In the World of today, we are in need of teaching academic information to our students. Youth can develop in only one way, academic success. Besides academic education, teenagers are bound to technology, and this situation force them to be in a dilemma between academic success and technology. Parents want them to study all the time, however students want to surf on the net and play video games. As a result of this, we have a generation who is unaware of the world spinning around them. They don’t care about the environment and society, and most teenagers are techology freaks. This screen-boundness affects them in a bad way, and causes some issues such as losing empathy skills, anger, having little interest in books, arts and sport. The active participation in society is poor, the students develop lack of self-confidence and health problems as eye deformities, obesity and problems with posture. These are common and serious problems of our countries and Europe in general. When we consider our partnership, each country has their own background, life style, culture, attitudes to life; also every school has their own system, methodology, ways of teaching, different student profiles. But we all have the same problem; pupils are bound to technology and they are isolated from society. We need a generation, who takes active citizenship and knows how to live in Europe and in the World. By organizing this project in a strong communication and interaction with the other partners, we are trying to gain a generation, who will be aware of their morals, values, success in social inclusion, toleranze to different cultures and innovations. Our main goal in this project is to help teenagers, be aware of themselves in social life; and also to minimize their boundness to technology. How? By the activities which will help teenagers be more active in society and gain communication skills such as being face to face, not only chatting on an electronical device. That’s how we group our activities; music activities, sport activities, art activities, drama activities and International night activities. These activities help them raise the interest of social events such as; the nature, music, art, sports. Our project includes both students and teachers and moreover youth workers, civil community organizations and youth leaders. Furthermore, in our target group, the students in all partner countries, who have social, economical and educational obstacles will be included in the project. All students will be under the effect of the project somehow, but there will be a selection for the project meetings and the number of the students. For the aim of achieving the goals we set, activities that will be available during and after the project. In our project, there will be three kinds of activities; -Project management and implementation activities; -Problems that youth face, such as lack of empathy skills, tolerance, anger-control. With the implementation of the project, the students will use ICT and they will learn how to coope with emotional problems, like assertiveness and aggression, and they will learn how to think about, discuss, communicate and work together with other mates from different countries. This will qualify them and provide them with life-long learning abilities. -Dissemination activities, that will be carried out after the implementation of the project are: -interactive web-site Sustainability: -Seminars for other teachers. With the implementation of the project, the students will use ICT and they will learn how to coope with emotional problems, like assertiveness and aggression, and they will learn how to think about, discuss, communicate and work together with other mates from different countries. This will qualify them and provide them with life-long learning abilities. We will organize activities concerned with the education to the active citizenship. Students will meet the Major and the local administrators, and they will know all the services that the town offers. They will meet the representatives of associations that work in the territory. Activities with the Parents Association will be organized. All the activities, results, documents will be shared with the Partner schools. Our project's activities will contain all necessary phases: implementation, monitoring, evaluation and dissemination of the project results. We will realize joint projects, teachers and students' mobilities, CLIL, ICT-based methods, peer learning, work in national and international groups, etc. The impact of our project will be that teachers and students in the future will be more open to innovations, new changes, eager to work in international groups together with local authorities and educational government. The project activities will be continued even after the EU funds will end.
The five partner schools in project Square Eyed Students are very different, when it comes to size, cultural background, teaching methods and possibilities. We have one thing in common though, our teenagers share the same interest and addiction to digital devices. The fact, that they live the most of their awaken day online, brings advantages and disadvantages into their lives. From the beginning of our cooperation, we have been interested in creating a project, that gives our teenagers possibility to make friendships, and be together in real life. We decided to make activities where focus was on digital addiction and we made activities, that gave alternatives to digital life, such as art workshops, music and theatre workshops. One of the main objectives of the project Square Eyed Students was to make students reflect on their screen habits in order to avoid digital addiction. Another goal was to qualify the use of screens and digital devices, so students developed digital skills, that goes further than communication on social media. At our first transnational meeting, we discussed how to assure the quality of the program succesfully at every meeting, so the main objectives of our project were carried out every time we met. At every student meeting, we held workshops with a digital content. In Turkey, we prepared role-plays about digital addiction, that students presented to each other. In Croatia, students tried programming with micro-bits in Estonia they built their hometowns in Minecraft and in Hungary they tried to work with robotics. Between the meetings, we carried out activities, to make the student think about how they used their screens, Especially the activity, Screen-free day had a great impact on our students. The entire school didn't use screens at all, for an entire day. They had to involve their families at home and the other students at school. It was very interesting to hear the comments from the students at morning assembly the next day. The directly involved students interviewed their classmates and shared their English evaluation and reflections with their international friends, through videos. In the evaluations after our first student meeting in Turkey, we realized, that students tended to work in groups with students of own nationality. We have always agreed, that a main focus should be on the development of English language and the cultural awareness of other cultures. This is the reason why, we decided, that students should live with private host families during the mobilities. This has involved the families much more and even parents have developed their language, because the wanted to be kind and welcoming host families. From our second student meeting, we have always made mixed groups of students as well as we begun every day with icebreakers lead by different partners. This turned out to be really good for the students, who got to know each other much more. We have seen, that they continue the communication up to, during- and after a mobility. Their English language, written as well as oral, has improved a lot. It has been different, from country to country, how we have chosen the participating students. At our first Transnational meeting, we discussed the procedure, and agreed, that students should write motivated applications. We also agreed, that it could be possible, to ask a student to go, if we as teachers/ coordinators could see, that this student really needed this project because of bad screen habits and the consequences of that. We have successfully led several of these kinds of students through this project. Students who uses too much time at home, sitting alone in front of the computer, having obesity, suffering from loneliness or having other social problems. The coordinators have participated in every mobility, but different teachers from our schools have been represented. They have been asked to join the project for professional development, and because they had skills that was required at the student meeting they participated in. The Danish Headmistress wrote the lyrics to our project song, so when it was rehearsed and performed in Estonia, a Danish music teacher joined the mobility and led the song workshop. In Estonia, the stencil art workshop was led by the art teacher and a professional artist. We have always done our best to have a high professional level, where everyone does his best, to make the project great.