Computer Science Connects Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Computer Science Connects Schools

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 2018

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

‘Computer Science Connects Schools’ is a project that aimed to connect a Spanish, a Finnish and a German school in rural areas through an exchange of their different knowledge and good practices in teaching Computer Science thereby enhancing skills for a modern, open classroom and cross-curriculum and bilingual studies. The partners saw the necessity to involve particularly the Natural Science and Math teachers and students in international projects, as for many colleagues and students in this field communication and cooperation in a foreign language at school is not possible, whereas in their further education and working world it has become increasingly the reality. The Finnish partners were completely new to such international project work, but are experienced in modern methodology in teaching and were keen to enhance their possibilities for international cooperation.
Our project was aiming to bring the different experiences in CLIL/bilingual teaching (German school), and Computer Science and using Computer Technology in the classroom (Spanish school) and modern teaching methodology (Finland) together to interlock different skills with each other and create a more modern, application-oriented lesson plan and try out forms of more product- and student-oriented teaching. Our project was aiming to develop both, the skills of teachers and students and improve assessment strategies of such skills through the exchange of knowledge of new tools and programs. For this we decided on a working plan in stages for some application-oriented products with manuals and lesson plans, so that the products and ideas will be reusable in future Computer Science lessons.Thus we designed simple PC games with intercultural aspects and we built a model house with some programmed electronic appliances with Arduino and small robots with Lego Mindstorm for simple household tasks that could be tried out and played with.
Teachers and students studying Computer Science were working online and at meetings together in transnational teams. The work was documented via a common project website with blogs about the online work, pictures, application manuals and partly films of the meetings. With the support of English and CLIL-teachers students and teachers of Computer Science enhanced their general and specific language skills and communicated throughout the project in English. At the transnational meetings the teams involved refined, presented and tried out their common products. Furthermore, new products were designed (e.g. designing and 3D-printing of model furniture). The experiences, gained skills and resulting products were presented to the school communities on Open Days and via the project website for further use and development in different departments and follow-up courses, especially in the Computer Science Departments, and via our school websites, Twinspace and the Educational Gateway for other interested school communities.The partners are going to implement the new methods and tools in the schools’ development plans, and increase their global digital teaching competence through the formative evaluation of the teaching staff through the specific European development tool MENTEP.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 56628 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Philippinum Weilburg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Jaakko Ilkan koulu
• IES Rosa Chacel