Pick up STEAM! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Pick up STEAM!

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: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

We live in a world where everything is in change. Our children today, our students, will have to work in jobs which haven’t been created yet. It’s important to prepare them for a future in which things such as programming and coding, designing new machines, apps, gadgets, working with robots, for example, but at the same time, creativity, teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving and innovation may be really important in their lives. All these things need training. We want to empower students to deal with the challenges in the society of the future.
We want to focus on girls, who are becoming more and more involved in scientific-technological areas but the truth is that gender is still an obstacle to the professional development of women. We want to break historical stereotypes related to STEM and inspire new generations of cross-disciplinary innovators.
OBJECTIVES:
1- To integrate STEAM education into our school curriculum, designing and planning different activities for the different ages and levels of education, by using PBL methods,which include teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, in order to help students develop their key competences and face future challenges.
2- To work STEAM areas with a sensitive gender-equality point of view, working not only to break the barriers of historical stereotypes which mostly affect women but also other aspects which influence motivations and interests such as self-perception about your competence to learn and work with STEMs in the future.
3- To motivate students, teachers and even students’ families to improve their communicative skills in another language, specially English, but also strengthening the interest in other European languages and cultures.
4- To increase students’ climate change awareness by getting them involved in activities related to environmental sustainability during one of the mobilities and in etwinning activities during the project.
5- To increase the understanding of other cultures and countries by establishing contacts and working relationships with teachers and students from European countries;
6- To support and encourage teachers to keep on learning and improving their professional development by offering opportunities to innovate in new methodologies and teaching tools;
7- Make students aware of the importance of teamwork, equality and inclusion.
8- To get an international dimension of our schools by designing an international plan and activities to foster it.
ACTIVITIES:
We have launched an eTwinning project in which students and teachers will work collaboratively preparing, designing and developing different activities of the project. These activities will occur before and after every LTTA.
We will have a preparatory staff training event and 5 LTTAs which involve students exchange:
C1: short staff training event (Spain): How to integrate the STEAM approach in our school curricula.
C2: Portugal: Techno-Club at school.
C3:Poland : Integrating robots and drones in education.
C4: Lithuania: “Water in everyday life” lessons with a STEAM point of view.
C5: Turkey: 3D Printing, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Tools in the Classroom.
C6: Spain: Final International STEAM week at school.
PARTICIPANTS:
Our target group are students aged 12-16. 3 teachers from each country will take part in C1. In the rest of the mobilities 5 students and 2 teachers from each country will take part. Students with economic obstacles and mainly girls will have preference in the selection criteria as one of the objectives is focussed on gender-equality. Other students, teachers and families will also get involved in preparatory, development and dissemination activities.
RESULTS and IMPACT.
These are some contributions of this project to the develpment of the schools involved in it:
– A rich list of resources such as lessons based in PBL, challenges, experiments and new tools, as a material basis which will allow us to integrate STEAM in our curricula in a coherent and progressive way in all stages.
– An improvement of school staff relations and an improvement regarding active involvement and participation of families in school life.
– A higher level of motivation and interest in STEAM among students, and above all, among girls.
– An improvement in students’ English communicative skills and motivation to improve it.
– International dimension of the school.
After this two-year project, we expect to have acquired enough practical knowledge, resources and tools to integrate STEAM education in our curricula in a coherent way. Dissemination activities will include a website and facebook account, which will be frequently updated. The dissemination of results after every LTTA and when the project ends will give an international dimension to our schools.Schools will be promoted in other local schools and institutions. We hope to give continuity to this project or to start new projects in the same direction.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 152970 Eur

Project Coordinator

San Felix Ikastola & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Zespol Szkolno-Przedszkolny Nr 6 w Rzeszowie
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Alhandra, Sobralinho e S.João dos Montes
• KUDRET DEMIR ORTAOKULU
• Alytaus Panemunes progimnazija