Global goals that we wanted to achieve by implementing the project are: 1.Enabling professional development of the teachers through the programmes in chosen European learning centers 2. Implementation of the new teaching methods and enabling students to become ready for functional learning by teaching them how to adapt different learning strategies, not only in the classroom environment abut in life, in general 3. Getting familiar with the educational systems in EU, developing internationalization and enriching the teachers’ experience through collaboration with schools from the EU 4. Developing language competences by speaking English language abroad and meeting other colleagues from different countries from the EU and presenting Serbian educational system as well as sharing personal experience while teaching Specific goals that we wanted to achieve by implementing the project are: 1. Teacher training of at least 10% of teachers and enabling them to use ICT tools in lesson planning and realization of the lesson plan 2. Teacher training and empowering the teachers to use innovative methods of teaching during the school year in order to improve students’ achievements 3. Teacher training and enabling teachers to write special education plans for gifted students (SEP) in different subjects, 5 SEPs were planned Clarification of the goals: 1. By teacher training via video tutorials and written lesson plans with implemented ICT tools, our goals are met - teachers’ resistance towards ICT tools implementation is lowered and digital competences of the teaching staff improved 2. By creating a digital bank with examples of good practice in order for the teachers to create their own examples for their subjects 3. As an antopode to frontal teaching that primarily engages the teacher while students are passive, alternative is to offer through a webinar the paradigm of active teaching with an explanation how to engage students to increase their intrinsic motivation in order to make learning as productive as possible. 4. by writing special education plans for gifted students (SEP) to develop pupil’s full potential in different subjects, through workshop to give support and explanation teachers how to write SEP
Before applying for the open call a thorough school analysis was carried out via the self-assessment team's report and external evaluation report. The report of the educational unit Lessons and Studying showed students' lack of motivation and that professors use ex cathedra and frontal teaching in which the teacher is the only source of knowledge while the students remain passive and their only goal is to learn the facts from the lessons taught in class. Moreover, external evaluators evaluated the teachers with grade 3 which additionally shows that an improvement in this field of work is possible and expected. What is more, teachers, despite of fully equipped classrooms with television sets and laptops, mostly as a part of their digital competences prepare PPT presentations and short clips and need help to use technological devices more efficiently in order to help the students enrich the means of acquiring knowledge at school in different subjects. From the results we came to a conclusion that additional education is necessary for the teachers regarding the key factors of the educational process which are digitalization, usage of ICT tools in teaching as well as implementing the innovations in the teaching process in order to involve students more and to make them participate in class equally and to change from passive knowledge receivers to creators and get them involved in the learning process. Finally, we have concluded that, even though there is a big number of gifted students in our school, there are not any programs written for them and, thus, additional education of teachers in order to be well prepared to write special education plans for gifted students is needed (SEP). We were led by the idea that educational systems in EU are more beneficial when it comes to internationalization, modernization and exchanging the experience with participants from other countries.