Teachers nation and European wide discuss a lot about using technology in various ways in teaching. Also the new Finnish core curriculum emphasizes the use of technology, new software and applications in all teaching and also collaboration between different subjects. The target of the project partners is to create innovative art and technology-based pedagogical and didactic methods in music education. Students will gain skills in technology and music which will have a significant impact in their future and carriers. The project includes music technology, song writing, dancing & robots designing & technology and our project will be a two year project for tenth class / second year students (15 to 17 years old). During the first year we will teach the students basics of music technology – recording combined to song writing & tutorial videos of the process. Second year focus will be on combining dancing and robots using previous year's recordings. In the first year of the project the students will learn how to use different kinds of tools in music technology – recording, producing and arranging, and they will also be creative using basic tools of song writing – composing skills, lyric writing, arranging. As a final product we want to make a good quality recording of the original music students have made and also publish videos of the process. In the second year new students will be chosen for the project. They will learn about programming and how to build "dancing robots". Ulm has a strong base and knowledge of programming and building robots. Our goal is to adjust the dancing robots to the choreography made and rehearsed by the dancers in Kuopio. The music they will use is the music we have recorded with the students in the first year. Thus, the recordings made will work as a great link between the first year and the second year and between the dancing and high technology. Participating students will improve significantly their key competences like digital skills, critical thinking and collaborative working skills. In addition they will have a chance to work collaboratively on an international platform which will help them improving their knowledge of foreign languages, communication skills, problem solving and collaborative working abilities which will strengthen their future skills in the world of work. The students will get a chance to make new friends by working both in a local school team and in the bilateral team which improves their tolerance of differences and understanding of the common European citizenship. Participating teachers will improve their vocational and training skills, learn and test novel and innovative pedagogical and didactical teaching methods and will enlarge their occupational horizons. Furthermore the teachers will significantly improve their language capabilities and implementation and management skills. As an impact of the project the teachers will improve their knowledge of the European Union, its partner countries and as a consequence they will have more tolerance to differences and to foreign cultures. Also the knowledge of national education systems in partner countries will be enhanced due to the project through which the teachers will gain notably more motivation for their job and schoolwork. The project website will be maintained at the website of the coordinating school. Both schools consider international and European collaboration valuable and indispensable to the continuous development of the schools which is why the schools are committed to maintain the information publicly available for the period demanded in the grant application and also beyond it. The social media contents and platforms created during the project will likewise be maintained during the project and also after the end of the EU funding. To ensure the widest possible transnational use and dissemination the videos are in English in order for them be used by the international community. We aim at drafting also all written pedagogical material and documents in English to ensure intercultural and as wide distribution and usability as possible. With the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the project results the pedagogical content and outputs will be included to the curriculum of both partner schools to the largest extent possible. We aim at providing the new pedagogical skills to several teachers and other staff members of each school during the implementation of the project, and by doing this aim at a long-lasting uplift of pedagogical quality and innovativeness of teaching at our schools. Furthermore, we aim at disseminating the pedagogical knowledge inside the partner schools through future in-service training and tutor teacher model. The tutor teacher model is an important part of the new Finnish core curriculum and it will be promoted at both partner schools during the project lifetime and beyond.
The starting point and the aim of the project to create novel cross-sectoral pedagogical content in an international sphere, and with these raise the pedagogical and methodological skills of our teaching staff. Moreover, our aim was to boost our students´ skills in their own field of expertise (music, composing, arranging, dance, technology, robotics and/or programming) as well as increase our students´ cross-sectoral skills in new fields of expertise. Technological skills are a must in the creative industry even now and above else in the future world of work of our students. The project combined music technology, composition and arrangement of songs, dancing, robots design, programming and technology. Target groups of the project were students (15 to 17 years old), teachers and the families of the students. The focus of the first year was teaching the students basics of music technology i.e. composing, arranging and producing recordings applying technological tools as well as tutorial videos of the learning process. The focus of the second year focus was to create dance choreographies, dance presentations, robot building and robot programming to match the dance choreographies, and using previous year's recordings. There were 4 Learning, Teaching and Training periods in our project, two in Kuopio and two in Ulm, each one with 3 teachers and 12 students travellilng. Participating students improved significantly their key competences like digital skills, critical thinking and collaborative working skills. In addition, they got the chance to work collaboratively on an international platform, which will improved their knowledge of foreign languages, communication skills, problem-solving and teamwork skills. All these strengthened their skills for the the future world of work. The students got a chance to make new friends by working both their local school team and in the bilateral team. This improved their tolerance of differences and understanding of the common European citizenship. Participating teachers´ vocational and training skills improved during the project, in addition to which they learned and tested novel and innovative pedagogical and didactical teaching methods. Also the teachers were able to significantly improve their language capabilities as well as implementation and management skills. As an impact of the project the teachers improved also their knowledge of the European Union, its partner countries and European cultures. The project had significant value added to our two partner schools´ curriculum development via the novel pedagogical innovations. Project website will be maintained at the website of the coordinating school. Both schools consider international and European collaboration valuable and indispensable to the continuous development of the schools, which is why the schools are committed to maintain the information publicly available for the period demanded in the grant application and also beyond it. The social media contents and platforms created during the project will likewise be maintained during the project and also after the end of the EU funding. To ensure the widest possible transnational use and dissemination the videos are in English in order for them be used by the international community. Also the pedagogical materials and documents were drafted in English to ensure intercultural and as wide distribution and usability as possible. Moreover, pedagogical knowledge will be passed on to other teachers of our partner schools through future in-service training and tutor teacher model. Link to the project homepage: https://lumit.onedu.fi/verkkojulkaisut/zine/17/cover Youtube introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCAbgs4Zbc0