Our school has considerable number of disadvantaged students and family groups. Children of these families, who are mostly divorced are 30% of the pupils in our school. Some of those children work to pay a domestic help in the region out of school time. We have also 25 gipsy students and 18 Syrian ones facing same social exclusion risk. In EU 2020 Strategy, early school leaving rate is expected to be decreased to %10 in education. Because researches show that; people who take poor education due to early school leaving, increase rate of unemployment and cost big to society and public. This situation decreases tax yield and increases the cost of social services(health,help,support etc.). According to Europe Commision 2015 data, if only they can decrease early school leaving rate for 1 point, this can provide half million quality labour force for Europe Economy (Eurostat,2015). But, apart from HR (%2,8) and CZ (%6,7), early school leaving rate in partner schools is still above %10, for 2016. LV (%10,7), HU (%12,5), PT (%13,6), IT (%14,1) ve TR (%34,9) (Eurostat, data extracted in February 2017). On the other hand, students coming from immigrant families(different ethnic groups and refugees) have higher tendency towards early school leaving. Minorities who live in disadvantaged regions are at higher risk of leaving school early. When Pisa 2015 results are analyzed, apart from CZ (%16), disadvantaged student rates in partner countries are above OECD average(%17). IT (%19), HU (%23), LV (%28), PT (%29) and TR (%64) (PISA 2015 National Report, p.39). Early school leaving is a multidimensional problem with various reasons. According to school socialization approach, due to not confronting of learners’ learning needs with school’s structure and academic climate, more students fail and leave school early. In this project, seven different schools from different countries of Europe came together to do some studies about using ICT in education efficiently by considering teacher,student,parent and society components; in order to support “EU aims for decreasing early school leaving rate to %10”, to struggle with factors that lead to disadvantageds, to create a society with increased awareness and to raise a digitally literate generation. In this context,in order to achieve those objectives mentioned above, a blended learning way "Flipped Learning Model "has been chosen. Because in flipped learning model, learner can choose where, when and how to learn, so this model combines out of class learning and intraclass face to face learning activities. Besides, with flipped learning model; abilities like remembering and understanding which are low levels of Bloom Taxonomy can be achieved and also with in class trainings by the teacher, the abilities like applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating which are high levels of Bloom Taxonomy can also be achieved, so Flipped Learning Model is a perfect match for Bloom Taxonomy. Project activities are based on innovative applications for ICT usage in education and transfering those good practices. Project activities are specified in sharing best flipped learning lesson applications with project partners and adapting those activities to all partner schools. As a methodology, based on SWOT analysis findings, benchmarking steps will be followed. In project, 2 short-term joint staff training events, 2 short-term exchanges of groups of pupils, 3 transnational project meetings and lots of seminars will be done. First year, teachers will attend trainings about EU 2020 Education Objectives and PISA 2015 results, flipped learning applications; second year, they will apply flipped learning lessons with students. In the first part of flipped learning which contains transfer of information, students will use web 2.0 tools and social media and in the second part of flipped learning by intraclass group studies, they will learn by living and will be active users. Thus, teachers will gain an international experience. At the end of the project, it is very important to transfer and disseminate the achievements to schools that want to use similar education technology, thanks to a handbook "Designing a Flipped Lesson : Before- During- After" that can be used by many teachers to prepare the Flipping lesson and the platform“Know-How Alliance Platform” which is a free member and can be benefited from many Flipped course scenarios. By partner schools, dissemination activities will gain Europe dimension and will reach broader masses. We believe that our project will give permanent, long term results, will create a huge impact on changing educational politics and will gain a great favor for future both economically and socially will decrease digital divide successfully.
In the project,as we had aimed about in application form ,7 different schools from different countries of Europe came together, did some studies about using ICT in education efficiently by considering teacher,student,parent and society components; to support “EU aims for decreasing early school leaving rate to %10”, to struggle with factors that lead to disadvantageds, to create a society with increased awareness and to raise a digitally literate generation.To achieve those objectives mentioned above, we chose a blended learning way "Flipped Learning Model "which combines out of class learning and intraclass face to face learning activities and a perfect match for levels of Bloom Taxonomy .Project activities were based on innovative applications for ICT usage in education and transfering those good practices. Project activities were specified in sharing best flipped learning lesson applications with project partners and adapting those activities to all partner schools. As a methodology, based on SWOT analysis findings, benchmarking steps were followed. For TPMs that were held for teachers-2 from each country, there was a meeting at the beginning of the 1st year to make clear the activities for this same year to be planned.It helped project partners to get familiar with each other,also was a pre-preparation visit.A detailed work calendar was prepared for all 2 years.All partners reported the SWOT analysis results, made them a common document. Also the plan of dissemination, usage of project results was made up. Expected impacts, outputs were defined and It was considered on how and to whom dissemination would be done.The 2nd meeting was at the beginning of the 2nd year.Evaluation of deviations from the process was done.The 1st year's assessment and the 2nd year's planning were determined.The activities were planned and what to be done until the next staff meeting (C3)was made clear.Finally TPM3 was arranged for recapping of whole project – its activities, outcomes, impact, evaluation, dissemination, etc. It was also used for gathering project documentation and writing of final project report. The LTT1 and LTT2 were short-term joint staff meetings with totally 39 participants while the LTT3 and LTT4 were short-term exchange of pupils with 4 students and 1 accompanying person from each country. In those meetings,we analyzed SWOT analysis results reported at TPM1, presented local/national situations by taking benchmarking teams’ needs into consider, in the light of EU 2020 objectives and PISA 2015 results.Good exercises were experienced among partner schools, opportunities were created for new ideas.Partners had chance to compare education systems.They discussed advantages, disadvantages, good- bad examples and roles of students and teachers in Flipped Learning which is a blended learning way. Participant teachers joined flipped lessons and got trainings firstly, then they performed Flipped Lessons and students attended those flipped classroom in-class activities and caught the team spirit, learned how to work as a team.With their peers, they compared their local and general flipped learning experiences, gained motivation for learning foreign languages with the notion of bravery and entrepreneurship. We made changes about which country would be responsible of creating our project product "Open Education Resource Platform"and being editor of other product " Flipped Learning Lesson Guidance Book". As different from our application form, we gave the task for the handbook to Portuguese team and for the platform Croatian team after evaulation of competences of each partner in the workshops and shared experiences.In the light of all studies, workshops during project process, all project team attended actively on creating the content of guidance handbook- for preparing a flipped lesson- "Designing a Flipped Lesson:Before- During-After" and open education resource which is a free member and can be benefited from many flipped course scenarios “Know-How Alliance Platform”.In project final festival; all works, outputs and project products were exhibited. We presented our 2 project products to all users from all over the world. At the end of the project, we implemented the post-test survey and analysed the results. When we compared the post one with the pre -test that we had implemented at the beginning of the 1st year we saw the conclusions that: -Students learned how to use digitals tools to search information online, use their smartphone to work.They increased the use of internet to study and research, taking notes while watching videos. -Teachers also increased knowledge of how to use digital tools to work with others and knowledge of performing flipped learning.The use of traditional teaching methods have decreased and active methodologies have increased.So, as expected, there´s an increase in ability of using “web 2.0 -3.0” tools and google apps, teachers have used innovative ICT based methodologies.