Two-year international project "Programme your future" relates to the main aim of the project- teaching of programming, solving problems using computers and teaching of computational thinking, that is formulating problems in such a way as to make it possible to solve it using computers and other devices. The project is aimed at a group of 1500 students (from primary to high school) and teachers from partner schools from Poland, Estonia, Finland and Spain. It is an interdisciplinary project because completing tasks requires knowledge of different school subjects. The idea of creating the project was the reaction to the information about changes in Polish and Finnish educational system. The new core curriculum in primary schools in Poland and Finland will be extended by compulsory teaching of programming/coding. Programming skill is defined as one of the most useful skills on the labour market and teaching of programming is a great challenge for modern schools. Developing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) create new workplaces for ICT specialists, especially programmers. There is a shortage of programmers on European labour market.The aim of the project is to develop information skills among students and teachers by means of a great variety of ICT tools used in the project. Partners will observe and monitor the level of integrating ICT with other school subjects and its impact on the students’ level of information skills.We suppose that at least 50% women from each project group from partner countries will take part in our project. We think that a particular attention should be paid to this group as there is still a small number of women on technical studies, especially IT faculties. The realisation of the project will be a great opportunity to exchange ideas concerning gender equality and overcome stereotypes.Innovative character of the project relating on idea exchange between partner countries will develop new methods and tools of teaching of coding and also logical and creative thinking. It will bring long term effects, such as increase of competence appreciated on the labour market and useful in many countries. Schools taking part in the project will exchange experience and ideas when it comes to methodology, tools that are necessary to teach programming, computational thinking and how to use ICT in teaching and learning. Project partner countries have a lot of experience in areas mentioned above. Partners will have opportunities to observe the differences in skill level between students starting to learn programming at the beginning of primary school and those who start to learn it at the later stage of education. In the longer term they will be able to take measures in order to improve the efficiency if work, learning outcomes and in the future increase chances for employment among their students.The implementation of computational thinking, teaching of programming and using ICT in various school subjects has been divided into different months. Realisation of tasks concerning each subjects (maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, social studies, native language) will take 2 months. There is a fixed schedule for each month and teachers of different subjects will work to implement computational thinking and ICT and project groups from partner countries will realise the project in the form of computer programs. Teachers of partner schools will implement computational thinking and using ICT in different subjects while information technology teachers will prepare lesson plans and descriptions of methods and tools concerning programming. Five international project meetings will take place in the course of the project. A special website will also be created during the project. It will contain effects of the project presented in the form of:a collection of lesson plans for computer studies teachers about teaching of coding and lessons plans ( for maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, social studies, native language teachers) concerning computational thinking and using ICT tools in different subjects, descriptions of methods and tools used to teach programming at different stages of education and to teach computational thinking in different school subjects, a set of computer programs solving different problems, an instructional film that can be useful while teaching of programming.During the realisation of the project different teaching methods will be used (for example lecturing, problem solving and activating methods, practical method, demonstration, presentation). Everyone will be able to make full use of website resources after the project has finished. In the longer term, effects of our work will be available for all schools where teaching of programming will be introduced.
The project "Programme your future" relates to the main aim of the project- teaching programming, solving problems using computers and teaching computational thinking, that is formulating problems in such a way as to make it possible to solve it using computers and other devices. The idea of creating the project was the reaction to the information about changes in Polish and Finnish educational system. The new core curriculum in primary schools in Poland and Finland has been extended by compulsory teaching programming. Programming skill is defined as one of the most useful skills on the labour market and teaching programming is a great challenge for modern schools. The aim of the project was to develop information skills among students and teachers by means of a great variety of ICT tools used in the project. Teachers of partnership schools exchanged their knowledge about methods and tools of teaching programming from the first class of the primary school, teaching computational thinking and using ICT tools in teaching and learning. The project was also the initiative to build the motivation to learn science among women. On this account over 50% of the participants were girls. Students and teachers of 4 schools from Finland, Estonia, Poland and Spain took part In the project. Over 70 students at different age from 10 to 16 and about 50 teachers of partnership schools took part in direct project activities. The teachers created scripts, took care of students during exchanges, helped translate documents or participated in other project activities. 4 short-term exchanges of group of pupils in Finland, Estonia, Poland and Spain took place. During the visits pupils took part in activities concerning the topic of the project, they took part in workshops connected with learning programming and robotics, using information-communication technology to solving problems and they visited places connected with new technologies. 4 transnational project meetings took part in Poland, Finland and Spain. The teachers and headmasters of partnership schools took part in them. During the project every school take various actions concerning the topic of the project including programming and robotics workshops for students and teachers, taking part in Hour of Code, meetings with IT specialists, English courses for teachers. In the beginning all partnership schools prepared some posters which informed the school’s community about the project. Students designed their own proposals for the logo of the project and they also sent Christmas wishes with the use of Christmas cards programmed by them. The teachers of mathematics, geography, physics, biology, chemistry, history/civics and native language subjects created scripts with the use of the idea of computational thinking and IT tools for solving problems on these subjects. Furthermore the teachers of computer science (or subjects related to computer science) created scripts of teaching programming from the first class of the primary school. Within the project the website of the project www.pyourf.eu was made. It can find there all information about realized activities, scripts of mathematics, geography, physics, biology, chemistry, history/civics and native language subjects concerning teaching computational thinking and using IT tools for solving diffrent problems on these subjects, scripts of teaching programming, package of computer programs solving choosen problems, description of methods and tools used for teaching programming on different stage of eductaion. Thanks to the project teachers responsible for implementing programming skills in partnership schools can teach programming in their schools more effectively and teachers other subjects got the basics of the knowledge of teaching computational thinking. Majority of teachers and students involved in realizing the project think that thanks to this they increased their openess, tolerance and acceptance of other cultures. It also contributed to the high motivation to learn foreign languages. Teachers truly believe that international cooperation affected the quality of their work and the frequency of using different ICT tools in teaching. The participation in Erasmus+project increased interesting in programming among students and teachers’ willingness to taking part in international projects. Everyone will be able to make full use of website resources after the project has finished. In the longer term, effects of our work will be available for all schools where teaching of programming will be introduced.