This project starts after detecting some necessities and weaknesses we need to cover in our school, being the most important ones the necessity of improving students’ and teachers’ competence in English, the necessity of reinforcing the students’ feelings as full European citizens and the necessity of increasing in them the awareness of the value of our common cultural heritage, particularly among those students with Special Educational Needs or in danger of exclusion. This is why we decided the title “Let’s connect Europe to each other” Different commissions were in charge of the multiple aspects of the project. The “Commission to look for partners” contacted through eTwinning and School Education Gateway with several schools interested in collaborating, deciding our final partners because of the added value everyone represents. We are the coordinators but all of us have worked cooperatively and under the basis of mutual enrichment. We agreed we will develop a bi-annual project and we decided the activities to carry out according to a fixed chronogram and the final objectives: • Using English as the working language. • Using of Technologies for Learning and Knowledge, especially the newest ones. • Visiting cultural heritage places in every country. • Promoting tourism in every region. • Enhancing the feeling of belonging to a same identity which joins us as European citizens. • Improving action protocols when working with students with Special Educational Needs or in danger of exclusion. The phases of the project are related to the activities to be carried out. INITIAL PHASE: selection of students. The “commission of selection of students” in every country organizes a “Club of Erasmus+ students” with extra-curricular activities to select the students according to their level of implication instead of being selected on their academic marks, offering all of them the same opportunities. They will exchange emails with personal experiences, motivations and points of view about topics of general interest in order to promote their internationalization. They will elaborate, under the teachers’ supervision, an online tourism guide of their cities with photo galleries and descriptions of monuments, interesting buildings and places, traditions, popular festivals, local cuisine…All final products will be uploaded to eTwinning and to a Blog especially built for the project. These products together with the students’ achievements and experiences will also be essential for the spread and impact of the project at a regional level during the dissemination phase through presentations and forums especially set up for the purpose. DEVELOPMENT PHASE: three international visits will take place, one to every country. All visitors will meet together in the receiving country for a linguistic and cultural immersion week. An Integrated multidisciplinary Didactic Unit has been elaborated by every partner to connect the visit to the official curriculum of the main subjects. Every Didactic Unit comprehends the necessary elements as to be implemented in real lessons among the students who do not travel. We have used the freeware Genial.ly to share the Didactic Units online. Some activities include the newest digital applications, for example, while visiting The Alhambra in Granada, students, through HP Reveal, will use Augmented Reality to find out the different mathematical and geometric patterns with their mobile phones. We will also use Geogebra, gymkhanas, storytelling, forms, etc. As a final product Students will have to make an ePortfolio which will be shared with the international educative community on all types of webs apart from the Blog of the project. One Didactic Unit has been attached as an example to this application and can be checked on Genial.ly through the following link https://view.genial.ly/5a998615c35a7e5836688799/udi-erasmus FINAL PHASE: in order to impact and disseminate the project at a local and regional levels, we have created a detailed chronogram which includes when and how different events to share good practice with other schools in every participant partner’s area will be carried out. These events will have an additional important impact through the press, radio, brochures and the implication of local authorities. The set of final products, achievements and experiences will be shared on all online platforms. In addition, we want to keep the Erasmus+ Club alive for at least 5 years with annual meetings where we will be able to analyse how the participation in this project benefitted our students’ lives. They will explain to the future generations how this project helped them to make decisions about their future both at an academic and personal or professional levels. Although ambitious, we would like the Erasmus+ Club to be a reality even in the long term, adding new students interested in internationalization processes or coming from other future Erasmus+ projects developed by every participant school.
This project started after detecting some necessities and weaknesses we needed to cover in our school, being the most important ones the necessity of improving students’ and teachers’ competence in English, the necessity of reinforcing the students’ feelings as full European citizens and the necessity of increasing in them the awareness of the value of our common cultural heritage, particularly among those students with Special Educational Needs or with less opportunities. This is why we decided the title “Let’s connect Europe to each other” Different commissions were in charge of the multiple aspects of the project. The “Commission to look for partners” contacted through eTwinning and School Education Gateway with several schools, interested in a common project, and selected the final partners because of their added value. Spain was the coordinator but all of us worked cooperatively when making decisions and deciding the activities to carry out, according to a fixed chronogram and the final objectives: • Using English as the working language. • Using of Technologies for Learning and Knowledge, especially the newest ones. • Visiting cultural heritage places in every country. • Promoting tourism in every region. • Enhancing the feeling of belonging to a same identity which joins us as European citizens. • Improving action protocols when working with students with Special Educational Needs or in danger of exclusion. The phases of the project remained related to the activities to be carried out. The INITIAL PHASE was devoted to the selection of students. Every country organized a “Club of Erasmus+ students” with extra-curricular activities to select the students according to their level of implication instead of being selected on their academic marks, offering all of them the same opportunities. Sometimes, the students were asked to exchange emails with personal experiences, motivations and points of view about topics of general interest in order to promote their internationalization. They created online photo galleries of their respective cities and areas with descriptions of monuments, interesting buildings and places, traditions, popular festivals, local cuisine…All final products were uploaded to an eTwinning project we created, although we do not know if all those materials are still available after the transformations in that platform. A specific website was created inside the coordinator's school webpage in order to collect all the final products together with the students’ achievements and experiences because they were essential for the spread and impact of the project. A link to this website was shared through the webpages of the partners. During the DEVELOPMENT PHASE, three international visits took place, one to every country, sharing a week of linguistic and cultural immersion. A program of activities for every mobility was made, with tasks which were connected to the official curriculum in order to share the experience in class with the rest of students who did not travel. We used all sort of media apps both for the development of the activities and for the elaboration of the final products, such as videos, presentations, photo galleries, etc. The final products were collected as an ePortfolio on the website we devoted to the project inside the coorditator's school webpage. All these materials were shared with the international community inserting links to the site of the project on our partner's school webpages. We also uploaded the final products to our eTwinning project, although, again, we insist, we do not know how to access these materials after the transformations in eTwinning platform. The Didactic Unit we attached as an example to the application remains accesible on Genial.ly through the following link https://view.genial.ly/5a998615c35a7e5836688799/udi-erasmus FINAL PHASE: we created a detailed chronogram for the impact and dissemination of the poject so that we could offer precise information after every activity, always supported by press, radio, local TV and also using brochures and materials for dissemination such as T-shirts, bags, pens, etc., all of them including the official logos of the Erasmus+ project of the EU and sharing the final products in all sort of online platforms. The Erasmus+ Club remains alive after the project and it is being a really helpful tool for the selection of new participants in the new projects we are now running, together with its use as a very important tool for the dissemination of the project and the impact on the new students who continuously join the club. Thus, the Erasmus+ Club is already a reality even in the long term, as we had thought, in all the schools, adding permanently new students interested in internationalization processes.