Connected Classrooms – Living and Learning in a Digital World Erasmus Project

Project Title

Connected Classrooms – Living and Learning in a Digital World

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

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.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 97140 Eur

Project Coordinator

Europaschule GS “Am Stadtsee” & Country: DE

Project Partners

• ŞEHİT ASTSUBAY HİLMİ ÖZ İLKOKULU
• Agrupamento de Escolas do Monte de Caparica
• Scoala Gimnaziala”Alexandru Deparateanu”
• CEIP FUENTE DEL ORO