Most of our students and other partners' students are low income families originated and live in the rural areas or regions where a high level of unemployment is common. One result of these conditions is that most of our pupils are socially non-active, non-communicative children. We see that unsociability and isolation of our pupils in social groups and their unwillingness to take active roles in the process of planning and handling of the school subjects, give rise to numerous problems. One of these important problems is that this process gives rise to loss of motivation and willingness to success and to join school life and social activities, among our students. If we can regain these students by including them into the process of formation of our school culture, we would be able to decrease levels of unsuccess and early school leaving, both of which, are common problems of our.partner schools. We want to interconnect the artistic approaches with educative methodology of problem-based learning (PBL) model and extend the results and implications through an “Internet/Digital Democracy” platform based on interactive communicative rules of discussion and sharing in a game-like environment. We want to promote social/active participation of our students into the social and cultural life of the school and the society. Firstly, we want to formate voluntary, integration/art working groups on the basis/solution of a pre-given problem. At the beginning of every semestre, we will define/give a social/cultural/educative problem for our students and want them to produce an artistic explanation of that problem -with painting, music, dance, literature and especially theater-. Through the end of the semestre they will create/prepare another artistic explanation as the solution of that problem. At the end of the semestre they will exhibit/perform their artistic creations in front of the other teachers and students from their schools and in front of the visitors of the partner schools. At the last semestre every partner school will choose the problem of the other partners and create a solution for their problematic situations. At the last semestre of our project, we will exchange the problems and the solutions transnationally. We will also upload our pupils' art performances about the problem and how they created the solution to that problem to our websites. In the website other member students and teachers will be able to evaluate/vote/like/comment and counter-comment to performances and the other commentators. We will setup a website just similar to social sharing websites like facebook and give the opportunity to the students to develop themselves in the branches of arts and to understand the maincornerstones of the digital voting system and democratic participation/multi-cultural, interactive/communicative rules of discussions and the rules of European democratic citizenship. By using these methods our students will be engaged to complex, challenging problems and collaboratively work toward their resolution. Our methods will provide our students to inter-connect their disciplinary knowledge with real-world problems. Especially setting up a social media-like website and encouraging our students to produce artistic works that will be elected/voted/shared through that website and telling that they will become more popular on the NET, will increase their motivation to solve problems/create new works/participate in the school life rapidly. Shortly by applying this project, we want to exchange our students' “motivation to solve a problem” to “the motivation to learn”. Our project will open new ways for the participants to discover/comprehend other cultures and their local potential by using arts and online sharings. it will also provide the participants a new dimension for evaluating real and digital democracy with five partners coming from five European countries who have different traditions of social transitions, economic structures, democracy and history. We want to use dance, painting and especially theater to mobilize the potential of participation, creativity and willingness of our pupils, who are involved in the project. By the end of the project, we want to improve our students' true perception of the effectiveness of “Triangle of knowledge” (education, research, participation) Evaluating, analyzing, comparing the art activities from the eyes of others coming from different cultures and nationalities will open new horizons for our students to practice and perceive the importance of modern arts to express people's desire to make the world a better place. One cannot change the world but one can his attitude towards it, especially by using ways of different artistic explanations.
One of the main reasons motivating us for beginning this project was the reality that most of our pupils were socially non-active, non-communicative children/youngsters and had unwillingness to participate into social activities by themselves. We had realized that non-active, unsociable behaviours of our pupils and their unwillingness to take active roles in social groups and in the process of planning and handling of the school subjects and environment had been causing many problems to increase. One of the most important of these problems was their loss of motivation and willingness to success and to join school life and social activities. It was becoming more problematic for some of our students and it was even causing an increase in ESL in our schools, in long term. If we could regain these students by including them into the process of formation of our school culture, we would be able to decrease levels of unsuccess and early school leaving, both of which, had been the common problems of all our.partner schools. Throughout our project’s implementation process, we tried to intermingle the artistic approaches with educative methodology of problem-based learning (PBL) model and we extended the results and implications of that intermixture through an “Internet/Digital Democracy” platform based on interactive communicative rules of discussion and sharing in a “game-like environment”. We tried to achieve to increase social/active participation of our students into the social and cultural life of their school and the local society they live in. First, we formated voluntary, problem-definition/solution-suggestion & art intermixturing work-groups. The groups would produce artistic adaptions for the definitons of pre-given problems and solutions to these pre-given problem set, at the beginning and end of every semestre. At the beginning of every first semestre of the year, we defined/gave a social/cultural/educative problem-area for our students and wanted them to produce an artistic explanation of the problems they saw related with the given area -by applying art, ie. painting, music, dance, literature and especially theater…etc.-. At the end of every second semestre they created/prepared another artistic explanation as the solution of that problem. At the end of both semestres they exhibited/performed their artistic creations in front of the other teachers and students from their schools and in front of the visitors of our transnational partner schools. At the last semestre, if we could have enough time, we were planning that every partner school would choose the problem of the other partners and create a solution for their problematic situations and then, we would exchange the problems and the solutions transnationally. However, due to Covid-19 pandemics, that planned mutual exchange of problems could not be realized. All the partner schools uploaded the art performances of their pupils about the problems and the solutions to our “digital election e-platform”. In the e-platform other member students and teachers evaluated/voted/liked/commented and counter-commented about these performances and the other commentators. In total, more than 600 students had created and upploaded work-group activities and art-performances and these performances were voted and commented by more than 2000 students and teachers in our partner schools. Our e-platform (website supported by extensions and modules simulating the rules of digital democracy) was setup as just similar to social sharing websites like facebook or instagram. The website gave all our students the opportunity to understand the main cornerstones of the “digital voting systems” and “virtual” democratic, participatory, multi-cultural, interactive, communicative rules of discussions. Besides practising the rules of European digital democratic citizenship, they could become more ready for “distance education” which became a reality of daily lives of all of us. The e-platform had helped them not get caught unprepared for the days of “virtual education” caused by covid-19 pandemics process. Our methodology of intermingling art with PBL our students learnt to engage problems collaboratively and work toward their resolution. Our methods provided our students to inter-connect their experiences and knowledge with real-world problems. Especially the voting e-platform increased their motivation to solve problems/create new art-works and participate in the school life rapidly. In the long term, this project will enable our students to develop different consciousness and “motivation to learn” and to use and transform this consciousness and motivation into the appropriate form for “developing solutions to any problems they come accross with in their schools, education lives and in the society they live in”