A problem felt in Europe and in the schools of the Partnership is the growing lack of interest in the study of scientific and technological subjects. Our students are heavily and daily involved in technology, more as passive users than as developers of scientific and technological tools. Our belief is that this mainly depends on the misrepresented view of mathematics, often proposed as a sterile set of rules and theorems, totally detached from common practice. The PRO.MATH.EU.S project partners agree that working on the study of Mathematics will consequently raise the basic skills. The target age group is 14-16 years old. There are four partnership schools. The I.I.S. "A.Volta", coordinator of the project, is a technical-scientific institute of higher education of about 1400 students, regional reference for Educational Robotics thanks to the numerous years of experience in competitions and awards obtained in the field. The Szkola Podstawowa w Psarach is a comprehensive institute of 350 students located in a rural area interested in learning more about digital education. The Liceul Teoretic Grigore Moisil Timisoara is a secondary school with 1800 students whose main specializations are Mathematics and Computer Science with experience in Robotics. The Daugavpils Valsts Gimnazija is a higher education institution of 340 students whose main courses are Mathematics and Science. During the first year of the project students in cooperative learning will create animations, videos with real human characters, virtual characters or humanoid robots. The purpose of each video is to show ,in the form of captivating stories, conceived by the students themselves, how to apply Mathematics to problems of daily life. A dedicated online platform will be built in English where the videos produced by the students of all the partners will be uploaded. They themselves will provide continuous feedback on teaching efficacy thanks to satisfaction tests and the assessments of acquired skills. The Polish school will organize a Mathematics Symposium to agree on the Syllabus of the skills to be developed, and training on video-making. IIS A. Volta will host the mobility phase in the field of robotics training. The Romanian school will take care of training on animation software. The "Promatheus Contest" will then be organized. It will consists in a competition that will take place during the second year of the project, when the teams challenge each other with video shots according to themes chosen by the project teams. The videos , available on the online platform, will be evaluated by the non-challenged students ,proclaiming the winners. The Latvian school, expert in organizing international competitions, will host the final round of the Contest and the "Festa della Matematica" :the award ceremony for winners, with workshops, seminars and student presentations. We expect that: • the partnership increases the responsibility of pupils in the care of learning key competences (Communication in foreign languages, mathematical competence and basic skills in science and technology, Digital competence); • the partnership offers a possibility of profitable long-term relationships among the participants schools, expanding the knowledge and understanding of people, places and cultures; • the motivation to study Mathematics increases in the students involved (both creators and users of the videos) also for the following years; • there is vertical and horizontal contamination in the classes; • the method can be increasingly successful in the coming years, encouraging pupils and teachers to continuously improve. The e-learning platform will be open to schools that want to consult it. The didactic paths developed, thanks to the video-lessons, will be available to the students and maths teachers of the partner schools also in the years following the project, as well as the tests used to verify the effectiveness of the training. Thanks to a dedicated website, even after the end of the project, the "PROMATHEUS Contest" competitions will be promoted each year in partner schools and other local schools. We also plan to involve Mathematics education research institutions in order to validate the method's effectiveness by scientifically analyzing the results of the tests obtained. Teachers of Mathematics, but in general all teachers of other disciplines that will be contaminated, will be more motivated to use innovative approaches, methods and techniques, increasing the use of computers and various computer technologies. On the other hand, the students will have the opportunity to be actively involved in cooperative learning by carrying out activities that can contribute to the development of their digital skills as well as the English language.
According to several studies, the lack of interest in the study of scientific and technological subjects is due to the distorted view of the scientific discipline par excellence, Mathematics, often proposed as a sterile set of rules and theorems, totally detached from common practice. The "A.Volta" Institute of Pescara in Italy, leader, Szkola Podstawowa w Psarach in Poland, Liceul Teoretic "Grigore Moisil" of Timisoara in Romania, Daugavpils Valsts Gimnazija in Latvia are educational institutions always involved in the promotion of technical culture and scientific in their students and in their territories, therefore they wanted to establish the Pro.Math.Eu.S. partnership with the following objectives: • increase the motivation to study Mathematics in the students involved • improve their key competences (Communication in foreign languages, mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology, digital competence); • broaden the knowledge and understanding of people, places and cultures; • contaminate vertically and horizontally in the classrooms; • create a successful method in the years to come by encouraging pupils and teachers to continuously improve. The age range of the target students involved was 12-16 years. In the first year of the project the students produced videos that showed in captivating forms how to apply Maths to problems of everyday life. Different tools and languages were used in each mobility. Starting from the scripts written directly by them, the boys were the direct protagonists in the videos made in Poland, they made animations in Romania, they used robots to talk about Maths to their peers in Italy. In each meeting, the teachers were committed to raising the quality levels of the project. In Poland, the Symposium of Maths teachers and training in video-making for students were organized. The Symposium produced a common syllabus of Maths skills on which all schools could compare. The Romanian school organized training on animation software, transforming scripts in a fast and fun way. The IIS A.Volta hosted the robotics training with the support of many experienced students. A dedicated online e-learning platform in Moodle was also built in English, used to test the didactic effectiveness of the videos. The second year of the project was unfortunately marked by the pandemic and it was not possible to implement the planned activities. The extension of another year gave way to organize the "Promatheus Contest", an online competition in three challenges that saw the teams of students from the partner schools compete against each other with the production of videos according to the Maths themes chosen by the Project Team. The final should have ended in the mobility in Latvia, but this, unfortunately, also due to the pandemic did not take place. Alternatively, the partnership decided for a virtual mobility in which the Latvian school organized workshops, seminars on Mathematics and student presentations, online logic games and the last challenge of the Contest in which spectators were able to vote for their favorite videos and elect the winning team of the Contest. Through the e-learning platform,120 students from the partnership's schools watched the videos produced in the project and Math tests on the same topic as the videos were administered before and after the viewing. Comparing the results of the tests before and after, an increase in performance from 5.3 to 6.7 points was found, demonstrating the effectiveness of the videos with statistical significance p<0.01 Given the profitable results, the partners will continue to collaborate on new projects and the teachers of Maths have discovered new strategies to motivate their students to study by contaminating their knowledge with other disciplines. The students, both producing and watching the videos, have enjoyed new aspects of Maths, the ones writing scripts or being selected for the mobility have disseminated their new passion for mixing different subjects, the desire to know new cultures, experimenting with their language and customs has infected many students of the partnership and the aim of European students more aware of the importance of union has certainly been achieved in the partnership. The e-learning platform will be open to schools who want to consult it. The didactic paths developed thanks to the video-lessons are available to the pupils and Maths teachers of the partner schools also in the years following the project, as well as the tests used to verify the training effectiveness. A dedicated YouTube channel hosts the videos made, and a website summarizes the characteristics of the project and illustrates the activities carried out in detail. The "Promatheus Contest" competitions will be promoted every year in the partner schools and in the other territorial schools. In addition, research institutions of Mathematics teaching will be involved in order to validate the effectiveness of the method.