Discovering Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Discovering Europe

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

The title of our project may at first sound like a paradox. There is, after all, no such event in history books as discovery of Europe, since it was mostly the Europeans who travelled around the world in search of new lands, new routes and new means of achieving their goals.
With this project, ten primary and lower secondary schools from ten European countries wanted to make the best of this tradition. All participants set off for a journey during which they discovered something valuable.
Students discovered new lands and made new friends. Although no great distances separate them, they used to know very little about their neighbours. To change this situation, they helped one another learn about their countries and shared their cultures. While doing this, they discovered something more: their own potential and creativity, sense of responsibility for their education, importance of learning foreign languages and value of teamwork and cooperation.
Teachers explored new routes in teaching, to avoid such dangers as boredom, stagnation and discouragement, which constantly threaten both their students and themselves. They looked for new means to achieve their ultimate goal: cultivating and nurturing children’s natural enthusiasm for learning, curiosity and creativity. They explored new methods of teaching to better equip children for their further education and future work,
allowinging students more power in decisions concerning their own learning and letting children learn by working in teams on performing practical, creative tasks.
For these purposes, we decided to explore in our project methods based on the theory of constructivism, in particular PBL (project based learning) and webquest. Teachers know very well that the best way leading to truly learning and understanding something is trying to teach it to somebody else. That is why we also decided to explore the methods of peer-learning and learning-by-teaching in our work with the students. Those four methods were the base of all activities in our project. In our search for better routes in teaching , we blended them together in an innovative method of “modified webquest”, which was implemented through the main group of project’s activities called ‘Teach&LEarn’. Second group of activities, called ‘Connect&Play’, included collaborative tasks performed on eTwinning platform, facilitated the process of teaching and learning English as foreign language through providing the much desired communication context. Besides all activities mentioned before,based on virtual cooperation, we also implemented the targeted methods through group of activities called ‘Face2FAce’, involving direct communication and collaboration of children from different countries during transnational learning meetings. To fully utilize the potential of international cooperation for enhancing the European dimension of our schools, we concentrated the ‘Teach&Learn’ and ‘Face2Face’ activities on the topics concerning geography, natural environment, history and culture of partner countries.
Like every well-designed expedition, our project has brought tangible profits: teaching resources based on the targeted methods, in form of websites and ICT materials. The resources resulting from the project (webquests and activity scenarios ) are available to be re-used, and can also serve as templates for the teachers, helping them develop new activities based on the targeted teaching methods. We would like for the resources to be of use not only for the participating organizations, but also for other teachers and schools, and therefore they have been published on the Internet as public teaching resources.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 344682 Eur

Project Coordinator

Szkola Podstawowa Nr 2 & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Pielaveden Yhtenäiskoulu, Pielavesi
• Istituto Comprensivo Li Punti
• Grund- und Mittelschule Dinkelscherben
• Escola El Castellot
• Openbare Daltonschool De Gondelier
• CATTON GROVE PRIMARY SCHOOL
• Scoala Gimnaziala Alexandru Vaida Voevod