Creative, Active, Responsible Students in the Digital World Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative, Active, Responsible Students in the Digital World

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: Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

Technology is everywhere, present in almost every part of our lives. It affects how we shop, socialize, connect, play, and most importantly learn. With their great and increasing presence in our lives it only makes sense to have digital technology in the classroom. Integrating technology into the classroom is definitely a great way to reach diversity in learning styles, it helps prepare students for their future careers, it gives students the chance to interact with their classmates more by encouraging collaboration. The primary target group of the project are students aged 10-14 and their teachers from 5 different European schools.
The original objectives of the project were all met. They were:
-to develop, test and implement innovative and effective teaching methods using ICT in the classroom,
-to create a pleasant and safe educational environment, promoting peer-learning, problem-based learning, game-based-learning, which helps to increase students’ problem solving, numeracy, digital, verbal communication skills, critical thinking, creativity, team-working and improves their transition to high school
-to enhance the collaboration among European teachers by sharing good practices as part of their professional development
-to strengthen the communication and collaboration with the students’ parents
In this project took part 5 schools:
1. Liceul Tehnologic Octavian Goga Jibou, Romania – a school with 670 students aged 6-19 in primary, secondary and vocational education.
2. Agrupamento de Escolas do Forte da Casa, Portugal – a group of 3 schools, from grammar to secondary level school with a a diverse multicultural background.
3. Zakladni skola Zamberk, 28.rijna 581, Czech Republic – primary school with about 420 pupils in the age range 6-15.
4. General Kemal Balikesir Ortaokulu, Turkey – There are kindergarten, primary school and secondary school in the same building and there are about 950 students aged between 5 and 14 and sixty teachers in school.
5. 3rd Primary School of Agios Nikolaos Crete, Greece – a primary school of 250 pupils and 25-30 teachers.
The main activities of the project were:
1. Creative recycling workshops – students worked with old materials and objects and turned them into new, useful objects.
2. Donation/Charity activities: – the recycled, new objects created during the creative recycling workshops were donated to different institutions
3. Digital Technology in the Classrooms: -teachers integrated the new digital technologies into their teaching practices (tablets, smartphones)
4. Educational Articles: – 8 articles written by teachers on topics related to the project, mainly on using digital technology in teaching and learning
5. eTwinning Activities: – used for communication, collaboration and dissemination and a work space for students
6. Transnational Project Meetings – 2 TPMs in Jibou, Romania (December 2016) to set the roles, responsibilities, deadlines, agree on the timeline of the activities and in Balikesir, Turkey (October 2018) to evaluate the project and talk about the sustainability of some of the project activities.
7. Learning/Teaching/Training Activities – we had LTTAs in Zamberk, Czech Republic (May 2017), Forte da Casa, Portugal (October 2017) and in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece (May 2018). All LTTAs included creative recycling workshops, digital activities and donations to different institutions.
The tangible results of the project are:
1. Blogs in 6 languages (English, Romanian, Portuguese, Czech, Greek and Turkish), where each school described their local activities.
2. Facebook page – each partner uploaded their activities with photos and descriptions
3. YouTube channel – video tutorials of the creative recycling workshops can be viewed here
4. The Book “Creative, Active, Responsible Students in the Digital World” – it contains the educational articles written by teachers and the descriptions of the main activities undertaken during the project.
Students have developed their creativity, digital, entrepreneurship, social and civic, cultural awareness competences. Teachers have developed professionally, they use more often group works, small-scale projects and digital technology in their teaching.
Longer-term benefits:
Using project based learning and integrating digital technology into the classroom have become a habit during the project and it surely will be maintained after the project. The other thing that will be maintained, are the creative recycling workshops as they proved a great opportunity for students to develop their creativity and critical thinking, the sense of ownership of their their newly-created products and it contributes to waste reduction. It made them aware that they do not always need to buy new things, they can create their own products from old ones.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 120788 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liceul Tehnologic “Octavian Goga” Jibou & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas do Forte da Casa
• 3rd Primary School of Agios Nikolaos Crete
• General Kemal Balikesir Ortaokulu
• Zakladni skola Zamberk, 28.rijna 581