Code to Create new knowledge using programming in primary school. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Code to Create new knowledge using programming in primary 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 Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Computational thinking is a key factor to understand the digital world and how the digital world affects the future job area. EC among other have defined that by 2020 there will be a lack of about one million programmers.

Many schools in different countries throughout Europe therefore are trying out the concept of code and sees programming as useful for implementing digital skills in order to achieve future key competences. To build new knowledge but also to understand how a computer works and how it affects a teachers and students way of thinking of learning is important in todays society.

Programming is an important factor of the education of 21st century skills. Coding in classrooms also supports the fact that education becomes more innovative. Producing new knowledge and new methods in a society getting more and more changing world also changes classroom education. Supporting teachers that develops future competences for children as digital skills also strengthen a lifelong competence for future jobs as e.g.programming software.

Code and programming also plays an important part of implementation of digital skills into basic subjects as Maths, Crafts and Technology. It has been documented and shared by other projects and has also been seen as a successful way to achieve better results since it offers a new tool to support logical thinking.

All over the world programming is a very actual topic in schools. Programming also need to be addressed from an international perspective by looking at the similarities and differences between countries. When teachers learn from each other and form a methodology the digital skills will increase for students and teachers in all countries. The development of finding new methods to teach programming in younger ages needs to go faster to meet the demands of the digital competences of the future.

The three partner-schools in this project; from Sweden, Finland and Italy all have a big interest in using ICT in an innovative way for better results in basic skills, inclusive perspective and to increase digital competence.

We have all participated in the the hour of code and also have started the process of programming locally at our own schools. We are in different stages of implementing computational thinking, code and programming in our daily education and also at a higher level and in curriculum.
Therefore the three different countries has worked together to learn from each others practices, both students and teachers regarding;
1. Programming and Maths- using code to solve problems
2. Programming and Technology- using code to create something new
3. Programming and Crafts- using code to create something new

The project has also focused on what the curriculum says about code/programming and the result from best practice in this project has become an online course/lesson activities to support other schools implementing code/programming in primary school.
During the project we had 4 transnational projectmeetings where we worked on the different subjects connected to programing and coding. During these transnational meetings we laid out the plans for how we would be able to work with implementing code/programming in these three different subjects, and then carried out activities at our schools that we shared results from. During our transnational meetings we also carried out lesson observations to be able to compare cultural differences in teaching/learning.

The results from this project has been in different levels.
At first, the three participating schools have had a great change of experience working together in this project based on developing our own ability to teach programming and coding to our students. The partners in this project have raised their confidence and awareness for both cultural differences in our countries but also in how you can work with digital tools and computational thinking.

We have also during the project worked on and created a free website where we have collected our best activities we have tried out during the project. This website has activities based on our subjects, but can also be reached by using our terminology of concepts regarding programming/code in school.

The long-term benefits of this is that both our schools and teachers at our schools will be able to use this website to start using code/programming and have activities planned to get going.
We will also keep on sharing this website to non-participating schools and organisations and hopefully they will find our work useful. To keep this a living website, we will perform evaluations for people using it and collect thoughts on how to keep on develop it and broaden the activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 45440 Eur

Project Coordinator

Glasbergsskolan & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Höjdens skola
• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO “RESTA – DE DONATO GIANNINI”