The “Full STEAM Ahead“ is a two-year long cross-curricular project created to help students to enrich, acquire and strengthen knowledge in the areas of Astronomy, robotics and coding by using carefully selected teaching methodologies. The project brings together approximately 150 teachers and 1300 students from 5 European countries (Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and France) to attract the interest to science and scientific activities, gaining skills in observing the world around us. Planned activities are divided in main categories: ASTRONOMY, ROBOTICS, TECHNOLOGY (ICT), EARTH SCIENCE, ENVIROMENT & HEALTH and each partner is specialised in a certain area. The project will follow European Space Agency’s EXOMARS MISSION in real time and students will design and program an ExoMars rover out of Lego bricks and EV3 Mindstorms robot. Activities will also focus on new web 2.0 and 3.0 tools and safety on the Internet. Students will experience the entire engineering process, from imagining to designing, researching to testing and simulations. We will connect STEM activities with the history of Space exploration through games and storytelling activities, as well as entrepreneurship, exploring and 3D printing of Mars habitat and Space Law.INNOVATIVE approach that we will use is STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths). Children in all schools are already involved in STEM activities. Recent researches show that creativity and design are also very important and art provides diverse opportunities for expression. STEAM is a great learning tool that provokes thinking and our aim is to shape a fully literate 21st century citizen that will be ready to offer different solutions in the future. A pedagogy we use encourages creativity, vision, cooperation and collaboration in every student and teacher. Project-based, child-directed learning, peer-learning methods and learning through teaching concept are used in the project. We use this project as opportunity to promote teamwork between teachers and students. The project contains some activities for gifted students like programing robots and Scratch that include younger students with talent for STEM but also inclusion and arts (STEAM) activities that involve students with dissabilities like making a vulcano and participating in different game based activities.A new curricular reform in Croatia and France also emphasizes the use of ICT and the importance of STEAM and focus on developing basic competences for life-long learning, increasing functional literacy levels of students and critical thinking.Results of the project are collaboratively designed set of INNOVATIVE ACTIVITIES. The project exchanges pedagogical methods and best practices through school visits and the exchange of ideas and lessons. Materials will be consolidated on the web page of the project where they can be adopted and applied by other teachers. An e-reference teacher’s book will accompany various worksheets, videos, instructions and games for teachers. Our product, SPACE BOX, will be made by students and teachers in each school that take part in the project. It will contain materials, the instructions and explanations for low-cost experiments. Partners will compare results after each experiment and activity. Some of the OER made in 3D print and Braille will be donated to schools for blind and visually impaired students.ETwinning will be used for collaborative learning and natural use of English (CLIL) when discussing and sharing our work. Long term benefits of the project will be collaboration with the scientific community, sustainable open educational resources, better students' learning outcomes and teachers’ professional growth. Some schools will develop and sustain extracurricular activities connected to robotics, programming and writing blogs in English language.This project will be beneficial experience for all participants to experience how to be a part of multicultural team. We hope that we will cultivate a love for life-long learning through participation in the project and raise cultural awareness among students and teachers.
The “Full STEAM Ahead“ was a two-year project that helped teachers and students from 5 European countries (Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and France) to change their way of teaching and learning.Participants of the project were students and teachers from Instituto Comprensivo Statale (Italy), College Edouard Herriot (France), Gortskehy National School (Ireland), Aguramento de Escolas Marinhas do Sal (Portugal) and Osnovna škola Pantovčak (Zagreb). T eams of teachers were very diverse and we manage to divide activities equaly. Schools that participated in the project set up objectives to empower teachers and give them opportunities to gain more experience by working in multicultural, international teams. The goal was to prepare teachers and students to use new technologies more and make research-based materials that will make it easy to integrate STEAM into existing curricula. Planned activities were divided into main categories: ASTRONOMY, ROBOTICS, TECHNOLOGY (ICT), EARTH SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH and each partner is specialised in a specific area. Activities were also focused on new web 2.0 and 3.0 tools (the list of the used tools and activities on our eTwinning page: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24870/pages/page/214697) and safety on the Internet (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24870/pages/page/231656) The teachers who were included in the project used carefully selected teaching methods. Teaching styles and activities were chosen to enhance the student-centred approach and high-tech approach. Students and teachers were using gamification, as well as education-focused social media platforms like TwinSpace and Facebook page. A pedagogy we used encourages creativity, vision, cooperation and collaboration in every student and teacher. Project-based, peer-learning methods and learning through teaching concept are used in the project. We use this project as an opportunity to promote teamwork between teachers and students. Students had a chance to hold workshops for their peers from other European countries. Croatian students and teachers are using various web tools and the students have presented Genial.ly web tool and run a workshop. Erasmus group students have prepared tasks for the activity Explore Zagreb with QR codes and also the tasks for the Escape room. Students have also presented the results of the school mini-project. We have planted sunflower seeds that were on the ISS and the "normal" seeds in 2 different pots. The students observed, measured and tried to find differences in the growth of those two plants. Irish students are experienced in robotics, so they taught other students how to program Exo Mars lego rover and how to make the online Space Game. It can be run on a computer, tablet or smartphone. (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24870/pages/page/369246). They have also make a video about space(https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24870/pages/page/369251) French students showed us how they use a 3D printer. The Portuguese students introduced the web tool Plickers. Italians held a workshop on robotics and prepared a competition. As one of the results, we have created online audiobook Full STEAM ahead together. This open educational sustainable resource can be used for different purposes and throughout different school subjects. A group of students from each country has written one chapter. They have also illustrated the book. We had a school Mars poem contest, and the best poem is also a part of the book, as well as a glossary and the facts about Mars. We have chosen three students that recorded the story, and now you can use it as an audiobook. (LINK: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/24870/pages/page/400071). In our Spacebox (a wooden box designed by art teacher and students and have its place in the school library) we keep Space games for different age levels that were created during the project. Each game has cross-curricular tasks that are in connection with the space topic. Teachers can find there and choose from the various worksheets that we have produced over the two years. The project did reach the project objectives based on the activities and results. That can be measured by increased knowledge of the participants within space topic; cooperation processes and usage of new methodologies and new web tools during lessons; in exchange of ideas and good practice which ought to improve the quality of education to stimulate innovation. The project mobilities enabled more than 100 students and more than 20 teachers to experience how to be a part of the multicultural team.