Our project, i-City, has been carefully designed to benefit all stakeholders in both the short and long term. An established partnership has recruited 2 new schools to the group and together we decided to tackle the problems facing urban planners by challenging our pupils to learn about and then design all the elements that make up a modern, purpose built city: our overall objective is to produce a set of plans for a new city and recommendations for improvements to our respective current urban environments. It will involve work across the curriculum as we study the history of town-planning, the key geographical considerations in locating a new urban development, the infrastructure needed to supply a large population with food, shelter and power, changing population profiles, and the meeting of cultural, spiritual and health needs of all age-groups. We will also foster the participation and support of the wider school and local communities, and the expertise of teachers and external professionals. Teachers will be motivating, facilitating and overseeing the pupils’ execution of the work, collaborating and sharing ideas/best practice as the project proceeds. We will need to be up-skilled in ICT software such as the design package for the i-City plans as well as presentation formats such as e-books and interactive apps; to this end we will be recruiting outside expertise as needed to support our professional development. Schools will be building links with experts, businesses and public authorities in their local areas, and cascading their pedagogical experience and skills to the extended teaching community via e-Twinning, ‘Teach-Meet’ style events and the Erasmus+ Shared Results Platform. Large numbers of pupils aged between 13 and 16 years will be participating in a 2-year project that taps into their innate creativity, increases their knowledge of a wide range of current issues related to housing the growing, ageing and multi-cultural communities of the immediate future and exposes them to international cooperative team work. Using both Erasmus+ funding and private funding, and a homestay model of travel, we hope to facilitate the movement of around 50 students from each school over the course of the project; whether or not they are members of one of the 6 travelling teams, participants will have contact with peers in 5 other countries and in parallel with their academic learning will develop skills in ICT, communication and languages. The i-City project takes place in 6 phases, corresponding to school terms over 2 years; each phase has a research project resulting in a number of sub-products: presentations of learning, part of the i-City design, a page of the language glossary, a piece of merchandising and culminating in an international meeting of pupils and teachers. Each partner school has responsibility for a learning phase, hosts the respective meeting and takes on an administrative role, with one school acting as overall coordinator giving a reference point and trouble shooter should the need arise. Good communication and reporting systems will be key to the project’s success for which we have built in regular evaluation and review points, and plan to use communications software such as e-Twinning, Whatsapp, e-mail, e-book, e-surveys and web-pages to record and share our progress. Each school will also be promoting the project via school web-pages, newsletters and Twitter accounts. The impact for individuals - whether teachers or pupils - beyond the knowledge gained and immediate experience of participation, will be the up-skilling and potential professional success in the future as improved CVs and extensive experience open new doors in the worlds of further education and of employment. For the institutions and other stakeholders there will be strengthened links, shared expertise, a greater field of skilled applicants and raised profiles as we will make every effort to involve the local media in major project events. Were any local authorities to take up any of the suggestions for urban improvement submitted by the pupils, then local communities would benefit from the project work in a most meaningful and tangible way.
Our project, i-City, was carefully designed to benefit all stakeholders in both the short and long term. An established partnership recruited 2 new schools to the group and together we decided to tackle the problems facing urban planners by challenging our pupils to learn about and then design all the elements that make up a modern, purpose-built city: our overall objective was to produce a set of plans for a new city and recommendations for improvements to our respective current urban environments. It involved work across the curriculum as we studied the history of town-planning, the key geographical considerations in locating a new urban development, the infrastructure needed to supply a large population with food, shelter and power, changing population profiles, and the meeting of cultural, spiritual and health needs of all age-groups. We also fostered the participation and support of the wider school and local communities, making visits to relevant sites and the expertise of teachers and external professionals who came into schools to give talks and/or workshops. Teachers’ roles were to motivate, facilitate and oversee the pupils’ execution of the work; at the same time, we collaborated and shared ideas/best practice. We all needed to up-skill in ICT software such as Sketch-Up, the design software package chosen for the i-City plans, as well as presentation formats such as e-books and interactive apps; consequently, we recruited outside expertise to support our professional development. The individual partner schools built links with experts, businesses and public authorities in their local areas, cascading their pedagogical experience and skills to the extended teaching community via e-Twinning, a series ‘Teach-Meet’ style events and the project website. Large numbers of pupils aged 13-16 years participated in the 2-year project tapping into their innate creativity, increasing their knowledge of a wide range of current issues related to housing the growing, ageing and multi-cultural communities of the immediate future and exposing them to international cooperative team work. Using both Erasmus+ and private funding, and homestay accommodation, we facilitated the movement of between 30 and 50 students from each school over the course of the project; what’s more, all in-school participants also had contact with peers from 5 other countries and, in parallel, their academic learning developed skills in ICT, communication and languages. As planned our i-City project took place in 6 phases, corresponding to school terms over 2 years; each phase had a research project resulting in a number of sub-products: presentations of research undertaken, a section of the i-City design, a page of the language glossary, a piece of merchandising and each phase culminated in an international meeting of pupils and teachers. Each partner school had responsibility for a learning phase, hosts the respective meeting and also took on an administrative role, with one school acting as overall coordinator giving a reference point and trouble shooter should the need arise. Good communication and reporting systems were key to the project’s success and to that end we built in regular evaluation and review points, 2 coordinator meetings and used communications software (e-Twinning, Whatsapp, e-mail, e-surveys and a project website). Each school also promoted the project via school web-pages, newsletters, Twitter/Facebook accounts and a series of cascade events for the teaching/stakeholder communities. To our great dismay, our project was cut short by the imposition of Europe-wide COVID-19 lockdown; as schools were not re-opened until after the project end, the final 2 phases of the project were not completed and we were unable to pick up at a later stage given the age range of our participants: the majority had left the schools. We have pulled together to round up and produce the best results possible from the 4 completed stages. The impact for individuals - whether teachers or pupils - beyond the knowledge gained and immediate experience of participation, included the up-skilling and potential professional success in the future as improved CVs and extensive experience open new doors in the worlds of further education and of employment. For the institutions and other stakeholders there are now strengthened links, shared expertise, and we hope to attract a greater field of skilled applicants to participate in future projects. The schools have significantly raised profiles as every effort was made to involve local media in major project events; were any local authorities to take up any of the suggestions for urban improvement submitted by the pupils, then local communities will benefit from the project work in a most meaningful and tangible way. On a personal level there are many students still in touch with each other having made lasting friendships during the international meetings and the coordinator team remains in constant contact.