Digital tools surround us, help us and attract some as much as they scare others. We can no longer ignore them. That's why our role is to include them in our daily school life, to ensure that all children can benefit. Those tools will introduce students, in a playful way, to computer thinking: children will learn to plan a complex task, break it down to simple ones, detect risks and find solutions. They will also be able to effectively help teachers in managing the heterogeneity of classes as well as in helping children who encounter difficulties. Through the creation of 3 animations and at least one video game using free and open source software, children will advance step by step, by trial and error, while they learn the concept of code and robotic. In teams, they will define their animation project, code, test, modify if necessary.They will share with their partners information about their country, their games and gastronomy. The video game will be created with the agreement of all the partners to choose the scenery, the characters, the aim of the game and the different levels. The productions and their tutorials will be experimented, used and shared by all the teachers in their class but also by families and educational actors in the support and success of the pupils. Our project will create and share at least 18 animations and one game with six levels of difficulty and their tutorials. More than three hundred children, all of primary school age, and their teachers will be active in the project. The international meetings will allow them to discover different types of robots (Lego, Thymio, Beebot, Dash,...) and to understand their pedagogical interest. Through the use of digital tools, adapted to each child and each situation, the teachers will enrich their pedagogical practices through exchange, confrontation, analysis, sharing and mutualisation of didactic skills and know-how. All productions and tutorials will be available on the Twinspace of the project, and a blog, open to the public.
Convinced that learning code and programming is important for the future of our pupils and contribute to the development of information technology thinking and creativity, we have approached this teaching in a fun way, using different robots and free, open-source applications. During the first year, it was very difficult to prepare some activities because our schools were closed due to the pandemic. We only shared the first activity : presentation of our country with Scratch software. At the end of school, all the partners consulted to decide to stop or continue the project. We were all confident that we would be able to complete our project, despite the constraints that were still present. During the second year, we joined "Hour of code" and "code week". All the partners participated to the online sessions : kids learned how to use the scratch platform, create basic algorithms with lights, sounds and movements and discovered what is artificial intelligence. They enjoyed the company of their peers from other countries. We received certificates of excellence. November 2021, we organised the first meeting in Belgium, with some restrictions, to reschedule activities and meetings : 4 teams in Belgium and two online (Bulgairan and Latvian). In February 2022, because of Covid, we had to cancel the Spanish meeting and organise a virtual meeting. We shared online the second animation about gastronomy and decided to present the third animation about games students play at school during the Bulgarian meeting in November 2022. We had to ask our national agency to extend the project for one year. They accepted. During this virtual mobility, we had fun with our partners dancing the code week dance. We danced and we created a wonderful video. Finally, during the third year we could meet all the partners and students, discover the schools, learn and play with different robots and 3D tools (more than we expected) and visit the area of each partner. We presented different games we also created with Scratch. These games can now be used, copied, changed by everybody, because the tutorials are in the software which is free of charge and copyright. All this activities and mobilities allowed teachers and students to better understand different ways to use code and robots in the real life, and how integrate this teaching in the curriculum. We could also see that it is a good way to integrate all children with disabilities. On the one hand, a lot of applications can help them and, on the other, they are easily integrated into the learning process. We will now use our experience in our teaching and for new projects. The teachers are more confident with code and robots and we all bought new robots that we had discovered through our partners and found interesting. Moreover, all the students who participated in the project can be the teachers for the youngest one, using the same process : work in pairs or teams, trial and error, with a scientific approach.