT, project work, activities based on creativity, collaboration, problem solving etc., gamification, new forms of evaluation including experience points or digital badges. The main objective is to share experience and ideas to influence schools and stakeholders throughout Europe in order to increase quality of education in Europe. New approaches will be formed during a project meeting, transnational learning activities and other activities at participating schools and on-line sessions. At the beginning of the project, participating teachers will develop a handbook showing certain ICT tools and modern ways of teaching, objectives and evaluation. New experience and ideas will be added during the project. The handbook will be used at participating schools in order to implement modern approaches that develop 21st century skills and competences thanks to working on challenging tasks requiring creativity, collaboration, using ICT, critical thinking, problem solving, presenting or evaluating. At the end of the project, a new version of the handbook will be published on-line to rapidly increase the impact in a large scale. The project will have a crucial impact in several areas. First of all, participating teachers will increase their competences, motivation and satisfaction in their daily work. Pupils actively involved will develop 21st century skills and competences, broaden their horizons thanks to collaborating with peers from different European countries, see the importance of foreign languages and will learn to think in European context. Positive learning experience will improve their attitude to different forms of learning. Teachers not actively involved will see the importance of modern approaches and will be motivated to integrate new ways of teaching and go on forming their own techniques, which is a key to developing their pupils' 21st century skills and competences. In addition, participating schools will increase quality and quantity of collaboration inside and outside their schools and their work will be recognized by a wider audience. Local communities will experience European dimension thanks to being involved in certain project activities and general public will discover Europe and modern ways of teaching thanks to a wide range of dissemination activities. The project will show the power of collaboration among European people, promote European Union values as well as European projects. As the main result, higher level of teachers' competences will increase the quality of education at European schools. Besides the handbook for teachers, other important outcomes will be created in the framework of the project. Interactive European Pathways and an interactive book Let's Discover will show Europe from teenagers' points of view in an interactive way thanks to using Augmented Reality app Aurasma, QR codes and on-line tools. Moreover, there will be videos, interactive posters, presentations, blogs, photos, surveys, T-shirt designs, logos etc. as well as a wide range of dissemination activities outcomes available on-line. Created outcomes will be used by teachers and pupils at schools and will be available on-line in the upcoming years. Together with the fact participants will keep informing about modern approaches and promoting them, the project will have a long-lasting impact.
Challenge as a Modern Pedagogical Tool aimed to develop students' and teachers' competences and modernize education in a wider scale by integrating challenges and modern approaches into education. Before inventing this project, different challenges had become very popular among people of all ages. Testing challenges in education and seeing their great potential led us to create the project. The project consisted of different challenges both for students and teachers. Participants were able to choose from a variety of challenges as well as challenge others with new challenges. Challenges for students were based on curriculum, however, they were open so that they were both effective as well as motivating for everyone. Students worked on challenges based on creativity, use of modern technologies and problem solving on their own and in school or international teams. Videos in English about achieving challenges were shared on-line. There were various challenges for international teams during learning activities, too. Teachers were challenged to integrate modern approaches and ICT into their education. The project team created an on-line handbook for teachers European Teachers in Action which contains over 150 pages and which is focused on sharing experience, useful tools, apps and websites and international projects. Modern forms of evaluation such as experience forms or badges were tried, too. Schools from the Czech Republic, Turkey, Poland, Croatia and Portugal took part in the project. All the participating schools belong to the ones looking for ways to adapt modern ways of teaching and learning because we believe today's education must be focused on 21st century skills and competences in order to prepare our students for their lives and employability. Therefore we set up a team of European teachers with different ICT skills and experience, background and school equipment who were enthusiastic about modernizing current ways of teaching. Teachers learned, formed, experienced and shared modern approaches and learned how to adapt them on their own in the future. It is very important that five different European schools were involved as it was one of the main preconditions to make our project efficient and available to as many people and inspire and influence a wider audience throughout Europe. Modernizing our teaching has had an important impact on teachers, but, first of all, It was a crucial opportunity for students to develop new competences and discover Europe with European friends. The project addressed these main objectives: - Learn, develop and integrate new ways of teaching such as challenges, using ICT, gamification and new forms of evaluation or game-based learning. - Share experience, enrich each other and develop new ideas in a team of European teachers. - Inspire teachers and other stakeholders throughout Europe. - Develop students' 21st century skills and competences by working on challenging tasks requiring creativity, collaboration with students from different European countries, using ICT, critical thinking, problem solving, peer reviewing, presenting and evaluating outcomes and processes. - Let students discover Europe by collaborating with European peers, staying in hosting families, visiting partner schools, learning about different cultures and traditions, sharing materials (such as videos about participating countries) created by European teenagers. - Let students experience diverse and still similar Europe, discuss European and multicultural topics and think in European context. - Learn about countries we live in thanks to working on tasks aiming to introduce our states. - Give participants an opportunity to make friends from different European countries. - Show the importance of English (and foreign languages in general) thanks to the fact English will be used when working on all the activities, motivate students to learn foreign languages. - Develop language skills by on-line communication, creating outcomes in English and face-to-face meetings in different countries. - Create outcomes that will be available to a wider audience such as a handbook for teachers, project website with different outcomes and information, Interactive European Pathways or interactive book Let's Discover showing Europe from different points of view in an interactive way. - Bring European dimension to participating schools and local communities. - Extend the impact by a wide range of dissemination activities. - Involve students with fewer opportunities for whom it is more complicated to participate in similar activities.