For many young people a museum associates with a boring place. At present interactive museums enable us to carry out experiments, visit virtual exhibitions, create online collections, modify and make famous masterpieces by using web tools. The concept for this project is to collaborate and help our students explore museums in a new way with the use of web tools. During two years students will work on a website of virtual museum and present their everyday life, culture and traditions of their country by means of art. The website will consist of doors through which a visitor will discover different areas (region, music, pieces of art, dance). The outcomes will be: a logo, presentation of students, blog, website, jigsaws, exhibitions, films. Most of the results will be based on the use of ICT (Prezi, Padlet Audivity, Glogster, Google Art project, Twin Space). The project will be addresses at the pupils aged 14-19, it will also involve students with different disabilities, helth problems and students from other disadvantaged groups. By the use of informal learning in the project (workshops in museums, theatres, zoos) students will learn how to acquire knowledge from their everyday life and experience. Informal learning is an attractive form of education which motivates students to work and improves their learning outcomes. The main objectives of the project is to motivate students who are at risk of social exclusion, improve creative skills of both students and teachers, encourage students to develop entrepreneurial skills, improve participants' language and ICT skills, empower students to become more independent and self-confident, compare and adopt new pedagogical approaches according to integration of students in society. Over the two year project, partners will attend project meetings. There will be an opportunity to help individual schools to develop and share good practice that is particularly relevant to their own school. During the visits both students and teachers will take part in different workshops concerning informal learning and the use of ICT. The teachers will prepare lesson plans whith the use of informal learning which will be uploaded on the website in the teachers' corner. Visiting museums is considered to be a very important educational tool in order to make our students aware of the national and European cultural heritage. At the same time, getting acquainted with such an experience ensures the development of a permanent relation between students and museums, a relation which will last during their entire life. Only in this way the teaching materials will be the heritage object and a very good teaching method which will arouse their curiosity, which means that students will learn through self discovery. A place for informal education like the museum helps to renew education by developing its own pedagogical approaches. These pedagogical tools can be used during a visit to a museum or during creative workshops by the museum guide, the teacher and the students, these being the tools which maintain a well thought strategy which aims at helping the young and the very young public to know the contents of the museum. As a result of the discovery learning activity inside the museum, the students and the teachers will get used to respect traditional values and will understand that these prove the relation between man and nature, time and space. This project is required and useful for the institution because the students will be equipped with intercultural components: respect for another culture, acceptance of differences, civilized intercultural dialogue and tolerance. Intercultural education means, actually, interaction, exchange, open mindedness.
The rationale of the project was to promote informal education and the usage of new ICT tools at school. Nowadays new technologies have become a part of everyday life. Digital literacy, effective and creative use of ICT, is key to develop the skills for learning, life and work needed by young people in the modern world. Schools should introduce digital media into their process of teaching because this way is more attractive to students comparing to traditional methods. Our aim was to bring new technology into everyday education in schools and combine ICT with art to get students more engaged in the process of learning. The project, with its activities and tasks, has fitted neatly within the concept of informal education. All activities were organised to meet students’ needs and interests. All participants got a chance to participate and what is more, they got a chance to take on responsibilities. The activities involved personal development and helped all students to obtain such qualities as responsibility, motivation, creativity, respect, tolerance, intercultural awareness, criticism and self-confidence in a new and fun way. What students experience, can help them change their lives, broaden their horizons and make them aware of a new, interesting way of gaining knowledge by learning through doing, teaching each other, following the passion. This project gave real opportunities to increase staff and students skill levels in ICT and communication methods. The use of modern popular technology sought to increase motivation for the students and therefore more engagement in lessons. The project provided excellent professional and personal development opportunities for teachers with a resulting beneficial effect on students and on life at school as a whole. Four schools from Spain, Portugal, Romania and Poland participated in the project. All institutions have classes with SEN students, students from different backgrounds and at risk of dropping out school and they were involved in the project. Schools have some experience in informal education and decided to share their knowledge in order to help students acquire knowledge in an attractive way. Most of the results were based on ICT: blog, website, presentations, jigsaw. With the use of informal learning in the project (workshops in museums, theatres) students learned how to acquire knowledge from their everyday life and experience. Informal learning is an attractive form of education which motivates students to work and improves their learning outcomes. One of the objectives was to motivate students who are at risk of social exclusion, improve creative skills of both students and teachers, encourage students to develop entrepreneurial skills, compare and adopt new pedagogical approaches according to integration of students in society. New teaching methods complemented the already existing sets of tools and methods and included informal education into school curriculum. They also allowed teachers in each school to vary the approach to different topics according to the learners´ needs and disabilities. Teachers have learned new ways to create "museum-friendly" places for students, extremely useful for direct information from real resources. There are two final products of the project. One of them is a handbook "Hand in hand with art" which includes a set of worksheets which can be used before, during or after a lesson in the museums or theatre. They were prepared by teachers of all schools and based on their visits in museums. The other result is a board game which popularises museums. The rules are similar to a famous Monopoly game. Students can sell and buy museums and artifacts from Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish museums. The rules of the game were made by students, they also chose the museums and artifacts.