This project intends to deal with pupils coming from disadvantaged groups at school (migrants, refugees, roma, students with disabilities…) and to focus on enhancing inclusion and integration of them, trying to fight dropout, demotivation, students’ discontinuity in attending lessons, low level of competences, social uneasiness and commuting. We aim to use new pedagogical strategies, methods and materials in the classroom of the partner schools so as to enrich the curriculum of each school for students with special educational needs and students that belong to disadvantaged groups by acquiring and/or improving their ICT competences. Europe is facing many challenges lately, including increasing intolerance, xenophobia, prejudice and exclusion towards minority ethnic and religious groups. We in this consortium believe that school in collaboration with families of course, is the main place to promote to the pupils, values like unity, diversity, tolerance, empathy and also to encourage them to show greater social responsibility and a greater sense of initiative and resourcefulness in the school, in the family, in the local and European community. All schools partners are facing similar issues but maybe of different nature each. This project proposes the tools in schools themselves and also in local communities that act to address issues of social inclusion and students' dropout. We aim to raise awareness about the importance of integration through innovative and non-formal teaching/learning materials and to highlight the importance of ICT and web technologies as a means of social equality and active citizenship as well as to increase the students’ key competences of communication in foreign languages, digital, civic and social skills. We also aim to investigate in scientific terms the reasons that disadvantaged groups of students feel excluded of the school environment and to support schools to early school leaving. We want to make the community aware of the problem and to actively take part in the solution. In the different stages of this project, we will have the participation of stakeholders, specially the parents’ associations and the local authorities of each school. They can play an important role in international meetings, surveys and in the analysis of the results as well as in the dissemination, by working the results with other parents (parents’ association) and establishing a community plan to help future kids to acquire important civic and social values. The project involves directly 40 teachers and 60 students in the teaching/training activities, 12 in the Transnational Project Meeting. We also estimate to involve 3000 participants in the total amount of schools that they actively participate in some of our activities and also be benefited by our dissemination activities regarding our results. The participants profile have to follow some basic characteristics like a good background in ICT, willingness to learn new things and contribute with new ideas and of course a strong commitment of participating in follow up and dissemination activities. It would be also good to have a previous experience in European projects and a previous experience in dealing with pupils with fewer opportunities. Activities were designed to achieve the objectives of the project and they were established having in mind the needs of our schools. We intend to investigate the reasons our “high risk” students who do not get properly integrated in the school environment by building and apply questionnaires to the students of our schools that will lead to a scientific article. We intend to create a collection of digital products such as videos, Lesson/Activity Plans, documentary in order to promote social inclusion and share open and innovative practices. By preparing and involving students to a Youth Forum, organizing Volunteer and Community days and training courses for students, we aim to promote integration in schools and at the same time fight early school leaving. All the work of this partnership is based on an ongoing effective cooperation and communication between partners using different communication technology. The expertise of the partners selected was complementary to the needs of the project. Monitoring and evaluation will be used in the continuous process of assessing the progress made towards stated objectives, so that gaps between the original project plan and the actual achievements can be identified and corrected. A detailed dissemination plan designed to promote a continuous exchange of information. The project is expected to contribute to raise awareness mainly of pupils but also and other stakeholders (families, schools’ communities and societies across Europe). This project is being considered as an opportunity for transnational cooperation of students and teachers from different countries but with the same needs for integration disadvantaged students in school communities and therefore in societies.
This project focuses on the topic of inclusion. During 2 years, pupils have worked collaboratively with different methodologies,using ICT and the English language. They have produced different kinds of outputs, concerning gender equality, nationality, disability, social disadvantages, giving a constant feedback to their partners. The collaborative work has been done on virtual meetings using the eTwinning platform but also during the 4 face-to-face meetings, held in Poland, Portugal, Norway and Italy. It involved directly 40 teachers and 60 students in the teaching/training activities and 12 teachers in the Transnational Project Meeting. Around 3000 people were also involved in the total amount of schools, including students, teachers, parents, stakeholders, local communities’ agencies, tv-channel and local newspapers, adults in general interested in the themes of the project. This involvement (around 500 people in each country) has been promoted during the different project activities, with different levels: parents and local community during the mobilities, by hosting the partners and by participating in the many activities; local stakeholders during the volunteer day, the adult training about inclusion and the Youth Forum; other members have been involved on the participation on the media (local and social media. And, most of all, the activities had a great impact at school, directly and indirectly, by changing behaviors and by promoting a better understanding between students and teachers as well. The students and teachers participated in blended mobilities, short –term exchanges of groups of pupils working in international groups, and in different local activities in each country. The project has started with the first meeting which was a Staff Training Event held in Greece. There, 2 teachers were trained on research methodology and the guidelines on building a questionnaire about integration have been outlined. A socio-demographic questionnaire that has been created by the partners under the guidance of a professor of Democritus University of Thrace, was applied to 70 students from each school aged 16-17 during the first year of the project. Teachers directly involved in the project inserted the answers to SPSS files and the coordinator team sent them to the professor. The results were analyzed during the first months of the second year of the project and shared with the teachers in Italy. The conclusions were written in an article that has been sent to “European Journal of Education Sciences” ( http://ejes.eu ) and is only waiting to be published. In this meeting 2 mascots were also created for each country, as a symbol of people from disadvantaged groups. These mascots became the permanent participants in every mobility during the two years, spreading the message of Inclusion. In the second meeting in Poland - a blended mobility - the participants students took part in the integration workshop where they were inspired and wrote the plot of 5 stories about Inclusion. These stories were the base of 2 other activities that were done in next mobilities. In Poland the students also composed and wrote the lyrics from the anthem of the project. During the third meeting in Portugal -a blended mobility and the last one of the project’s first year - the students worked in mixed groups designed and created the actors, selected the music and recorded a Stop Motion Video using web 2.0 tools and their mobile devices, based on each one of the stories created in Poland. They also participated in a European Youth Forum held in Miranda do Corvo city hall, where all the students have presented a lecture of 5 minutes about Inclusion. After them, representatives of three institutions that work on inclusion, shared their thoughts about the subject. In the fourth meeting - the first one of the project’s second year - held in faraway Norway, the students finalized their work on the comics (a Comic for each story created in the previous mobilities), developed a multilingual dictionnaire about inclusion. participated in the international day over freedom and equality (among with Sámi students) and experienced everyday life of Norwegians. Before the meeting in Italy, the students using eTwinning had started the preparation of the tv-shots that promotes the values of inclusion. During and after the meeting - the final one with students - the students managed to finish them and since then, they are used in every dissemination event and show the meaning of this project. The last meeting of the project was the TPM in Turkey were the participants teachers met for the last time and worked in order to finalize the project’s work. During these two years numerous activities such as workshops, Inclusion games, disseminations events, voluntary days, sharing of good practices and cultural and history activities and visits were organised in order to share experiences, learn and shared the message of Inclusion.