Partner schools are from Portugal, Turkey, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland and we have met through etwinning.This project will be carried out with students aged 10-14. Other students at schools will be included through dissemination activities. Communication language will be English and provided through Skype and Whatsapp. Documents will be shared through email and drive accounts. There will be 3 teacher trainings and 3 short-term mobility of pupils.For each training, participant teachers will be chosen from those who are volunteer and interested in technology. They will learn and work on; Web 2.0 tools, coding and robotics respectively during these trainings. They will also teach their students at school when they return. Then, 6 students from each school will come together via students mobility and work in teams and share their works to other students at host school. In one mobility 30 students will come together and 90 students will have come together at the end of the project.Trainings will be provided by Portugese partner who is very skilled in these fields.Each school will buy 10 tablets from organizational budget and participants will mostly use these tablets during trainings. Disadvataged students will be prioritized. There are students either immigrant struggling to adapt a different culture or financially having difficulties. Most of their parents don’t pay much attention to education in all partner countries. With this project, we want to raise their interest, raise awareness and give them a opportunity which highly probably get them empolyed in the future.This project will develop their self-confidence. Our purpose in this project is to learn and develop ICT skills; Web 2.0 tools, coding and robotics. Technological items are getting more and more popular and inevitable in education and classrooms. Teachers and students must learn these tools to be efficient during lessons. Also coding is the language of future. Everything is done by robots. To make robots work, we need to program them which means coding them. And robotics is the base of all machines, engineering. Students will be skilled at producing robots and programming them. Besides developing ICT skills, as coding is positively related to maths success, we also aim to increase maths and science success,mathematical and computational thinking. Students will be able to produce something concrete, see the result immediately so they will have more fun during lessons. Also through etwinning projects, students will be very active and prepare projects at other subjects. They will do something different and share their works on different platforms. These studies will motivate them and attact them to school. Technology will be more efficiently used in classrooms. Participants will be able to develop their language skills, speak more fluently. They will develop team work skills, collaboration capacity with international partners which will lead to better internationalization capacity of schools.They will learn different cultures, lifestyles, habits. We need to prepare our students for future skills and increase international cooperation among partners. We will use etwinning and Erasmus+ Results platform. Especially, we will prepare etwinning projects about different school subjects using Web 2.0 tools. Students will also share their coding and robotics works through etwinning. As soon as project is approved, project teams will be formed; budget team, preparation team, dissemination team etc. in each school. During mobilities, host partner will arrange accommodation, transportation and activities. To ensure safety, every participant will have travel insurance and they will be informed about emergency numbers, adresses, climate before mobility. Participants, teachers and students will be informed regularly from start to the end. To evaluate success of the project, we will prepare scales and questionnaires to determine participants knowledge,skills and interest in Web 2.0 tools, coding, robotics, language and cultural characteristics of partners. We will apply the same scales and questionnaires after the last mobility. We will compare the results. Scales and questionnaires will be prepared together with partners.Also we will get self-evaluation report from participants after mobility.They will state their opinion about mobility. Dissemination activities will start as soon as the project is approved. Schools will give information through their own websites. Turkish partners will form a Facebook group and will invite their friends to follow them. Every step will be published through websites and social media. Also local press will informed. We will prepare Erasmus+ corners at our schools and also an Erasmus+ week at the end of the project. We are also planning to publish a book which will be written by students via an etwinning project. They will use Web 2.0 tools from the start of writing stories to the publication.
In November 2018, there was a teacher training activity in Portugal. The training was about Web 2.0 tools. David Costa, an expert in ICT gave this training on these tools at the Portuguese partner school. He showed to the participant teachers how to use and integrate these Web 2.0 tools into their classroom activities. 3 teachers from each partner school took this training. The training lasted 5 days. The first day was a short meeting to talk about project details, programmes of mobilities etc. The ICT expert introduced other teachers to Web 2.0 tools, showed them how they can benefit in their lessons. This training was in the morning of the second, third and fourth day. After lunch break, teachers practised working on the Web 2.0 tool they learned that day. They are now more skilled in preparing more interesting and enjoyable presentations. When they return to their countries, they will give courses to other teachers and students about Web 2.0 tools. Teachers and students will start working on e-twinning projects using these Web 2.0 tools. As soon as all the teachers and students learn these tools, they will be integrated in lessons. When there was some time available the participants visited cultural and historical places around the town. Besides the host partners, participated in this activity Vitor Junqueira the Headmaster of the school; David Costa ICT teacher; João Pereira guide in Vila Real de Santo António provided by the city hall; Carlos do Carmo which guided the participants through Castro Marim and a local artist, Rui Tenório who sang Fado for the partners. In March, there was a short term mobility of pupils in Lithuania. 6 students and 2 teachers from each partner school took part in this mobility. Participants were focused on using Web 2.0 tools. On the 1st day host partner organized a cultural event. Students from each partner school made presentations that introduced themselves and their schools, city and cultural elements. They prepared these presentations with Web 2.0 tools. Before the mobility, partners determined a topic together with students such as environmental issues, renewable energy sources, health issues etc. Students did research about these topics before this mobility. At host school they worked there in mixed teams during their regular classes. One student from each country joined together and formed a team there were 5 teams. They prepared presentations about the topic using the Web 2.0 tools they have learned. After that, students presented their works to other students at school. Teachers didn’t interfere in students’ works but they provided guidance and help when they need. In May 2019, there was a teacher training activity in Poland as planned before. The training was all about Coding Scratch. One of the Portuguese ICT teachers from the Portuguese partner school gave the training. He showed participant teachers (three from each school) how to use coding in their classroom activities. Some of the teachers were new in this project and they used computers during the training. The training lasted five days. On the first day there was a short meeting to talk about some project details and programmes of the mobilities. On the second day the ICT expert introduced to the other teachers the coding programme and the teachers started to explore it and how it works. On the third and fourth days the teachers practised working on the code writing. They learned the basis of programming algorithm. The teachers are now able to give courses to their teachers and students about coding and start working in eTwinning projects. When they learn how to do this, they will be able to integrate it in their lessons. On the last day the Polish team arranged a nice city tour using an App called Actionbound which allowed the partners to get to know the cultural and historical places in a different way. In early November 2019, there was a short term mobility of pupils in North Macedonia, 6 students and 2 teachers from each partner school took part in this mobility. Students were not the same ones from the previous mobilities. The ones chosen were interested in code writing ‘Scratch’. On the first day the host partner organised a cultural event. Students from each partner school made presentations to introduce themselves, their schools, hometowns and cultural icons. Before the mobility, partners agreed on a topic with students to work. It was the same theme but with different approaches: environmental issues, renewable energy sources, health issues etc. Students did researches on their topics before mobility. During mobility, they were joined in mixed teams, again. One student from each country formed a team, there were 5 teams. They worked on code programme (game, application etc.) about the topic with Scratch. They work on this for two days. Teachers worked in e-Twinning platform and worked on project aims. On the 4th day, students did their presentations to other students and teachers at school. Teachers and students also attended presentations about Robotic Hand and Micro bit. On the last day, participants joined a cultural trip to Skopje. They visited cultural and touristic places with the guide of host partner. Participating students and teachers reinforced their ICT and coding skills, their cultural awareness raised, and language/ communication skills were developed. Students made new international friends that they may want to visit each other in the future when they are a bit older. Students will have better presentation skills during lessons and in their future jobs. Their self-confidence has increased and now they are able to speak better and more comfortably in front of an audience. They are motivated for lifelong learning. In March 2020, there was a teacher training activity in Turkey. The training was about robotics with Arduino and MBlock. The training was given by an expert from the partner school and the ICT teacher from Portugal. They showed participant teachers how to create a robot and software behind it. 3 teachers from each partner school took part in this training. Participating teachers used project tablets and robotic sets during the training. Robotic sets were bought from organizational budget of each partner. Teachers decided which robotics kit they buy to use at their own schools. The training lasted 5 days. On the first day there was a short meeting to talk about project details, programmes of mobilities, etc. On the second day, the ICT expert introduced to other teachers, robotics and gave theoretical information. On the third and fifth day, he showed them how to create and design a robot and how to install the program on robots. In the afternoon of the last day participants visited cultural and historical places around the town. Participants learned how to create and design a robot and learned how to use them during daily life and their lessons especially maths and science lessons. When they return to their countries, they will give courses to other teachers and students about robotics. They will share their robotics studies in their schools on e-twinning projects with Web 2.0 tools. As soon as all the teachers and students learn these tools, they will be used in lessons. Unfortunately, in March of 2020 the Corona Virus entered in our lives and the world stopped. We had to think over what we were going to do to finish our project. I was postponed to 2021, but the situation was not better so there was an on-line meeting in the beginning of May and the partners decided to finish the project with on-line meetings. Between May 22nd and June 18th, there were meetings by zoom with students and teachers. Every partner school presented a robot and the several stages of its construction. Each partner decided the topic and projected a robot to that purpose like traffic lights that change colour according to the aim, the submarine that scans the bottom of the sea, irrigation systems in agricultural areas, etc. In another meeting it was presented the magazine which was made between meetings showing the stages of the construction of the robot. Students also did a cultural report for the magazine about their country and Portugal. It was not the best way to complete the project, but it was the only possible way, and the results were surprisingly good. We managed to achieve all project objectives with the activities implemented. The results were very good, because the students with the exchange of impressions and experiences got to know different realities and improved their ICT skills as well as their language and communication in English. These international and intercultural learning experiences allow students to acquire and develop skills that will be useful for their future in society, both in their country and around the world.