The project English and ICT: an Interdisciplinary Approach was aimed to set the cooperation in the training of students to improve their English language skills by means of using ICT. By relating these two fields of learning adult participants have experimented their fully belonging to European citizenship in today's societies. Updating in these areas (English and ICT) was especially difficult for adult students in the beginning, but as it was aimed, they have achieved important non-strictly academic benefits, such as increasing the student's academic self-esteem and understanding/consolidating the personal learning project. The project has permitted us to combine virtual cooperation (integrated into the usual development of classes) with short-term exchanges of groups of English-speaking adult students, as well as personal encounters which have been greatly satisfying for students. The activities have been coordinated by a member of the management team with the support of the English language specialists, who were responsible for the conduct of classroom activities and the preparation of students participating in the mobility and the ICT teacher who taught students to manage online meetings. The results obtained have been shared with other public educational centres of adults of the same geographical area to which the participating centres belong, this has permitted the improvement of the teaching and learning processes in all of them.
In the first place, as we have mentioned before, we attempted to open the doors of the school to the outside world, demonstrate that our centre is not somewhere such as a mere school to pass the time without profit. We wanted to show that you can always continue learning; and learning has no limits at least spatial ones. It is very important, today, that they see that from their homes they can have access to the European community. We wanted our students to be able to take models from other types of students, to exchange information by improving English skills and that our students had a new illusion and an incentive to improve their digital competence without leaving anyone aside, from the youngest to the oldest of any origin. Above all, I wanted to get older people to engage with ICTs, to be attracted to the idea of learning more, because they are part of a digital gap that can still be largely avoided.
It was decided to apply for the project from the faculty because in our PEC (educational project of centre) we had been trying to tackle such an objective as to develop internationalization in teaching and learning in long-life education and make our students feel that they are part of the European Union. We wanted to awaken their curiosity when we saw that in countries as distant and different as those of our partners, Italy, Turkey and Lithuania, they share and live in their day to day many of the concerns of our country and our classrooms. The fact that we have shared, live and alive, our experiences and meetings with them at this unexpected time of pandemic, has even increased this feeling of proximity and equality, since they have been able to express their opinion about it. We needed incentives for our students to get involved in a new learning process that has nothing to do with what they know. We had to involve them in an education open to an entire continent; teaching them what is real and is also within their reach.