APP YOUR SCHOOL Erasmus Project

Project Title

APP YOUR SCHOOL

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The most relevant priority of this project was to support digital competences development in schools, by testing and implementing innovative practices in the field, using participatory approaches and ICT based technologies and through the development of guidelines that are usable and useful on a European scale. The partnership of the project – 8 partners of which 6 were consortia of media education organizations with secondary schools – made possible that schools of 8 European countries worked together on such important topics and the development of the format of the digital atelier. With the digital atelier the project aimed to transport extra school media practices of the students inside the school curricula, enabling so a transition of school extern solitary consumer relation with digital knowledge into collaborative productive processes that are capable of transforming learning actions inside the school, as well as the relation between school and society, through the design and implementation of projects for the community, supporting social development and innovation at the local level. The project implemented through the digital atelier new transversal methodologies that open a dialogue among students, schools and societies, promoting a development of the school as place to imagine, think and “test the future”. The “digital atelier” is a “workshop” in which teacher proposes ICT activities using two methodologies, that were already very appreciated in Italy for its educational attainment: the active methodologies of Alberto Manzi and Bruno Munari – able to transform school teaching models offering new ways to work both for students and teachers and creating a link to current technological opportunities, promoting also different ways to approach teaching that are closer to students with bigger disadvantages. With the digital atelier the teacher is able to design an educational experience that starts from an ICT content (for example an app) to develop then a manual task, with tools and materials, in order to start a personal and collective research with students. We planned the “digital atelier” as a “good place” to motivate students to use ICT for personal and community benefit, developing their creative potential. To design the new format of “digital atelier” we organized, in Bologna (headquarters of the Alberto Manzi’s Archive and Centre), 2 Transnational, Teaching and Learning Activities, on 5 days each, where teachers and partners discovered and worked concretely with the “Alberto Manzi Method” and “Bruno Munari Method”, and trained themselves more then 258 teachers and educators in their own countries with 8 National Trainings. Teachers had a very active role in the planning of trainings, as well as in the design the digital ateliers that were experimented in 7 countries. Based on the trainings and experimentations we produced 8 national toolkits in 8 different languages and an European manual in English. The Toolkits focus on students’ extracurricular media skills, active citizenship/ civic engagement and digital creativity, positioning the digital atelier in the national context and with detailed descriptions and materials of the digital Ateliers presented in each toolkit. They give an example of “how to do” and “what to do” in the 8 national languages, to support teachers and educators wishing to implement the approaches of the project in their own country. All digital ateliers are also published in English in the website of the project as well as in the MIL/PEER platform (Media and Information Literacy Platform for Exchanging Educational Resources), an online platform developed by the Evens Foundation and the Modern Poland Foundation (Polish partner of the project) dedicated to educational resource sharing in the field of Media and Information Literacy. The European manual is written in English from a group composed by partners (media education experts, researchers, teachers and school experts) and external experts and focuses on the methodological aspects of the App Your School Project and its main axes: how to insert technology in the curricula; how to create the link with media education and civic engagement; build connections with art, multimedia and pedagogical innovation; value extracurricular skills and student’s motivation/dispositions. Its target are teachers and institutions that play a role in the development of innovative uses of technology in the classroom: Universities, Centers of Research and Training, Educational Centers, Networks of schools, national and European organizations. For the dissemination of the Toolkits, the format of the Digital Ateliers and the European manual 7 multiplier events were organized in 7 different countries with a total of 684 participants. Further information on the projects activities and outputs can be found here: https://www.appyourschool.eu/.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 340093 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zaffiria Network & Country: IT

Project Partners

• KUOPION KAUPUNKI
• VsI EDUKACINIAI PROJEKTAI
• Evropska rozvojova agentura, s.r.o.
• Fundacja Nowoczesna Polska – network
• Associação Educativa Nacional de Inclusão e Inovação nas Escolas- AENIE
• Esenler Ilce Milli Egitim Mudurlugu
• KARPOS KENTRO EKPAIDEYTIKON DRASEONKAI DIAPOLITISMIKHS EPIKOINONIAS