Today’s global, competitive and rapidly changing world needs young people who are flexible, active, innovative and creative in problem solving and decision making, who can communicate effectively and work collaboratively. It needs young people to develop their potential as individuals and to be prepared for the unique demands of the 21st century world. The ability to communicate is important in order to be able to operate effectively in the real World In order to improve students’ oral skills in an innovative and effective way and prepare them to deliver a good speech, as teachers in the schools involved in the Project we have decided to make use of TEDtalks, as an educational tool and medium inside and outside the classroom. Currently many teachers have already started to use them because they present a variety of subjects in an accessible format, have very user-friendly website with subtitles and the lenght of the time varies from 5 to 30 minutes. “Be interesTED Project” is designed to embed TED Talks into academic curriculum since TED Talks provide for students an engaging context from which they can autonomously improve their English. They can help students improve, not only their listening skills, but also improve their pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and writing and presentation skills. Teenagers, being the ‘YouTube generation’, also find them highly engaging and motivating. Our partnership consists of Turkey, Portugal, Italy, Latvia and the Czeck Republic . Partner schools were chosen among previous Comenius, Erasmus+ and e twinning projects. Our partners are experienced in EU Projects. During our previous EU projects, the most common problem we observed was that nearly all students had low communicative skills with high level of anxiety before their oral presentations even if they were choosen among students having high grades. The education policy of “Be interesTED Project” will address; - to increase entrepreneurship and oral presentation skills , - to develop transversal skills such as multilangualism, digital skills and innonative students-centred pedegogical approaches - to contribute the attainment of young people particularly, those at the risk of early school leaving and with low basic skills by increasing school motivation, understanding the importance of communication skills, focusing on meaningful learning. The aims of “be interesTED” Project are ; • To improve oral presentation skills of the students and prepare them to the real world ; • To help students to collect, inquire, organize and construct information, • To analyze most popular TED talks and create TED like talks • To enhance team work, • To prepare students to deliver a good speech • To help students become active and autonomous learners. • To develop communicative competences among at least 500 students in seven European schools by the end of 2019. • To create a common sense of European Citizenship based on understanding and being tolerant towards the difference between cultures, people and religions. • To increase entrepreneurship and communicative skills among 82 students. We will succeeed in our goals with the help of setting TED club in schools, organizing workshop to analyze TED talks and to create TED like talks, Lesson plans, be interesTED events, playing simulation games on the problems of Europe, active citizenship, making Street reportages, organizing local events and debates during the mobilities on the problems of Europe such as global warming, intercultural heritage, refugees,. During the project, innovative and student-centred pedegogical aproach will be used. Holistic approach will be used in assessing a student’s performance based on the content and the delivery of their presentation. Students are encouraged to search for solutions to real-world problems, and thus, they are engaged in transformative learning, leading to critical and analytical thinking.
Our project aimed at improving oral presentation skills of the students and preparing them to the real world, helping them to collect, inquire, organize and construct information, creating TED like talks, enhancing team work, preparing them to deliver a good speech and helping them become active and autonomous learners as well as offering our students a chance to explore different facets of cultural diversity in the modern Europe. All partner schools except for the Czech partner had already cooperated with each other in European projects before. We knew we could work efficiently in this project because of our former collaboration and experiences. In terms of exploring the key concepts of the project, we motivated our students to develop leadership skills thanks to the TED like speeches which gave them the opportunity to find out the topics they really wanted to talk about. This way we were able to involve a great number of students overcoming their fears of public speaking. Each partner school established a TED-Ed Club led by the students, where they periodically met and shared knowledge, exchanged ideas and prepared their TED-Like Talks which they later on performed either at their schools or during mobilities. Through these meetings and discussions, the students were able to share, compare, change and modify their ideas with the help of the others. We have observed that such intense interaction helped them have a better understanding of others and other cultures. According to their answers to the initial and final questionnaire about `fears of giving a public talk`, we can report that students have become much more confident with public speaking and aware of the importance and the need of such a skill in today’s world as the leaders of the future. We prepared satisfaction questionnaires after each LTTA (Latvia, Italy and Germany) and the students provided answers showing that they gained deeper consciousness of multiculturalism and European identity, common European values and breaking down prejudices. They also found the interaction with their peers from various countries very valuable as they were able to brainstorm, compare their views, discover new ways to deal with topics and improve their social and language skills. We truly believe that these genuine encounters helped them to gain more emotional competence and intercultural sensitivity. Intercultural competence supported by the dialogical approach was one of the main objectives of the project that was fully reached during each students’ mobility and this helped them to understand each other’s views and backgrounds better. Thanks especially to the TED city game held in Italy, and the Model United Nations (MUN) conference held in Germany, we watched them learn and widen their perspectives by sharing their views, working in multicultural teams, and learning from each other. We happily observed fruitful and friendly conversations, true tolerance and mutual understanding among students where the feelings of strangeness and otherness were not felt at all. We had 3 LTTA meetings where the students performed their TED-Like Talks and worked on other activities of the meetings, as well as attending international TED-Ed lessons prepared by the teachers of the project’s partner schools. After each meeting, teachers were also asked to fill in a feedback form which confirmed the answers given by the students. It confirmed that all the partners worked in harmony, sharing and caring and that the project was really improving and smoothly giving the expected results and outcomes. We had three Transnational Project Meetings (TPMs), the first of which took place in Turkey, where we participated in a training on `How to use TED Talks in the classrooms and prepare TED-Ed lessons`. The second TPM was held in Portugal at the end of the first year, where we were able to evaluate the activities of the project, plan the future steps, and write the interim report. The last TPM was organized in the Czech Republic at which we shared the final results of the project and worked on the final report. After each mobility a newsletter was prepared by the host schools which not only included the activities held during the meeting, but also showed the progress of the project. We met the objectives described in the application form carefully, which required a lot of planning, preparation and cooperation among partners, not only during the meetings, but throughout the whole project. We can declare that there was good, swift and constant communication, which gave enough support and encouragement to each partner and we felt like a huge family:-) We supported the students not only during regular school lessons but also in the TED-Ed Club activities organized mostly after school. During these activities students had the opportunity to collect ideas and materials for videos and presentations required for the mobilities, as well as watch popular TED Talks and prepare their own speeches