The DREAM project idea was conceived in October 2015 during an Erasmus+ KA1 training stage. Teachers from the three country members of this consortium (Romania, Greece, Portugal) discovered that Mathematics is a common topic of discussion. Discussions revealed that students and teachers in these countries face similar problems/difficulties in studying Mathematics. The opportunity of forming a partnership comes from the fact that the strengths and weaknesses complement each other: teaching mathematics in Romania is very theoretical, teachers in Portugal are focused on creating practical skills in students, and those in Greece are very skilled in the use of learning platforms.The needs identified and described in the project are: the lack of motivation of students to learn Maths, the lack of interactive methodology that lead to the understanding the involvements of Maths in real-life phenomena, the lack of experienced teachers that can use learning platforms and ICT technologies. As immediate consequence, the high-school graduates do not choose careers in technology.The central idea of our proposal is to develop an e-course entitled "Maths in Real-life", with 6 topics for 6 specific real-life sectors (Finance, Sport, Nature, Art, Architecture and Physics). Real-life applications of Maths will give motivation to students and will allow them to access the material anytime, anywhere. It will also facilitate math teachers to have better control of their students' activity.E-lesson implementation will be done as a mix of Moodle/LAMS platforms.The main objective is to build up a new Maths teaching/learning methodology based on real-life problems and investigations (open-ended math situations), designed by students and teachers together. The activities will involve experimentations, hands-on approach, outdoor activities and virtual/mobile software applications. The developed material will be transformed into an on-line courses and will be freely available to all interested communities, in order to produce collaborative learning activities. As less than 30% of the graduates are following a technical profile faculty, the consortium estimates that, for each of the three schools involved, the implementation of this project will increase with 25% the number of high-school graduates that will enroll in a technical, mathematics or computer science faculty. Similarly, a 25% increase of the number of teachers using educational software and on-line platforms during the teaching/learning/evaluation process is expected. An overall 50% growth is also expected in the number of secondary level students that are learning technical disciplines using educational software. Through this proposal we address to students, teachers, math teacher and training institutes. We expect to involve 300 people in the project.Activities leading to the attainment of the objectives are:A1.The project's operational managementA2.Developing on-line real-life Maths lessonsA3. Implementation of the new teaching methods and efficient tools for teaching mathThe outputs of this project are:O1. Open on-line course "Maths in Finance"O2. Open on-line course "Maths in Sports"O3. Open on-line course "Maths in Nature"O4. Open on-line course "Maths in Art"O5. Open on-line course "Maths in Architecture"O6. Open on-line course "Maths in Physics"O7. Mobile apps on-line courseO8. Evaluation of open on-line math courseO9. Guide to project practices for educatorsDREAM mobility project includes the following:1. November 2016 in Romania. Opening of the project. Meeting personnel. Training of initiation in the use of learning platforms.2. April 2017 in Romania. Joint mobility, student-teacher. Students will benefit from the workshop type activities, and teachers will experience exchange activities.3. October 2017 in Portugal. Joint mobility, student-teacher. Students will benefit from the workshop type activities, teachers will have activities and exchange of experience and training.4. May 2018 in Greece. Joint mobility, student-teacher. Students will benefit from the workshop type activities, teachers will have activities and exchange of experience and training.Multiplier event is planned in October 2018 in Romania for a total of 100 participants.The project involves participants from different countries across southern Europe, but the results of the common work will have impact not only on local level, but also on interested schools at regional, national and international level. In general, the web-enabling of the e-courses is the main step towards giving wider exposure and access to our project results, having a long term effect. The project results will be available on-line through the partner organisations’ official websites, linking to the official project website. In this way, existing and new staff, recently enrolled students and educational technologists can have access to the project outcomes extending further the project audience.
The DREAM project idea was conceived in October 2015 during an Erasmus+ KA1 training stage in Portugal. While working together in workshops, teachers from the three countries, Romania, Greece and Portugal, discovered that Mathematics is a common topic of discussion. Discussions revealed that students and teachers in these countries face similar problems in studying and teaching Mathematics and thus rose the opportunity of forming a partnership. We came to the conclusion that our strengths and weaknesses in Mathematics complement each other: teaching mathematics in Romania is very theoretical, teachers in Portugal are focused on creating practical skills in students, and those in Greece are very skilled in the use of learning platforms. The needs that we identified in our discussions then were: the lack of motivation of students to learn Maths, the lack of interactive methodology that lead to the understanding the involvements of Maths in real-life phenomena, the lack of experienced teachers that can use learning platforms and ICT technologies. As immediate consequence, the high-school graduates do not choose careers in technology. The central idea of our project was to develop an e-course entitled "Maths in Real-life", with 6 topics for 6 specific real-life sectors (Finance, Sport, Nature, Art, Architecture and Physics). Real-life applications of Maths would give motivation to students and allow them to access the material anytime, anywhere. It would also facilitate math teachers to have better control of their students' activity. E-lesson implementation would be done as a mix of Moodle/LAMS platforms. In other words, the main objective of our project was to build up a new Maths teaching/learning methodology based on real-life problems and investigations (open-ended math situations), designed by students and teachers together. The activities would involve experimentations, hands-on approach, outdoor activities and mobile applications. We planned to transform the developed material into on-line courses that would be freely available to all interested communities, in order to produce collaborative learning activities. The implementation of this project increased with 25% the number of high-school graduates that enrolled in a technical faculty. Similarly, 25% increased of the number of teachers using educational software and on-line platforms during the teaching/learning/evaluation process was expected. Our proposal would be addressed to students, teachers and training institutes. We expected to involve 300 people in the project, and managed to do so by involving our schools and communities in the activities, that were: A1. The project's operational management A2. Developing on-line real-life Maths lessons A3. Implementation of the new teaching methods and efficient tools for teaching math. The outputs of this project are: O1. Open on-line course "Maths in Finance" O2. Open on-line course "Maths in Sports" O3. Open on-line course "Maths in Nature" O4. Open on-line course "Maths in Art" O5. Open on-line course "Maths in Architecture" O6. Open on-line course "Maths in Physics" O7. Mobile apps on-line course O8. Evaluation of open on-line math course O9. Guide to project practices for educators. The courses were developed by students, under teacher supervision, so that the topics that were addressed would be of interest to students, thus making the lessons more inviting to young learners. These online courses are on our partners website, that is also linked to the official project website. The DREAM mobility project included the following meetings: 1. December 2016 in Romania. Project opening. Personnel meeting. Round table discussions on topics such as Mathematics curriculum and educational systems in the three countries. Training of initiation in the use of learning platforms. The following three mobilities were joint mobilities, student – teacher: 2. May 2017 in Romania, 3. October 2017 in Portugal, 4. May 2018 in Greece. In all three of them students benefited from the workshop type activities, presenting the lessons they had developed to the others, but also taking part in intercultural activities, or other game –type activities, that involved the use of Mathematics. Teachers experienced exchange activities. The last event was the Multiplier event in October 2018 in Romania for a total of 100 participants. The project involved participants from different countries across southern Europe. Some activities during this event focused on presenting the DREAM project and the online courses that had been developed, by making brochures available to all participants. These brochures contain all the lessons developed in the project. During this event the students presented some of lessons to other students and teachers, who had not been part of the project. Thus the results of the common work had an impact not only on local level, but also on interested schools at regional, national and international level.