“New methodologies to avoid early school leaving” is the name chosen for our project as a response to the increasing drop out rate and the decreasing motivation of pupils. We have to involve pupils in the learning process and assume that the teacher isn’t the only source of information. Modern learning is a great option to increase the interest of young people to study. Moreover, new learning apps, digital materials, new subjects as robotics, 3D printing, new methodologies such as Flipped classrooms are becoming a trend in education and a must in society. The idea emerged from a previous project with Croatia. We were discussing about the situations in our schools and found that we had similar problems. As cooperation was proved to be very beneficial for both countries and a strong professional relationship has been formed we decided to seek ways to solve problems and start a project where we could find solutions and meet other partners who could help us and share knowledge with each other. The focus of our project is making learning attractive for our students by using new technology and digital tools and to give teachers the means needed to achieve this goal. Therefore one of the goals was to involve these students in the project to promote inclusion and equity and to prevent their early school leaving. Our priorities are then to support schools to tackle early school leaving and disadvantage, To develop open and innovative practices in a digital era and to promote the acquisition of skills and competences. Some other objectives are: - to support the innovation and creativity in didactic activities - exchange of good practices and creation of networks between schools - schools development and updating - fostering peer learning During this project we aim at promoting digital learning and new methods among students and teachers with activities that can draw their attention to these methodologies as well as familiarising them with apps, 3D printing and robotics used by their peers in other countries while they discover other cultures and speak English at the same time. Finally, our aim is to include new methods in our curriculums by organising international workshops for students and teachers. Different areas will be involved and this will be innovation in each school. We used E-twinning and contacts from previous Erasmus projects to look for schools that seek solutions to similar problems and offer varied examples of this type of initiatives. Finally the partners in our project are: Spain with Experience coordinating Erasmus + project and digital learning, CLIL, the use of apps for teaching. Croatia: Previous experience in projects and in need of acquiring knowledge about new technologies and methods of teaching. Latvia: Educational Apps and 3D Printing. Greece: Robotics. Hungary: Flipped Classrooms and Peer learning. Italy: CLIL, Cinema,making videos. All the students in the schools involved will benefit from our project indirectly in one way or another. So approximately 3000 students and 200 teachers will be involved. But only 3 students and 2 teachers per school will go to the Short term exchanges. A high percentage are students with fewer opportunities such as cultural or social differences and economic obstacles. Parents, local associations and governments will also take part in the activities. Methodology: Nowadays It is an old fashioned mistake to consider teachers as the only source students learn from. Students learn from each other too. This is now reinforced with techniques such as collaborative and peer-to-peer learning. They enable students to take part in the learning process themselves, not only receiving but also sharing their knowledge. The joint of these methodologies with new technologies will be one of the key concepts of the methodology used in our project. The work to be done in the International Learning Activities will be organized in: Formative Activities. Students will be given information related to the topic in each international exchange. Workshops. They will put into practice the acquired knowledge. Exhibitions of the results, Visits and Assessment. Some of the results expected will be direct products of the activities such us the exhibitions, the flipped classrooms website, 3D objects, robotics, etc. And others will be the knowledge and experience gained by the participants. These activities will have impact at different levels and times, some of them long term. Students will change their attitude and feel more interested in learning realizing that they are better prepared to find a job due to their improvement in linguistic and digital competence. Teachers will increase their motivation to learn English and ICT to be better qualified and take part in future projects. Schools will offer an innovative approach offering a more attractive programme based on a project task based methodology. E-twinning will be used as an effective working tool.
he idea of this project came up as a response to the increasing drop out rate and the decreasing motivation of pupils. We have to involve pupils in the learning process and assume that the teacher isn’t the only source of information. Modern learning could be a great option to increase the interest of young people to study. Moreover, new apps in learning, digital materials, new subjects as robotics, 3D printing, new methodologies such as Flipped classrooms and innovations are becoming a trend in education and a must in society. The focus of our project has been making learning attractive for our students with disadvantaged backgrounds and with special needs by using new technology and digital tools and to give teachers the means needed to achieve this goal. Therefore one of the goals has been to involve these students in the project to promote inclusion and equity and to prevent their early school leaving. Through these activities we have raised the students' European awareness and make them successful European citizens by jointly work in the workshops and formative activities organized in the International Study Visits. Objectives - to support the innovation and creativity in didactic activities; implementation of innovative strategies - fostering peer learning • the development of social and intercultural skills and a European Awareness of community • the improvement of language skills • the reduction of disparities between students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who are better off • the development of digital skills by using modern technologies: • the development of intercultural skills as well as a European sense of community and the promotion of e-twinning at schools • the improvement of personal and professional training and the exchange of knowledge between European teachers • the creation of synergies between secondary and vocational schools, • the dissemination of the project’s findings to the public, the Ministry of Education, town halls, other schools • improved educational opportunities and additional job perspectives · Increasing the European dimension of our organizations On the one hand, the activities has been integrated in the school curriculum, that means that all the students in the groups or classes involved in the project have participated and they did the activities planned in each school. More than 400 students and 100 teachers have been directly involved in the project activities in the different schools. Nevertheless, only some of these students and teachers were selected to go to the Short term exchanges to do the activities planned for each meeting. An average of 4 students and 2, 3 teachers have participated in each of the meetings. 40 teachers have also had the possibility of taking part in transnational meetings. There have been four Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils in Italy, Hungary, Greece and Latvia. We worked with educational video editing and new methodos of learning as Two voices lesson in Italy. The meeting in Hungary was about flipped classrooms and educational apps which let our students create innovative lessons about general topics worked at schools. Athens held the meeting about robotics where students presented some devices putting in common their previous work at schools. The last meeting was in Latvia where students had the opportunity to work with 3d printing and they worked on a new business prototype All the short-term exchanges have followed the same pattern which included a formative activity, workshop, cultural visits and presentations made by students. The outputs of this project have been very varied including the work done by students related to educational videos, booktrailers, tutorials about using robotics devices, lessons based on flipped classrooms, presentations about each country made by students, 3d products which can be shared to the motivational purpose at school level. There have been many outcomes during the projects. Students and teachers have been working with new educational tools and their ICT skills have been reinforced gaining new knowledge in many of them. This project has had a huge impact in all the schools due to the cooperation among partners and the exchange of good practices. All schools have had the opportunity to involve many students and teachers in new methods of learning and it has been very beneficial for the community. Thanks to the budget of the project we have aqquired new materials in robotics and 3D printing to be used in our lessons implementing new techniques and methods. In a short future there will be many teachers collaborating and working with the results of this project, using the website, implementing new classes with the knowledge acquired, creating new environments with robotics devices and using 3d printer. A new project with a Primary school from our city has been approved, so in a long term there will be many benefits and we have overcome many hurdles we had in the past.