The Erasmus+ Project „ Learning about our countries – we are united in Europe“ unites pupils and teachers of schools in 5 countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Turkey. The Project programme focuses on internationalism of education and the high needs of usage of digital learning and is based on a real situation in partner schools considering the number of students with learning disabilities ( Bulgaria - 20 pupils, Greece - 25pupils, Lithuania - 6 pupils, Turkey - 32 pupils), and students coming from families with low standard of living, unemployed and depending on social welfare system (Bulgaria - 100, Greece Lithuania - 36, Greece - 50) and with limited social skills, pupils facing geographical options when living in rural areas and being transported to school every day ( Bulgaria - 70 , Lithuania - 46). As a result of the conditions mentioned, most of these pupils obtain fewer opportunities for learning and self educating than their peers. There are pupils with zero opportunities to travel, and their geographical knowledge and world perception are insufficient. Some student families do not have Internet access. A big number of students have never been abroad and have never had a chance to communicate with foreigners in English. Because of the living conditions in such environment, low motivation to learn and seek for a better future are obvious. These are the main reasons such students usually do not benefit form general/basic education and do not seek for the higher education in gymnasiums, and colleges or universities. The conditions mentioned are the main reasons why we have decided to cooperate in the Project on learning about Europe and sharing our knowledge with objectives to: - create more attractive educational conditions based non- traditional ways/methods of teaching/ learning about the EU and the countries of the project; - create possibilities of self - education for students with low motivation when involving them in task preparation and fulfillment process; - improve the communicative competences and social skills of pupils while their participating in various activities with peers of the 5 different countries; - create non-traditional learning possibilities (to learn with peers of the 5 countries) opportunities for pupils; - raise pupils‘s motivation in learning English and some basic vocabulary of Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, and Turkish; - open traveling possibilities for pupils with lower opportunities when participating in transnational meetings; - improve pupils‘ active participation in a society life when presenting the project to their school communities and communities of other participants; - increase pupils‘ digital competences when constantly communicating by using IT during the project implementation; - improve the knowledge about Europe and learn about the 5 countries' geography, history, and culture; - share the pedagogical competences among teachers of the 5 countries regarding non-traditional ways of education; - encourage international communication among pupils and teachers of the 5 countries during the project lifetime and after the completion of the project. The project programme consists of the 5 parts/ topics: 1.Our Local History, 2. Natural beauty of our countries, 3. Our folklore and customs 4. Our traditional cuisines, 5. Sports and games. Each topic will be led by one partner country responsible for the activities and outcomes of the topic. Developing learning/teaching process for each topic would take about 4 months time. At the beginning of their time, the country responsible for the topic will present the non- traditional learning/ teaching tasks and activities prepared for all the project members and will virtually ( ICT, videoconferencing, eTwinning) monitor the process while all the partners are involved in completion the tasks provided. At the end of the task completion, the leading topic country will organize an international mobility meeting where learning/teaching activities will be performed and the intellectual outcome will be created and presented (if created earlier) to the all the participants of the project. The five day learning /teaching activities will be organized in each partner country - Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and Turkey. The project activities will bring five intellectual outcomes that will be able to use as pedagogical means in school education curriculum. The project is innovative in methods chosen : non-traditional learning-teaching methods leading to new teaching and assessment approaches and sharing our knowledge while communicating with peers in different European countries.
The Erasmus+ Project „ Learning about our countries – we are united in Europe“ with pupils and teachers of schools in 5 countries- "Nikolay Katranov" secondary school in Svishtov, Bulgaria; 7th gymnasium of Rhodes, Greece; Kulupenai M.Valancius Basic School, Lithuania; Pobiedziska Kazimierza Odnowiciela Basic school, Poland; and Ahmet Cuhadaroglu middle school in Istanbul, Turkey - opened new opportunities for the schools' communities to travel, to improve their geographical knowledge and the world perception which were insufficient before the beginning of the project. The students of the schools were given new and unconventional possibilities to learn about European Union and the five countries of the project. The project program was created with the purpose to broaden students' views about the contemporary world, to present new unconventional methods and learning and communicating, to improve the competences necessary to be successful in nowadays world. The project fulfilled these objectives: - created more attractive educational conditions based non- traditional ways/methods of teaching/ learning about the EU and the countries of the project; - created possibilities of self - education for students with low motivation when involving them in task preparation and fulfillment process; - improved the communicative competences and social skills of pupils while their participating in various activities with peers of the 5 different countries; - created non-traditional learning possibilities (to learn with peers of the 5 countries) opportunities for pupils; - raised pupils‘s motivation in learning English and some basic vocabulary of Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Polish, and Turkish; - opened traveling possibilities for pupils with lower opportunities when participating in transnational students- teachers meetings; - improved pupils‘ active participation in a society life when presenting the project to their school communities and communities of other participants; - increased pupils‘ digital competences when constantly communicating by using IT during the project implementation and collecting and selecting the materials to be used for learning- teaching activities ; - improved the knowledge about Europe and about the 5 countries' geography, history, and culture; - the teachers of the 5 countries shared their pedagogical competences regarding non-traditional ways of education; - encouraged international communication among pupils and teachers of the 5 countries during the project lifetime and after the completion of the project. These objectives affected directly the communities of the 5 schools -participants of the project. The students aged 11-18 were the participants in different planned activities of the project. The project program consisted of the 5 parts/ topics chosen by each partner country to develop and prepare learning - teaching activities for all the participants : 1.Our Local History (Greece), 2. Natural beauty of our countries (Poland), 3. Our folklore and customs (Lithuania) 4. Our traditional cuisines (Turkey), 5. Sports and games (Bulgaria). Each topic was led by the country responsible for the activities and outcomes of the topic. Developing learning/teaching process for each topic would took about 4 months time. At the beginning of their time, the country responsible for the topic presented the non- traditional learning/ teaching tasks and activities prepared for all the project members and presented them on the main project dissemination platform, eTwinning, for all the partners to study. At the end of the task completion, the leading topic country organized an international mobility meeting where learning/teaching activities were performed and the intellectual output was created and presented (if created earlier) to the all the participants of the project. The five day learning /teaching activities were organized in 4 partner countries - Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, and Lithuania. The program of the Turkish school was covered be the 7th gymnasium of Rhodes because of political instability and the state of emergency status in Turkey at the time of the project implementation. Five CD/DVDs ( intellectual outputs) were created during the project time to use them as pedagogical means in school education curriculum. The project was innovative in methods chosen : non-traditional learning-teaching methods leading to new teaching and assessment approach during the project program implementation. The results of the project have long lasting impact on the participants and the whole communities of the five project partner countries: - the relationship and friendship of the partner schools the did not end after the completion of the project; - participating in Erasmus + project brought a new comprehension of European values and experience for the future projects.