Through robotics and collaboration to the successful citizens of the 21st century Erasmus Project

Project Title

Through robotics and collaboration to the successful citizens of the 21st century

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The main goal of our project was sharing good practices on using robotics as educational tool, among partners. The project lasted 2 years and 3 learning, teaching or training activities (students + teachers) took place in each one of our countries.
It is well known that technological areas such as robotics and machine learning—rather than completely replacing existing occupations and job categories — are likely to substitute specific tasks previously carried out as part of these jobs, freeing workers up to focus on new tasks and leading to rapidly changing core skill sets in these occupations. On average, by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today. In essence, technical skills will need to be supplemented with strong social and collaboration skills, such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and teaching/leading others.
All three partners, being aware of the above facts, were using robotics at their schools but in a different way. Spain school had much experience on aquatic ROVs (submarine robots) made of every day materials and programmed using arduino platform. Estonian school used robotics in curricula and Greek school got students engaged in the subject through participation in robotics competitions, using the platform of Lego mindstorms ev3.
The three schools shared their experience in an innovative way. Students taught their peers from other countries either from distance (using etwinning-twinspace platform and other cooperative web2.0 tools) or by meeting them in person and having hands on activities (during the short student exchanges that are going to take place in the three countries). Teachers assisted students, guided them and monitored the process. They also evaluated on how the new techniques can be adopted by their school in the future.
Hard skills like how to build a robot, program it using different programming languages STEM and ICT skills were obtained by the students, as well as soft skills like being able to work in teams, problem solving and critical thinking capabilities, decision making, cooperation, leadership etc. The skills that are absolutely necessary for the 21st century successful employee.
Of course students’ language competence increased as well as cultural awareness, as it happens in every Erasmus+ program.
The outcome of the project (all activities, reports, lessons, how to videos etc) was uploaded to a site/blog, making them available to everyone that is interested in applying robotics in school.
Students and teachers, not only from the participating schools, benefited from the project. Families and local communities were affected. In a European level communication and teamwork among partners led to better understanding and realization that together we could achieve more and go further.
One more dimension of the project was inclusion. About a quarter of Greek school students belong to the Muslim Minority. We’ll tried to eliminate discrimination and segregation by mixing students from majority and minority in working groups in our project.
The benefits for all (students, teachers, families, local society, Europe) are multiple and we are very happy that we had the chance to prove it.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 58630 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kõrveküla Põhikool & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Proto gymnasio Komotinis
• IES Schamann