My vision, your vision: An intercultural network of European heritage" is a project of exchange of good practices framed in the action KA204 of Erasmus+, and is an association of two adult education centers located in Spain (one Official School of Languages and one CEPA), a Greek cultural association, an adult training center in Italy and an inter-municipal adult training center in Norway. The centers developed joint initiatives to promote cooperation and the exchange of good practices. The project increased the partners' ability to operate transnationally and to share and compare innovative ideas, teaching practices and methods. The objectives are to reinforce the values of our socio-cultural, human and linguistic heritage, and promoting a deeper understanding of our common idiosyncrasy as European citizens among adult learners. The context of the project encompasses the EOI's needs to gain visibility, internationalize, collaborate with like-minded European centers, creating online multimedia resources and endowing its teaching methods with a more flexible and accessible academic offer. In addition to our two-year KA104 project, we wanted to delve into certain topics (digital, intercultural and connected learning) and weave international networks of exchange between our partners in order to enrich each other and promote informal and non-formal learning with the aim of expanding it outside the classroom and help students learn to learn. Furthermore, the objectives of the project were to enrich language teaching from the perspective of interculturality, digitalization, inclusion, international collaboration and, consequently, the ultimate objective was not to lose students and to gain them among the underrepresented population groups (aged over 55 years), as well as to increase the digital competence of students and teachers, to get to offer quality teaching that extends the offer to blended courses, providing virtual classrooms with online and multimedia resources that allow for greater and more extensive viability, scalability and accessibility to the training we offer to the citizens. As a result, we gathered more than 70 videos in our YouTube channel, with 113 followers: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBDbw6sQZHpyoUGq3zZKYaw The participants in the 4 mobilities foreseen in the project were two teachers for each associated center, plus the students of the host center. Two teachers plus 4 students of each partner participated in the learning activity, for a total of 30 participants. The profile of the students who participated in the training activities were over 55 years old, or with few digital skills or at risk of exclusion (immigrants). During the project, we planned four transnational meetings, one to kick off, the second to peer learning, a third intermediate exchange of good practices and a final evaluation and dissemination meeting. In addition, there was a training activity with students in Norway (with the support of our Norwegian partner, competent in video making), for a video editing course that allowed us to acquire basic skills to develop and implement the final product. The methodology used to carry out the project was active and collaborative. Members were communicated and informed by sharing all the material on Google Drive, allowing them to make proposals and explain their needs. There was an emphasis on transparency (everyone had access to everything) and stewardship. Most of the work materials have been translated to Italian, English Spanish and Greek, providing facilities for interaction between all partners, although the vast majority could also communicate in Spanish. The results formed a database of educational videos on special places in the different locations involved, a sort of "human itinerary" in the languages we teach, subtitled in various languages and geolocated on a public 3D Google Earth map: http://drive.google.com/open?id=11pirjiCO4Q_4y7X93kC2c0mfohYtTCWB&usp=sharing_eil&ts=5fd1f8e4 The project surely had an impact on the associated centers themselves, on their teachers and the target group of students, and ultimately on the entire educational community and the general public, since the didactic material that we created is open and public (OAR). In this way, we wanted to contribute to crossing the border between formal and informal education, integrating them. The long-term benefits will be a greater digital competence of students and teachers and the possibility of becoming organizations that learn digitally.
The project has multiple objectives that converge into a single one: to reinforce the values of our socio-cultural, human and linguistic heritage by promoting cooperation and exchange of good practices, increasing the digital competence of students and teachers and therefore the quality of the courses we offer. We wanted to put students in contact with the reality of other European citizens and countries and provide them with the intercultural skills necessary to be true mediators between languages and cultures. We do this under the common denominator of their vision of heritage. It has been carried out through the elaboration of videos, deepening the use of audiovisual tools to disseminate these values. The project has influenced the greater implementation of multimedia tools, especially to promote digital didactics within our teaching in online training activities both as speakers and listeners. Such training has been specialised in order to reach out to intertwine formal and informal learning, fostering links between the students involved and other parts of the community interested in our teaching outside the classroom. We wanted to grow: this year the EOI has 60 more students.
In the long history of our school, we had detected that our students acquire extensive knowledge of the language in the classroom, and recently, and through linguistic mediation, it has become clear how powerful it is to be in contact with the reality of the countries and citizens of the language of learning. That is why, through this project, we wanted to put them in contact with other European adults under the common denominator of their vision of the cultural heritage. The main intention was to promote cooperation and exchange of best practices with European partners and collaborators and thus make our educational offer more flexible and accessible when it comes to learning. The main needs addressed are the promotion of innovative and intercultural educational methods with new didactic practices that integrate formal, non-formal and informal learning. The possibility of moving students abroad is also a plus for our Language School, which aims to train citizens not only in linguistic competence but also in sociocultural, interpersonal and multicultural competence. We have also responded to our desire for internationalisation and intergenerational collaboration.