Four countries participate in the project “Go 4 Education: get connected!”: Spain which is the coordinator of the project, Greece, Italy and Lithuania. Its main idea is to explore the topics that connect people despite the country they are living and try to look at those topics in a creative way stressing out the diversity of our cultures and traditions. It covers such topics as sport, music, history, art, food, traditions. Since all the project partners are schools and have the same goal – to make the educational process more effective and attractive, we have decided to involve on equal terms both learning and teaching participants. Our project targets two audiences: pupils and teachers providing many activities for both groups. The activities for students were chosen carefully as we intend to involve as many students with low academic performance as possible. For this reason such topics as sports and music were chosen to help them stay motivated and feel equal with other peers. We are sure that these activities will lead further to more complicated ones such as creating videos, comic strips and cartoons and the learners with higher academic achievements will provide the necessary help for the first ones. The participants will learn how to cooperate and gain team working skills. Teachers will gain much from this project as well because they will have many activities for improving their professional skills. They will watch and show lessons during the mobilities and will have discussions about the most attractive and effective teaching methods they use. The exchange of practices will motivate teachers for searching innovative ways to get students with low school performance interested in learning. Besides, it will help teachers to build self-esteem and to promote the teaching profession.At the very beginning the participants will exchange their contact details and make contacts with the use of the WhatsApp application for mobile devices. Then Facebook group will be created to publish all events and products and, what is more important, to get constant feedback about all activities. After that we will present project ideas to the students and start a project logo contest, the project website will be created and all the participants will join the etwinning platform. We live in the world in which a great role is played by mass media and modern technologies, especially for the youth, so we will include them in all our upcoming activities. Students will prepare video presentations, language tutorials, create comic strips and cartoons. Thanks to that they will learn how to edit films and photos, how to make presentations and animations in Scratch or Toondoo. Every school will upload one video presentations every given topic as mentioned above. Then the students knowledge will be tested about, for example, musical instruments or foods in different countries provided the information given in videos. There will be six tests in total. While preparing for the mobilities students and teachers will learn some basic vocabulary of the language of the partner they are going to visit. The language tutorials will be prepared by students themselves. During the mobility week students will take part in the Olympic Games which will include national and global sports. We will also build bridge models of different materials such as spaghetti or ice-cream sticks, work in a Mobile Science Lab, learn about Scratch, Toondoo and other programs.We intend to involve at least 300 participants in total, which will make 25% of schools' communities: teenage students, teachers of different subjects, parents, school administration and other staff members. Students from poor families who are at risk of social exclusion or those with poor school performance will be actively involved in most of the activities, too. It will enable them gain self-confidence and achieve probably their first success. Expected impact on students are:• Improve knowledge and communication in English• Acquire basic skills (student with educational/ economical difficulties), cross skills using ITC tools• Learn to collaborate and cooperate• expand the knowledge on the project topics about partner countriesOn teachers:• Improve topic skills• Enhance the relational skills working with students and colleagues • Improve the use of innovative methodologies We will continue to run the project webpage after the project is completed so that the activities and results we will produce remain easy to reach for everybody. The teachers are likely to cooperate in new projects The school exhibition boards and bulletins on the project outcomes will be permanently put in one place in each of the participating institutions so that new students and parents will be able to have a view of what has been done. The schools will take part in local or regional events organised by authorities or associations promoting the use of European Union funding.
All the partners of the project reached the goal to make educational process more effective and attractive through some topics as sport, music, history, art, food, traditions. All the participants had the opportunity to discover, to share, to communicate using English language. These topics played an important role in setting up and carrying out the programmed activities. In fact, it was the right way to improve in students with low academic performance motivation in studying and awareness of their abilities feeling equal with other peers. So,as underlined in the different tests before and after all the mobilities, the competences pointed out by all students are: to cooperate, to gain team abilities, to improve English language and ICTwhich helped not only the students involved but also the teachers who had the opportunity to experiment new didactic methodologies that had an impact on daily class activity too(creation of videos with Animoto; comic strips and cartoons with Scratch, Toondoo, presentations…) The monitoring of all the activities in each country, as well as the tests of the mobilities, have allowed continuously to verify and evaluate them, giving important information on the interest of the students, and the skills they reached, and on the needs of the teachers.In the same way, the realization of different products concerning the mentioned topics allowed the students to know better their region. The schedule of the mobilities and programmed activities have been respected.This project became not only the project of students with their families and teachers involved but also the project of each school. All the hosted families contributed to the success of the project and they aroused the curiosity of the other families who gave their availability for future projects. The social networks like FB and Whatshapp have allowed to keep in touch, to have permanent contact, to create new links, strong friendships among the students the teachers and the families. The official website of the project, the blogs or website of each school have been important to illustrate to all the stakeholders the progress of the project. The project also had official moments, all the partners were received by the municipal authorities The activities realized concerned: creation of official logos, official webpages, video presentations about important bridges of each country, language tutorial,videos about the most important festivals and about famous personalities, videos about the representation of an artwork, comic strips, videos about traditional food. Concerning the teachers, they were both observers and protagonists, Indeed, during the mobilities, they attended lessons independently of the taught subject, they themselves worked with the classes of the different partner countries using English language . The taught subjects were: Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, English, Economics, Art History, Greek, Lithuanian. All these activities were followed by a moment of discussion concerning the teaching techniques, the instruments used, the motivation of the students.Throughout the project, the partners discovered that technological tools could also be used to favour the interest of weaker students and , in general, lessons were no longer frontal;students became the protagonists of their knowledge by conducting research, collaborating with their peers, sharing their discoveries.The impact of the project has been very significant. The students have improved their language skills in English and their knowledge about other European countries as underlined in the tests before and after the mobilities; they learned through workshops to appreciate the values of the European Union, to promote solidarity, to fight against racism and intolerance; students with economical and/or educational difficulties had the opportunity to move and to improve their own motivation. Students and teachers implemented together their knowledge about new educational programs and they opened their mind to new way of living and fostered the curiosity about different cultures. Teachers involved in the project spoke and wrote constantly in English and some teachers improved their competences, so that some of them got a B2 certificate after following an English course. All teachers used new technologies and created digital materials on websites and platforms transferring all what they acquired in their everyday lessons and sharing it with other colleagues. In order to disseminate the ideas of the project, in every country the school community was informed through meetings, conferences, video presentations and other. Many products have been realized as leaflets, posters, pens with the logo of the project... In Greece an olive tree was planted as a souvenir of the project and as a symbol ofour awareness of European identity, that has grown in all participants and will grow stronger and stronger with deep roots throughout time and barriers.