Unlock your technological skills Erasmus Project

Project Title

Unlock your technological skills

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Cooperation between educational institutions and business; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

During writing the project we stick to findings we came to in the process of quality monitoring:
High school students cannot transfer theoretical knowledge into everyday life situations.
There are less activities that would combine different fields (mathematics and history in our case).
There are no contents in gymnasium programme that would enable the development of technological competencies.
Boys use modern technology more often than girls.
Students need knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship.
The living environment is still poorly adapted for the blind or partially sighted people.
In the project Open it we wanted to draw attention to those shortcomings and mitigate them.
Our goals:
– to connect knowledge from social science and natural science and apply it into life situation
– to develop mathematics, technological and digital literacy
– to get to know a part of local history
– to strenghten entrepreneurship skills
– to enable girls and people with fewer opportunities (the blind or partially sighted people, students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds) to work with modern machines
– to encourage students to take up non-formal education
– to connect interculturally, to get to know other language cultures.
During the implementation of the project we achieved some other goals that we did not anticipate when applying. While creating the escape room students were developing entrepreneurship skills and manual skills. We became acquainted with the work of the Intellectual Property Office as the initial project name Unlock is a registered trademark so we had to change it.
The result of the project are four escape rooms: classic, outdoor, virtual and room adapted for blind and partially sighted. In Hranice, it was built in a former school shop. They involved the life of Sigmund Freud who was born near their town. Students from Opatija took advantage of the city park and dedicated the story to the history of tourism. Students from Slovenske Konjice turned a small classroom in the attic into an escape room for the blind and partially sighted. Their story is dedicated to the Konus Company which employed a large part of locals during Yugoslav era.
All three project teams included both sexes in a balanced way. Students with disabilities also participated. The students planned work by themselves, acquired knowledge, chose stories for the escape room, arranged the rooms, and put together puzzles. Students explored local history by interviewing elderly citizens and investigating contents on the Internet and in the books. Girls were encouraged to work with technologies in the lab to gain experience and knowledge that is not otherwise typical for them: erecting plaster walls, treating and painting them, making gadgets for the puzzles in the U-lab. Some students drawed old maps by hand, some searched the GPS coordinates of locations used in the escape park for example. Students used the software for text and photo editing and some of them researched the block programming and applied the knowledge on micro:bit.
In order to operate sustainably very little new furniture were bought and rather adapted the old one (the Konus Company donated furniture and products). In Hranice, a lot of furniture and decorations were obtained from municipal waste and domestic attics. Most of the equipment in the escape rooms is such that it can be reused in classrooms. Assembling mental tasks proved to be a difficult task. We realized that a good idea is also distinguished by a simple implementation. The most difficult thing was to assess whether a task was really difficult. We tested the shortlist among classmates. We put the best tasks in the room.
The promotion of our escape rooms was published in local newspapers and online. Project web page and brochures were designed.
We purchased 360° image capture cameras. We learned how to use tools to make a virtual escape room. For simplicity and accessibility, we have moved the virtual escape room from originally planned veer.tv.app to Google forms.
The more students were involved in the project, the more teachers performed as tutors, no longer guiding the students on the path of discovering new knowledge, but following them and learning together with them.
The escape rooms are used by students from secondary and primary schools from the surrounding area. They are available to tourists, so we connect with tourist information centres. In Sl. Konjice we will invite the society for the blind and visually impaired. The virtual escape room will be freely available on websites of our schools. In the long term, we see the continuation of the project in the development of escape rooms that will be adapted to other vulnerable groups (deaf, handicapped, people with intellectual disabilities, ….). Students gained a lot of competencies needed for today’s and future jobs during their participation in the project.

Project Website

http://project-openit.weebly.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 61567,31 Eur

Project Coordinator

SOLSKI CENTER SLOVENSKE KONJICE-ZRECE & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Gimnazija Eugena Kumicica Opatija
• Gymnázium, Hranice, Zborovská 293