New World-New Technologies- New Chances: Applied digitization in education embedded in the educational theme “Survive on Mars” Erasmus Project

Project Title

New World-New Technologies- New Chances: Applied digitization in education embedded in the educational theme “Survive on Mars”

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Digital transformation is changing our everyday lives. Therefore, educational actors have to face this change in their schools and to deal it with appropriate teaching and learning environment. Career opportunities depend on digital education and the acquisition of digital skills. Students need to have a sound digital education and other basic skills and key competencies to keep their career and life opportunities. Teachers, too, need to evolve in their digital education for the best support of their students.
MINT competencies are to be trained at an early stage and, above all, girls’ reservations about technology, scientific content and digital media should be reduced.
The close connection of early years education with professionel education is important in order to pave children a good way into the future. Attention should be payed on the fact, that children come early in their lives to recognise that Europe offers so many ways to be gone and that the childrens flexibility is built up. Reservations against other countries should not be created or dismantled.
Teachers should gather valuable input from other European school systems and integrate it into their teaching and the development of their schools.
In order to take this approach into account, this project has brought together two VET technical high schools with their upper and lower secondary school students from Germany and France and three primary schools from Bulgaria, Germany and Portugal to work together on this Erasmus + project.
Students and teachers gain, expand and deepen their skills in different areas of digitilization, including programming with different platforms at different levels. In addition, especially the students, but also the teachers basic skills and key competiences such as language skills, teamwork, empathy and networked thinking skills, are acquiredand expanded.
In total, about 20 teachers and 180 students are involved in the project. There are different age levels in the project who work together, the range is 6-30 years. The students from Portugal are children and adolescents with learning disabilities. Most of the participating teachers have experience in working on international projects and digital skills that they both enjoy to share with others and want to expand.
The focus is on getting to know programming / applying various platforms and the comparing of platforms such as Arduino, Calliope, Micro: bit and Raspberry. On the basis of this knowledge, the digital capabilities of all participants should be expanded. Each school creates teaching and learning arrangements about the platforms they use and thus broaden their knowledge. Secondary school students and their teachers support elementary school students and their teachers in acquiring programming skills from video tutorials for platforms they don’t know yet. Students in Portugal get to know different platforms, use them with the support of their teachers and, in the end, be able to create easy programming for the platform which is the most suitable platform for their degree of learning disability. In order to provide a motivating access to these topics, the students develop this within the learning environment “Survive on Mars”. They consider what is needed for the colonization of a planet and develop appropriate ideas and programming (lamp control, moisture measurement, etc.). At the same time, students acquire knowledge about astronomy.
Finally there are going to be created teaching units for different programming platforms, in particular for primary schools, which can be used all over Europe. A comparison of different programming platforms and their effect on different groups of students can be useful. Video tutorials and an ebook with programming suggestions are going to be created, as well as a multilingual (german, english and french) dictionary for technical terms. The project results should be available with the website created for the project and on eTwinning. An evaluation will reflect the effectiveness of the project for digital competence enhancement.
Each school aims to get long-term benefits from the project by the digital advancement of their school. The results should be usable throughout Europe via the website, the Erasmus + portal and eTwinning to be a source of inspiration and help other schools, teachers and students in the development of digital literacy and other key competencies.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 94290 Eur

Project Coordinator

Grundschule Reinsfeld & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Osnovno uchilishte Hristo Smirnenski
• LYCEE POLYVALENT LOUIS DE CORMONTAIGNE
• Escola Básica Integrada da Praia da Vitória
• Balthasar-Neumann-Technikum