The project develops teaching materials in mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences for pre-and primary school children in a way that creates a universal basis of the physical and interactive board material to be used by teacher in native language and English. That way, the core material outline will be applicable to any EU country, where teachers are able to navigate the material in English, while sub-sections of the material reflect, where necessary, adaptation to national requirements if those differ from participating project country to country. The project team intends to work on development of a European/universal material to the maximum degree possible, and it may serve as a later interactive mobile device material development platform/method at a later stage. Project partners have worked together earlier and have confirmed that face to face meetings where teachers can together work on specific problems encountered in material development are most effective, therefore project meetings serve both the purpose of monitoring (including financial), coordination and planning, but also as working meetings on the development of the 3 subject area teaching materials. In extension with the project meetings, 3 teacher capacity building seminars are organized on creativity in Education, skills on open platforms for own material development for interactive boards most used in schools across Europe, and inspiration on alternative education methods that also allow for English language integration in the teaching process. Regular project meetings, pre and post training assessments, mid-term review by partners and final assessment of the project work secures the effectiveness and efficiency of the project.
Objectives: project objectives were to implement 3 seminars for teachers on ICT and creativity in learning process in preschool and primary school, as well as jointly work on developing and adjusting various materials for use on interactive Whiteboards in 3 areas of learning: mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences. During this process the skills of teachers were improved in terms of use of technology in learning process and using technology in developing the learning materials. Partners from Italy, Romania, Turkey and Latvia had worked together previously on a wider bilingual education programme. Continuing the earlier work they strengthened cooperation and focused on new challenges. Partnership also allowed to follow the progress of children who were part of pre-school programmes and how they were doing in the first years of the school. That way it was possible to observe interrelation and mutual impact of the education levels. Therefore the main reach of the project was children 4-8 years of age, but other age groups in pre-school were involved in the activities Main activities: In total 5 teacher capacity building seminars were organized. 3 were initially planned - on creativity in education, skills on using and developing material for interactive boards mostly used in schools across Europe, and inspiration on alternative education methods that also allow English language integration in the teaching process and its relation to use of new technologies.2 additional seminars were organized - one on special needs and individual learning tools, which was agreed on by partners due to awareness of increased learning difficulties among children. final workshop was organized by coordinator for Turkish partners who because of political situation in the country were not allowed to travel for one of the seminars. The other block of activities focused on the materials and therefore also skills of teachers. During the project we developed and adjusted various interactive board applicable learning materials in mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences for pre-school and primary school children in national language and English. The initial layout and potential content was developed during the seminars and management meetings, but further content developed nationally. Samples of the materials are available on the resource page. It was agreed early on to maintain the bilingual education approach as much as possible, because of the observed positive effect on children who had participated in the previous project and their advantages starting school. Considering the different interactive board programmes used nationally, the initial idea of a universal structure available for all in one system was discarded, and the structures were discussed in the meetings and sketches in interactive group works on paper and with support of various tools, while the technical versions to be used on the boards were developed by each partner and partners based on the specific programme used by the school. Romania uses national e-learning manuals (https://manuale.edu.ro/manuale) and teachers have been integrating English, other partners have been exploring StarBoard, Active Inspire programmes, and used Adobe Flash Player to develop own materials. This project therefore was an excellent opportunity to support teachers for primary education or those who teach other subjects in the primary school on how to use the technology, how to develop own materials with children. The interactive whiteboard becomes the main learning tool and very attractive to students! The developed materials were matched to the national programs in Romanian, Italian, Latvian and Turkish, at the same time with the help of the native speaking teacher and through project participation part of the material was developed also in English, to continue the previous protect bilingual learning practice. Children in all partner countries worked on these activities happily and were motivated and enthusiastic being the main actors using the whiteboard, and the computer based activities was great for them. The project meetings served the purpose of monitoring (including financial), coordination and planning, and also as working meetings on the development of teaching materials in 3 subject areas.