Museums are no longer merely repositories of culture, but vital educational institutions. Museums can testify to the existence of other cultures and faiths in ways that go beyond the written or spoken word. They provide evidence of other realities, other histories and other influences beyond the ones we might have learned or perceived. Museums teach critical thinking, empathy, and other generally important skills and dispositions. Trips to museums help get kids excited about school subjects. Museums teach subject-specific content and skills. Museums expand the general world knowledge of students.Museums have the potential to allow a great variety of ways to study, discover, interact and enjoy. However, learning is at all restricted to formal schooling in the standart cases. Museums in Lithuania offer many educational activities for visitors (each museum from 3 to 50 education ectivities). Museums are trying functional to use for education purposes. They have areas to promote developing "learning by doing" skills among pupils and students. Very often teachers with their pupils visit museums. But these visits are not regullar, and not included in to curriculum. Besides that, museums educational programs situation in different countries is very different. Moreover, there are many museum educators, working at the museums, but these education activities not included in to lessons plans and schools programs, pupils must pay for education activities in museums. Thus, the context of the specific project aims at the use of the museum as a pedagogical approach and at the realization of innovative activities that will be a motivation to recognize the value of the museum exhibits as important and at the same time alternative learning sources for the target groups who are seven to fifteen years old students. As a consequence, the objectives of the project are building a stronger link between the school & the museum, use of the museum as a place of non-formal education while emphasizing on the experience acquisition through the senses, learning via studying museum exhibits and through activities that improve perception skills, incorporation of the learning by doing educational approach, integration of alternative, learning by doing methods that promote collaboration among the participants. Extensive use of the museum exhibits in open cross curricula approaches, moving from the teacher-centred education model to the student-centred model where knowledge is elicited by students’ participation, understanding of present time via exploration of the past, finding similarities and differences between yesterday and today, establishing bonds among generations by encouraging the students to act out as explorers of the national & international past. Our target groups are students between 7-15 age ranges. Our project partnership is created by both experienced partners and inexperienced partners in EU Projects. Therefore, this project will give insight to new partners and develop their project management and implementation skills. Our partnership includes education and cultural center for teachers, schools, NGO, University and (6 associated partner museums and 8 associated partner schools). We will have 2 LTT activities during the project lifetime. The aims of each of them are to have information about how to integrate museums into our educational system and our lives and how interdisciplinary lesson plans created and implemented within the framework of museums and classrooms.
All partners agreed that the main achievements from the beginning of the projects to the end were: - to building a stronger link and connection between the schools & the museums - to use the museum as a place of non-formal education while emphasising on the experience acquisition through the senses - to encourage learning via studying museum exhibits and through activities that improve perceptional skills - incorporation of the learning by doing educational approach - integration of alternative, learning by doing methods that promote collaboration among the participants - extensive use of the museum exhibits in open cross curricula approaches - moving from the teacher-centred education model to the student-centred model where knowledge is elicited by students’ participation - understanding of present time via exploration of the past, finding similarities and differences between yesterday and today - establishing bonds among generations by encouraging the students to act out as explorers of the national & international past - try to collect international experiences and try to use them in different countries - create interdisciplinary lessons and pilot them in schools.
The main idea why partners decided to apply was to try to understand what is the situation in different countries in connection of museums and schools. There are many museum educators, working at the museums, but these education activities not included in to lessons plans and schools programs, pupils must pay for education activities in museums. The objectives of the project were building a stronger link between the school & the museum, use of the museum as a place of non-formal education while emphasising on the experience acquisition through the senses, learning via studying museum exhibits and through activities that improve perception skills, incorporation of the learning by doing educational approach. The idea that museums and cultural can be a good plane to make integrated lesson and there are a lot possibilities to encourage teachers and educator together create interesting and more practical lesson was the leading idea to write the application and organise all project's activities. Others reasons were to exchange good practices, to improve intercultural communication, inclusion and integration and discover adult learning opportunity.