Connected Classrooms - Living and Learning in a Digital World This Erasmus+ Project is a two-year KA229 School Exchange Partnership between five primary schools from Germany, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey with the German school acting as the coordinator. All schools are equal partners who steadily contribute to the success of the project according to their special strengths. Our main focus is on reinforcing the development of our pupils' and staff's key competences. We aim to promote engaging, connecting and empowering young people by acting jointly in planning, implementation and evaluation. Together we succeeded in choosing authentic, meaningful and challenging contents and activities to deal with throughout the whole partnership. All project activities serve three main topics: ICT - new technologies - digital competences, environment and climate change and inclusion & equity. Four subject areas run through the entire project duration: Digital Learning, Environmental Education, the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and Diversity & Inclusion in the Classroom. In the field of Digital Learning we will record a virtual tour of all our five schools. A collection of songs will present favourite Christmas and winter songs. The highlight of this activity is a multilingual song that will be cut and edited from the individual recordings of all partner schools. Furthermore, the children design pop art pictures in the style of Andy Warhol using image editing programs and create a digital book about local insects. As part of environmental education children sow wildflowers to grow a bee meadow and put up insect hotels. Later on they will get the chance to observe the insects, take photographs and write information sheets about the insect species that will be used for the digital book. Another focus in the field of environmental education is sustainable development. In particular, we learn about saving water and energy and we deal with recycling and up-cycling. In November 2019, children around the world celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of a Child. Unfortunately, those rights are not yet equally taken into account all over the world. This is enough reason to look more closely at some of the children's rights and to investigate to which extent they are taken into account in our five countries. In close connection with equal children's rights, we turn to the topic of diversity and inclusion in the classroom. Two short-term staff training events are planned to observe and discuss ways to support diversity and to exchange experiences. Our goal is to find and implement new and better ways of inclusive teaching in order to meet and suit the diversity in our classrooms. In addition to the four mentioned subject areas we implement some other activities in our work. There will be a logo competition at the beginning of the project. All classes and schools are also asked to introduce themselves to the partners with the help of a poster or a portfolio. Two calendars will be created. The 2021 calendar is about the five countries, hometowns and schools. The 2022 calendar will be designed using the pop art pictures. Absolute highlights of our partnership will undoubtedly be the four short-term exchanges of groups of pupils. It may be the first time for many of our pupils to travel without their parents. Additionally, most of them have never visited another country. Facing this challenge and managing the time abroad will make an enormous contribution to the personal development of each child and strengthen its self-confidence. With the support of our professionally working educators, we can ensure the success of the trips and support the children accordingly. Furthermore, children will develop their cultural awareness and explore similarities and differences between the countries. All in all, we are really looking forward to working with each other and we cannot wait to put our ideas into practice.
Connected Classrooms - Living and Learning in a Digital World This Erasmus+ Project was a two-year KA229 School Exchange Partnership between five primary schools from Germany, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey with the German school acting as the coordinator. All schools acted as equal partners who steadily contributed to the success of the project according to their special strengths. Our focus was on reinforcing the development of our pupils' and staff's key competences. We aimed to promote engaging, connecting and empowering young people by acting jointly in planning, implementation and evaluation. Together we succeeded in choosing authentic, meaningful and challenging contents and activities to deal with throughout the whole partnership. All project activities served three main topics: ICT - new technologies - digital competences, environment and climate change and inclusion & equity. Due to the pandemic we applied for an additional year as we could not realise any mobilities and most of the activities within the first two years of the project. Four subject areas ran through the entire project duration: Digital Learning, Environmental Education, the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and Diversity & Inclusion in the Classroom. In the field of Digital Learning we recorded virtual tours of all our five schools. Favourite Christmas and winter songs were recorded and exchanged. We did not manage to produce a multilingual song as singing at school was not allowed for a long time and later on our focus was on the various other activities and mobilities. For example, the children designed pop art pictures in the style of Andy Warhol using image-editing programs. As part of environmental education children sowed wildflowers to grow bee meadows and put up insect hotels. They got the chance to observe the insects, took photographs and wrote information sheets about different insect species. Another focus in the field of environmental education was sustainable development. In particular, we learned about saving water and energy and we dealt with recycling and up-cycling. In November 2019, children around the world celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of a Child. Unfortunately, those rights are not yet equally taken into account all over the world. This led us to take a closer look at some of the children's rights and to investigate to which extent they are taken into account in different countries. In close connection with equal children's rights, we turned to the topic of diversity and inclusion in the classroom. During the different mobilities teachers and children observed and discussed ways to support diversity and to exchange experiences. Our goal to find and implement new and better ways of inclusive teaching in order to meet and suit the diversity in our classrooms could be achieved by learning from each other and by implementing newly developed ideas into our schools. In addition to the four mentioned subject areas we implemented other activities in our work. There was a logo competition at the beginning of the project. All classes and schools introduced themselves to the partners with the help of a poster, video or a portfolio. A calendar commemorating the successful project was created for 2024 and sent to all schools, partner organisations and supporters. The calendar shows the five countries, hometowns and schools throughout the partnership. Absolute highlights of our partnership were undoubtedly the four short-term exchanges of groups of pupils. For most of the children it was the first time to travel without parents. Additionally, most of them never had visited another country. Facing this challenge and managing the time abroad made an enormous contribution to the personal development of each child and strengthened its self-confidence. With the support of our professionally working educators, we could ensure the success of the trips and supported the children accordingly. Furthermore, children developed their cultural awareness and explored similarities and differences between the countries and the families. We are pleased to report that the families have become closer to each other and some are still in contact. Some have even planned further mutual visits. All in all, we are very grateful to have had the opportunity to work intensively together for over three years and put our ideas into action. All participants benefited from this project in different ways. The importance of cross-border collaboration became clearer and both pupils and teaching staff were prepared for life in an increasingly globalized world. We are pleased that all schools are thinking about possibilities for further collaboration. This wish is evidence of an extremely successful project period in which professional partnerships were created.