Educational scientists have been trying to develop new techniques, methods and material since the very beginning of teaching and training as formally and informally for students. The methods and techniques have started to change as student oriented that is compatible with students' needs in the last 10 years from teacher oriented. While the time has been changing along with the technology, even the fun methods and techniques away from ICT has started to fade away both amongst the students and teachers. We as 6 partner countries (Turkey, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Lithuanian, Bulgaria) active in the field of vocational education decided to develop the social media tools that we already use and get better results by cooperation and sharing our knowledges and skills with this project. We all are vocational secondary school that have students aged between 14-19. The reason why we all are vocational school is that our students’ motivation level towards the lessons as Maths, Literature and Foreign Language is lower than the other type of schools' students when compared. That's why we decided to reorganise these lessons by cooperating amongst us and developing new ways to spice up our lessons and raise our students’ motivation, knowledge and skills level. Another reason why we want to run this project is to raise the knowledges and skills of our teachers that has to be compatible with new generation. As we all know to stay away from social media and its tools is not much possible if you are living in a modern environment and these tools have already been started to integrate into all our lives including almost every field of life from private life to work, economy and politics. The new generation also love to pass their time in these platforms and that's why we decided to use these tools to raise the motivation and knowledge level of our students with the tools that they already love to use every moment of their lives. In this project we organised 2 students ltt activity and 2 staff ltt activity and home activities to address our needs. The first ltt will take place in Turkey for 5 days with the participation of 20 teachers working on preparing a social media e-guide regarding how to integrate popular social media tools into our lessons to improve the Maths, Literature and foreign language skills and knowledge of our students. 2nd ltt will take place in Italy for 5 days with the participation of 15 students from all participant schools. Students will attend the Maths, Literature and Foreign language classes together enhanced with social media tools and study collaboratively then create an e-list describing the classes with or without social media tools. 3rd ltt will take place in Portugal for 5 days with the participation of 15 Maths, Literature and Foreign Language teachers to let them improve their professional skills and knowledges. They will work collaboratively for 5 days to learn the ways to develop themselves as professionals and raise their professional profiles. 4th ltt activity will take place in Lithuanian for 5 days with the participation of 15 students from all partners. Students will work collaboratively and discuss the pros and cons of social media and create a ''safe use of social media e-guide'' for their peers. With this project we aim to get these results: 1) Increase our students motivation level so that to address their underachievement in Maths, Literature and Foreign Language lessons. 2) Improve the profile of our teachers by letting them to have chance to work on new educational tools. 3) Enhance the educational service that our schools provide for their students. 4) Change the bad image of social media and show people that these tools can be turned into a very practical and fun educational tool if we learn how to use and integrate them in classes.
In the 21st century, we have all met the Internet age. Many things have become increasingly digital. The Internet and digital tools have covered a large area of our lives. The variety of educational tools that can be used in education and training has increased. Social media tools have become richer and more diverse. Based on all these, we decided to find ways to use social media tools in education. We aimed to increase student motivation and increase student interest in lessons by using social media tools. We aimed for students to explore various ways of expressing themselves with digital tools. With the help of these tools, students discovered ways to express themselves by preparing an oral, written or digital material. Teachers learned the various and rich ways of education. Throughout the project, we used social media tools to carry out activities in accordance with the project objectives with teachers and students in school, outside of school and on different digital platforms. Teachers and students held competitive and cooperative educational activities using social media and digital tools. We also experienced these activities with teachers and students outside the project. We shared materials using social media tools. We did live broadcast events on social media. We conducted interactive and competitive Q&A activities and surveys. We encouraged students to express themselves more. We held award-winning social media question and answer activities. We prepared video, visual, written and oral materials with students on digital platforms. Teachers and students learned a wide variety of digital material preparation tools. We used many Web 2.0 tools. We have prepared guide books to explain and disseminate our project with the project partner teachers. We shared these books on many digital platforms. We shared the hard copies of these books with the surrounding schools. We evaluated the project processes by conducting surveys with teachers and students many times. Thus, we both critiqued the project process and evaluated new proposals that would contribute to the project. We made great efforts to involve all the teachers in our school in the project processes. We ensured that the project goals and practices were shared with everyone. We have done many activities related to this. We had meetings with local administrators and university professors. We had an effective working process with the project partner teachers. We shared our ideas and activity examples with each other. We interacted with many communication channels throughout the project. We have completed a successful project process with a democratic and active participatory method. We held meetings about the project processes. We gathered our project materials using many digital tools. There were 6 partners in the project application. (Turkey, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Lithuania) However, Lithuania left the partnership voluntarily at the beginning of the project. Therefore, project mobility dates, duties and responsibilities of the countries were determined again after a busy meeting day. Accordingly, the mobility planned to take place in Lithuania was to be carried out in Greece. But due to the pandemic, we could not carry out the Greek mobility. Due to the pandemic, we have successfully carried out all ltt activities except the last activity. We brainstormed about the project throughout the Ltt activities. We prepared e-books together. We made technical and cultural trips during the project mobilities. We worked with university professors with the coordination of the host country. We made cultural exchanges with the project partner countries. We shared the awareness of being a citizen of the European Union.