Technology is everywhere, present in almost every part of our lives. It affects how we shop, socialize, connect, play, and most importantly learn. With their great and increasing presence in our lives it only makes sense to have digital technology in the classroom. Integrating technology into the classroom is definitely a great way to reach diversity in learning styles, it will help prepare students for their future careers, it gives students the chance to interact with their classmates more by encouraging collaboration.This project will focus on promoting the use of ICT in teaching; strengthening the profile of teaching profession through transnational cooperation, developing, testing, implementing, sharing ideas, practices, teaching materials and tools; developing students' basic skills in maths, science and literacy, improving collaboration with parents and other stakeholders, promoting a sustainable lifestyle through creative recycling. Objectives:-to develop, test and implement innovative and effective teaching methods using ICT in the classroom, to increase the quality of education, create a pleasant and safe educational environment, promoting peer-learning, problem-based learning, game-based-learning, which will help to increase students' problem solving, numeracy, digital, verbal communication skills, critical thinking, creativity, team-working and will improve their transition to high school-to strengthen the cooperation with parents, through directly involving them in our activities, workshops, seminars, parent support groups, making them aware of the importance of their involvement for a successful school life of their children, offering ways of spending time with their children and also raising their awareness on the positive and negative sides of the digital worldThe aim of the creative recycling workshops is to foster students' creativity, develop their ability to turn ideas into action, turn them into a more responsible, global citizen. As many of our students are facing economic obstacles, these workshops are a good way to teach them, that they don't always need money to have new things. With little effort and creativity, they can make themselves the desired products from old materials.Our primary target group are students aged 10-14, their teachers and parents from the participating organizations. We will extend our impact as we are going to organize workshops and fairs for the local community, publish and make available all our materials and outcomes, as other interested teachers, students, parents, educational organizations to have access to them and use them in their work.For the implementation of the project we will follow the timeline of the project, in which the activities are planned and described in details for each month with requested outputs, tasks and responsibilities and dissemination methods: spreading information about the project, visibility of the project in schools, creating the website/blog, Facebook page, Youtube channel, project-based collaboration on eTwinning with activities for students and teachers, virtual collaboration, logo creation, professional development of teachers through research, individual study, collaboration, team-teaching, implementing in schools the new teaching methods, observing the changes they have produced in students attitude and motivation for learning, monitoring and evaluating the activities and results through questionnaires, surveys, observations, interviews, personal stories, analyzing and comparing results, writing reports, creative recycling workshops, involving parents and local community in activities, organizing a fair for charity reasons, seminars and support group for parents, transnational learning, teaching activities, transnational project meetings, virtual review meetings, dissemination activities, editing the Handbook with all our activities, launching the printed version and the digital online version, closing the project, working on the sustainability of the project.The main outcomes of the project will be a printed and online Handbook with all the activities, online channels (Facebook page, website, Youtube channel, Twinspace), which will be all made available and open to public to access and use them.Students will have acquired the relevant knowledge concerning up cycling and embody it in their everyday life, cooperated with peers from other parts of the world and realized that they can effectively work and communicate with people outside their narrow borders, enriched their knowledge on different countries, their cultures, ways of life, customs, traditions, languages and thus bridge any difference might occur, boosted their creativity and realized that attending school can be so much more than just learning by heart, will have developed basic skills of maths, science and literacy, foreign language and digital skills. Collaboration and cooperation among partners will continue in sharing good practice.
Technology is everywhere, present in almost every part of our lives. It affects how we shop, socialize, connect, play, and most importantly learn. With their great and increasing presence in our lives it only makes sense to have digital technology in the classroom. Integrating technology into the classroom is definitely a great way to reach diversity in learning styles, it helps prepare students for their future careers, it gives students the chance to interact with their classmates more by encouraging collaboration. The primary target group of the project are students aged 10-14 and their teachers from 5 different European schools. The original objectives of the project were all met. They were: -to develop, test and implement innovative and effective teaching methods using ICT in the classroom, -to create a pleasant and safe educational environment, promoting peer-learning, problem-based learning, game-based-learning, which helps to increase students' problem solving, numeracy, digital, verbal communication skills, critical thinking, creativity, team-working and improves their transition to high school -to enhance the collaboration among European teachers by sharing good practices as part of their professional development -to strengthen the communication and collaboration with the students' parents In this project took part 5 schools: 1. Liceul Tehnologic Octavian Goga Jibou, Romania - a school with 670 students aged 6-19 in primary, secondary and vocational education. 2. Agrupamento de Escolas do Forte da Casa, Portugal - a group of 3 schools, from grammar to secondary level school with a a diverse multicultural background. 3. Zakladni skola Zamberk, 28.rijna 581, Czech Republic - primary school with about 420 pupils in the age range 6-15. 4. General Kemal Balikesir Ortaokulu, Turkey - There are kindergarten, primary school and secondary school in the same building and there are about 950 students aged between 5 and 14 and sixty teachers in school. 5. 3rd Primary School of Agios Nikolaos Crete, Greece - a primary school of 250 pupils and 25-30 teachers. The main activities of the project were: 1. Creative recycling workshops - students worked with old materials and objects and turned them into new, useful objects. 2. Donation/Charity activities: - the recycled, new objects created during the creative recycling workshops were donated to different institutions 3. Digital Technology in the Classrooms: -teachers integrated the new digital technologies into their teaching practices (tablets, smartphones) 4. Educational Articles: - 8 articles written by teachers on topics related to the project, mainly on using digital technology in teaching and learning 5. eTwinning Activities: - used for communication, collaboration and dissemination and a work space for students 6. Transnational Project Meetings - 2 TPMs in Jibou, Romania (December 2016) to set the roles, responsibilities, deadlines, agree on the timeline of the activities and in Balikesir, Turkey (October 2018) to evaluate the project and talk about the sustainability of some of the project activities. 7. Learning/Teaching/Training Activities - we had LTTAs in Zamberk, Czech Republic (May 2017), Forte da Casa, Portugal (October 2017) and in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece (May 2018). All LTTAs included creative recycling workshops, digital activities and donations to different institutions. The tangible results of the project are: 1. Blogs in 6 languages (English, Romanian, Portuguese, Czech, Greek and Turkish), where each school described their local activities. 2. Facebook page - each partner uploaded their activities with photos and descriptions 3. YouTube channel - video tutorials of the creative recycling workshops can be viewed here 4. The Book "Creative, Active, Responsible Students in the Digital World" - it contains the educational articles written by teachers and the descriptions of the main activities undertaken during the project. Students have developed their creativity, digital, entrepreneurship, social and civic, cultural awareness competences. Teachers have developed professionally, they use more often group works, small-scale projects and digital technology in their teaching. Longer-term benefits: Using project based learning and integrating digital technology into the classroom have become a habit during the project and it surely will be maintained after the project. The other thing that will be maintained, are the creative recycling workshops as they proved a great opportunity for students to develop their creativity and critical thinking, the sense of ownership of their their newly-created products and it contributes to waste reduction. It made them aware that they do not always need to buy new things, they can create their own products from old ones.