The idea of our ”Learning for 21st Century: skills for the future" project comes from the need to fulfill the following European priorities: 1) TO DESIGN INNOVATIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGIES 2) TO PROMOTE PLURILINGUALISM This project brings at the same time significant innovations, especially in good teaching practices and methodology. Using web 2.0 will help not only to promote publication and sharing of documents but to promote real collaborative work and intraclass as well as interclass interaction. We’ ll also promote a language learning environment for young pupils by improving their ability to communicate and co-operate with people through language and CLIL approaches and web 2.0. We' ll increase children’s exposure to European languages and the quality of teaching through the implementation of the CLIL approach within the European demand of acquiring a mother tongue plus other foreign languages. We would like to achieve these goals by creating inclusive educational contexts where our students can experience web 2.0. The pupils will learn through modern foreign languages whilst discovering the environment in cooperation with European schools traversing language and cultural boundaries and providing future citizens with tools which will develop their intercultural competence. The two main objectives, effective use of WEB 2.0 and language learning, will be closely integrated and complemented with one another and integrated in the curricular contents of the schools. The project partners have met on the eTwinning portal and aim to carry out our project with the use of new technologies. They are from Italy, Cyprus, Germany (= coordinator), Spain, Portugal and Belgium and have various economic backgrounds. Some of them have a lot of pupils with socio-economic disadvantages and migrants and bring various complementary experiences to our partnership. In that way, our project has a European dimension and the results will be usable in different contexts. Teachers and student will be involved in the project in the following activities: - E-CLIL blog that promotes the philosophy of Education Web 2.0 allowing teachers and learners to interact and collaborate with each other as part of an educational network community. It will provide a meaningful learning context to develop cross-curricula topics common to all countries involved in the project´s partnership. - PRODUCT: AN OPEN WEB 2.0 blog using web 2.0 not only to promote publication and sharing of documents but to promote real collaborative work and intraclass as well as interclass interaction - eTwinning project: CLIL- resources e-books for teachers creating a set of teaching and learning CLIL materials suitable and graduated for learners of different ages - THE E-CLIL E-BOOKS are a collection of units and lesson plans that are aimed to be transferable to other contexts by giving teachers a detailed description. - CULTURAL BOX: all the teachers will prepare a collection of cultural materials which they will use during the exchanges. - PROJECT MEETINGS: during the meetings we will exchange products, review plans and evaluate progress. Regular project meetings will ensure that all partners are actively involved and that deadlines are met. - EXCHANGE OF PUPILS: each country will bring a group of children, so in the host country we will form a multicultural group of multilingual children. During the day they will participate in CLIL workshops in English and in the universal languages. More than 3000 pupils from six countries will work together online in mixed, international teams on the learning platform to gain an intercultural perspective on their shared topics. For all of them, it will be their first encounter with people from other cultural backgrounds and the first time they could use languages for real comunication. The project will contribute to raise the European profile at local and national level by providing evidence of how the European dimension can be integrated and bring innovation into the school curriculum. The dissemination plan has been designed to ensure that the outcomes of the project are appropriately recognized, demonstrated and implemented on a wide scale.
The idea of our project "Learning for the 21st Century: Skills for the Future" arose from the need to meet the following European priorities: 1) DESIGN INNOVATIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGIES 2) PROMOTION OF MULTILINGUALISM At the same time, this project brought important innovations, particularly in terms of good teaching practices and methodologies. The use of Web 2.0 has not only helped to encourage the publication and exchange of documents, but it has also encouraged good collaboration and interaction within and between classes. We have fostered a language learning environment for younger students by improving their ability to communicate and collaborate with people through language and CLIL approaches and Web 2.0. By implementing the CLIL approach, we were able to improve the children's exposure to European languages and the quality of teaching. We were able to achieve these goals by creating inclusive educational contexts in which our students could work with Web 2.0. Pupils learned through modern foreign language learning CLIL while discovering the environment and crossing linguistic and cultural borders in cooperation with European schools. They have been provided with tools that have developed their intercultural competence. The two main goals, effective use of WEB 2.0 and language learning, were closely interlinked, supplemented and implemented in the respective school curriculum. The project partners met on the eTwinning portal and we carried out our project using new technologies. The partners came from Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and Germany (= coordinator). Spain and Belgium dropped out of the project at the beginning, which meant a redistribution of tasks for the project partners and required some flexibility. In addition, the pandemic ensured that the second project meeting in February 2020 was already affected and all other processes had to be postponed. Nonetheless, we were able to meet the project's objectives in the planned order. We have applied for a third project year, which was approved in summer 2021. So in the end we only had to completely cancel one project meeting and hold the content planned for it virtually. Teachers and students were involved in the project in the following activities: - E-CLIL blog which promoted the Education Web 2.0 philosophy and allowed teachers and learners to interact and collaborate with each other as part of an education network community. A meaningful learning context was provided to develop cross-curricular themes common to all countries involved in the project partnership. - PRODUCT: an open WEB 2.0 blog (https://annamariadipasqua7.wixsite.com/clil-resources) that uses Web 2.0 not only to encourage the publication and sharing of documents, but also to encourage genuine collaborative work and intra-class as well as cross-class interactions. - CLIL digital manual eTwinning project (located at https://annamariadipasqua7.wixsite.com/clil-resources/about-us or at: https://read.bookcreator.com/c4T20hE2fXXtPHIVAz14SkhOot93/8alfYlGdTkWj2nA4ol2qQA): It has been CLIL resource e-books for teachers containing a range of CLIL teaching and learning materials suitable for learners of all ages. These e-books are a collection of units and lesson plans that are transferable to other contexts in the future by providing teachers with a detailed description. - CULTURE BOX: All teachers prepared a collection of country-specific materials with the students, which they could use during the exchange. - PROJECT MEETINGS: During the meetings, products were exchanged, plans reviewed, and progress assessed and evaluated. Regular project meetings ensured that all partners were actively involved and that deadlines were met. - STUDENT EXCHANGE: some countries brought a group of children so that we could form a multicultural group of multilingual children in the host country. However, due to Covid, this was not possible on every visit. During the day, these students took part in CLIL workshops in English. Pupils from four countries were able to work together online in mixed, international teams on the learning platform in order to gain an intercultural perspective on their common topics. The project has helped to raise the school's international profile and bring this innovation to the respective curriculum.