Making Culture Alive – Digital Escape Room Erasmus Project

Project Title

Making Culture Alive – Digital Escape Room

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: Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES
In European schools, teaching of cultural heritage and traditions has typically been quite passive -visits to places having cultural importance (museums, monuments) or presentations (songs, plays, dances etc). In this project, we will organize creative activities in terms of digital education to adopt new teaching methods and to promote the teaching of European cultural heritage. We will focus on developing digital education in a way that students will be inspired to discover representations of cultural heritage and traditions. It is attempting to develop new innovative ways to make European cultures visible and to promote the sense of belonging to Europe.

For teachers this is a project that helps to develop professional skills. For example, teachers will also evaluate their strengths, weaknesses and developmental needs for distance learning. This aim was raised mainly because of the current coronavirus situation – almost all schools are currently closed in Europe. Different countries have provided different approaches and solutions for distance education. Also, resources for distance education differ a lot among countries. Thus, we will gather all the experiences of distance learning under the state of this exceptional pandemic in European countries and we will share good practices and make suggestions to improve digital education and distance learning in European schools.

METHODS
The project will be based on a continuous way of working including totally six international workshops (each one will last for 5 days) to promote digital education and new teaching methods through cultural issues and traditions. Firstly, the teachers will work on gathering all the information on distance learning caused by the coronavirus pandemic. We will share experiences among the partners, and we will make suggestions to improve digital learning in educational institutions.

Secondly, we will work on both cultural issues and digital education at the same time. In each international workshop, we will organize a “digital escape room”. Students will solve problems and find clues to get out of the room. For solving the problems, they need to use ICT skills they have learned and adopted in the workshop or earlier in the project. Those digital escape rooms will have cultural themes representing local traditions and culture – the players have to find clues and solve problems rising up from the themes.

Between the international workshops, students write and produce presentations about local cultural heritage and traditions by using various digital methods – they will make local stories alive by ICT methods learned and shared in the project. The teachers will develop professional ICT skills by sharing expertise within the partnership and by putting new methods into use in their schools.

NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS
We are totally six European schools from different educational levels, from primary schools to upper secondary and vocational schools. We believe this is a benefit that the schools of the partnership represent different educational levels – our aim is to develop teaching methods which are applicable to different age groups of students.

DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS, IMPACT AND LONG-TERM EFFECT
As mentioned above we will work on European cultural heritage and traditions and the development of digital education. In addition to the six international workshops, we will publish an e-book including students’ stories about local cultures, such as tales, important places, people etc. In this book, we will also describe the implementations of ”digital escape rooms” of our international workshops. We will publish a blog about project activities in different partner schools. This is especially in order to increase the visibility of the project and to show the examples how to use ICT in creative ways in teaching to the wider audience.

The teachers will also publish an e-booklet in which we describe how the partner schools organized teaching and distance learning under the state of the exceptional coronavirus pandemic. Based on the experiences, we will also make suggestions for the future – how the school staff and students should be educated to ensure efficient learning in normal and exceptional conditions.

The long-term effects will focus especially on the digital skills of the school staff and improved knowhow on digital education. We will expect to see positive effects on the quality of teaching and the diversification of teaching methods in the long run. Long term effects will also be seen on students’ school motivation and as a better understanding on the European cultural diversity and heritage. In addition, we believe that our project will strengthen students’ and teachers’ European identity and sense of belonging together. The project also produces valuable information on problems and solutions in the distance learning activities implemented during the pandemic.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 150009 Eur

Project Coordinator

Arppen koulu & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Osnovna sola Prezihovega Voranca Bistrica
• Szent Piroska Görögkatolikus Általános Iskola
• Vyssi odborna skola zdravotnicka a Stredni zdravotnicka skola, Hradec Kralove, Komenskeho 234
• IES Bárbara de Braganza
• Tartu Kesklinna Kool