One of the targets of the Europe 2020 strategy is to strengthen the research and development performance of the European Union. Therefore STEM-related subjects gain importance, when talking about the future priorities of education. Our project is addressed to support the Europe 2020 strategy on a smaller scale: by raising awareness towards STEM field amongst secondary school students. We believe that the best way to do that is to make these subjects attractive for some talented and creative young people, who will then influence their peers by sharing their good experiences and ideas, also, their enthusiasm. We believe, they key to understand the next generations is to discover their point of view, to understand their expectations and to give them possibilities to form their own future through their own way. That is why we named our project “KIKS – Kids Inspire Kids for STEM”. In order to reach that strategic goal of ours, we will challenge kids on a national level first, in every country in the consortium. In the first phase of the project, they will have to form teams and execute awareness raising activities in their own environment: amongst their friends, classmates, school, etc. The most successful student-team will be chosen from every county, who will participate in an international online challenge during the lifecycle of the project. We will organise this online challenge in 4 phases. In each phase, students will have to work in mixed multinational teams, and they will have to solve STEM-related tasks, by using cheap and recycled materials and online avalaible, open source platforms and programmes. They also will be asked to show their results to each other, to their classmates and to the wider public by using web2 platforms to disseminate the project. Therefore, it is not only the partners of the consortium, but the students, as well, who will ensure the high visibility of the project. So not only their knowledge about STEM, but also their creativity, entrepreneurial skills, language and social competences will develop. Experts from consortial partners will continously monitor the development of the students during the project, and work together with their teachers. Through this way, our project will not only influence the students, but their teachers as well, who will be able to refresh their teaching methods with the help of KIKS. Since participating institutions operate in different sectors of education, cross-sectoral impact can be achieved by turning the results of the project into research papers, containing recommendations for other sectors, like higher education. The outcomes of the project will be available without any limitation on various platforms: social media (facebook, YouTube), blog, OER platform, and on the webpage of the project.
One of the targets of the Europe 2020 strategy is to strengthen the research and development performance of the European Union. STEAM-related educational subjects provide an opportunity to support and popularise this strategy. STEAM is a vehicle to make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) even more important, relevant and potentially exciting with the addition of the Art component. Our project is addressed to support the Europe 2020 strategy by raising awareness towards STEAM amongst secondary school students. We propose that the best way to do that is to make these subjects attractive for some talented and creative young people, who will then influence their peers by sharing their good experiences and ideas, also, their enthusiasm. Further, we propose that the key to understand the next generation is to discover their point of view, to understand their expectations and to give them possibilities to form their own future through their own way. That is why we named our project “KIKS – Kids Inspire Kids for STEAM”. In order to reach that strategic goal of ours, we challenged kids on a national level first, in every country in the consortium. We used a Hothousing process featuring Intellectual Outputs 01 Hothousing Workshops, 02 Local Challenges and 03 International Collaboration culminating in the Multiplier Events. In the first phase of the project, Hothousing Workshops, they had to form teams and execute awareness raising activities in their own environment: amongst their friends, classmates, school, etc. The student-teams from every county developed their ideas/projects in Local Challenges. They then participated in an International Collaboration during the lifecycle of the project. They were asked to show their results to each other, to their classmates and to the wider public and used Face-to-Face Multiplier Event(s) plus on-line tools in particular Facebook closed user groups, Youtube, KIKS website and a KIKS WIKI to disseminate the project. Therefore, it is not only the partners of the consortium, but the students, as well, who will ensure the high on-going visibility of the project. So not only their knowledge about STEAM, but also their creativity, entrepreneurial skills, language and social competences will develop. Experts from consortia partners continuously monitored the development of the students during the project, and worked together with their teachers. Through this way, our project not only influenced the students, but their teachers as well, who will be able to refresh their teaching methods with the help of KIKS in the future. Extensive information on the project is available in the KIKS National Reports collating the four individual countries. In summary, it will be seen that the KIKS Hothousing Process achieved a remarkable 90%+ completion rate (i.e. Hothousing through to Local Challenge and International Collaboration) in each country (There were 30 schools delivering 28 projects across the four countries). This compares with perhaps 50% maximum completion rates for comparable activities engaging schools to deliver projects (experience of STE in UK). As emphasized in the proposal, we worked with groups of heterogeneous schools (state and semi-public schools), with different backgrounds and also with different experience on STEAM activities. Some of them never worked on STEAM, while others reported to be familiar with this teaching/learning practice. Finally, it should be noted that there were many participants, for example the collection of Spanish teams accounts with more than 25 teams— from nine different schools— working in the project. Each team is composed by five/six students, and is led by, at least, one teacher from the STEAM areas. In terms of international collaboration, the project achieved 20+ On-line international Collaboration projects extending beyond the four countries. In the KIKS WIKI for example there were 400 unique visitors per month and 20% of visitors from US. The Intellectual outcomes of the project can be seen and will be available without any limitation on various platforms including the above but also national sites described in the collated report of the National Reports (LINK) from each of the four countries plus on-line sites in particular the KIKS site developed by the Spanish team https://www.kiks.unican.es, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/KidsInSTEM/, WIKI https://kiks-microbit.wikispaces.com/ and most recently our new MOODLE https://istemplus.moodlecloud.com.