The project “21st Century Skills – personalised learning in the digital age” focuses on two important themes. The first is ‘learning, making use of media’ and deals with the question how different media can be used to make a valuable contribution in teaching and learning. In addition there is the aim to make students aware of the pros and cons of digital media and to make sense of - and be critical of - such media, like social media. The second theme aims for more personalised learning in the context of media-use. The project aims at sharing knowledge and experience and to further results in the context of the two themes. Partners will send teachers to specific professional learning groups. Each school takes care of this individually. For the "Digi"-Camps the schools choose students with sufficient knowledge and command of the English language. These should also be students who show interest in working with digital media. The period of testing encompasses a whole year because they will adapt the plans. The project is for students, parents and teachers so it involves the entirety of the school’s community. For this project the schools need to co-operate and design shared lessons for subjects like English, Mathematics and Media Studies which focus on individualisation and digitalisation. Meaningful apps and videos should be chosen or created to connect the subjects to the theme. Interactive assessments will be created to keep track of and to provide proof for student achievement in the context of media competences. For both students and teachers of the partner schools workshops will be on offer with the goal to create learning materials and tutorials. As things like working with QR codes and tutorials will be embedded in the curriculum to come to a structural improvement of individual media skills. At the same time intercultural competences will be improved and developed. Teachers and students develop the materials together with a first-language policy. There is also an intercultural dictionary. The dictionary contains quintessential idiom in the first-language but also strives to overcome cultural differences between the partner schools. Students-experts will be trained to instruct in a peer-to-peer situation. Also, there will be themed webinars with experts from the joining countries. Students will make tutorials. We’ll plan and organise "Digi"-Camps where students and teachers will work together on materials. The development of a training in competencies in different media will also be pursued, as well as ‚dealing with new media‘. The results should be interpreted individually per group. For teachers this will result in an increased sense of urgency for the use of new media as well as the reasons for using digital media in individualised learning and teaching. At the end of the project students will have access to a surplus of materials that will be beneficial to individual and co-operative learning and testing. Parents will have more insight in the learning and way of working of their children. The aim for the produced materials is that they can contribute to supporting learning at home. For the school-system this means that by the end of the project the result is that the schools will be better connected and that it will have led to professionalization of the learning process. Results of our project will be digitalised teaching material and lessons, trained experts (teachers and students) in digital media, who act ass multipliers in the learning process. In this way the results of the project are disseminated in the whole school community. All schools should participate, in equity, with a principle of cooperation. In teaching peer-learning plays an important part. In the long run this project will result in a data bank with digitalised materials. These materials can be used individually and should be self-supporting and should be helpful in the student’s learning experience.
At the time of application, the Europaschule Kamp-Lintfort had been developed as a "media school" for 2 years. The handling of media was rudimentarily anchored in the lessons in the different grades, with various "media subjects" (computer science as a module subject, as a compulsory optional subject or as a subject in the field of industrial science) and in grade 8 the subject "media education". In terms of content, the focus of the media subjects was more on the aspect of a basic education in information technology, in the subject "media education" more on the aspect of "living with media", their reflected and critical use. Since its foundation, the Europaschule has worked with learning plans that are aimed at different learning needs and enable self-directed and individualised learning. For us the question arose how digital learning opportunities could be integrated into these learning plans. This led to a new focus on digital media: How can they be used to realise a higher level of differentiated learning? This school development focus of the Europaschule should be further developed together with schools from other European countries. With the schools from Poland, Estonia, Spain, Latvia and the Netherlands, partner institutions were found which, on the one hand, described the use of digital media as a current school development priority and, on the other hand, already had practical experience in this area. The project partners agreed on the objectives: • Exchange on the use and application of digital media and services in schools • Development of learning opportunities for individualised learning • Training of pupils as media experts who pass on their knowledge peer-to-peer at their schools to their fellow pupils In order to achieve these goals, transnational working groups were formed in which the colleagues concretised the issue of individualised digital learning opportunities for the subjects mathematics and English. This was done by developing digital offers together with pupils or testing them with groups of pupils at the participating schools. At the project meetings, these experiences were then evaluated and arrangements and responsibilities for the next step of the project work were agreed. It was important to us that the working groups included colleagues from the respective faculties. This also ensured that the students could be integrated into the conferences. As a result of these working groups, a wide variety of learning materials for selected subject areas in the subjects English and Mathematics are available. To provide a framework for these, a database was developed (http://santbonaventura.org/app/en/login) into which the individual exercises and offers were integrated. Exercises can be entered into this database by the individual countries. The database is designed to be open so that in the future, further subject areas can be opened up and filled with material that has been created by the participants themselves or is already available on the Internet. The technical procedures are explained with tutorials, so that administrative activities can be easily implemented. In order to bring the pupils into direct contact with each other and to implement the training of media experts, two "DigiCamps" were organised as part of the project. A total of 26 pupils and 1 - 2 teachers for each country took part in these pupils' meetings. These "DigiCamps" were subsequently rated extremely positively by both the pupils and the accompanying teachers. The joint work on the content "Digital Media" combined with the corresponding cultural programme led to an intensive exchange of ideas, some of which resulted in friendships that were cultivated at a much later stage. However, the fact that the implementation of these "media experts" in the participating schools and the peer-supported teaching of media education was not as systematic and sustainable as planned at the beginning of the project must be criticised. In this area we will have to work more intensively in future as a school development task. The acceptance of digital media for individualised learning and the insight into the sense and necessity of such offers has increased significantly at the Europaschule since the beginning of the project. Not least because of the school closures due to Corona, digital learning offers have become an almost self-evident supplement to conventional classroom teaching. Nevertheless, it must also be said that the fact that the last project meeting had to take place as a video conference due to Corona had a very negative effect on the completion of the project. The exchange about the final evaluation was much less intensive than the coordinating school had hoped for.