Cultural and Natural Treasures to Be Preserved for an Inclusive and Sustainable Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Cultural and Natural Treasures to Be Preserved for an Inclusive and Sustainable Europe

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: Energy and resources; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

We are six partners from different countries, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Spain, that have decided to start a Strategic Partnership with the purpose of diving into ways of reaching motivation in our students through the new tools that are available for us nowadays in our schools and on the Internet. We intend to prove that powerful tools such as Information and Communication Technologies can be excellent vectors to flood all our schools with enthusiasm and motivation for being creative and for learning. The context of an international partnership is an extraordinary breeding ground for sowing seeds of knowledge, creativity and excellence. We want to work with professionals in the fields of ICT, Renewable Energies and Environmental Sustainability and learn from them so that we can make school productions on different aspects of energy production and sustainability in the most professional way possible. We want to learn the technique and then produce and share our own works in several areas of the school curriculum. This production of materials will undoubtedly set our students (15-17 year-olds) in a much more active attitude. And sharing our productions with our School Communities and with other schools will definitely make them work more enthusiastically and in a more responsible way.

Each participating school will organise a visit to their school, and decide on the activities that all the schools will work on in that visit. Apart from sharing information about their countries with the host school, the students participating in the visit (5 students per school + 2 teachers, which makes a total of 25 students + 10 teachers visiting each host school) will produce new educational content from their trips, lectures and experiences during their visits.

Our strategic partnership is based on a two-year Project. In both years, participating students will acquire, through joint ICT workshops during their visits to their partner schools, but also in their classes at school, technological skills such as video recording, editing, screen capturing, multimedia presentations and digital educational content creator tools that will enable them to produce quality educational material such as Educational Videos, Multimedia Presentations, Videotutorials and Digital Educational Resources in the above-mentioned scientific fields. We will also learn about waste recycling, sources of energy, power plants and natural treasures or about the ecological footprint and organic farming. All this material will be in English, licensed under open licences and shared with schools and educational institutions both through our school websites and project blog and through free-access educational multimedia content platforms that are available in Europe and worldwide. All the production of the students (photos, sound files, videos, digital educational content, etc.) produced and collected during these visits will be uploaded to the eTwinning Workspace. We will also share them in any other European educational platforms available at the time, and through other general multimedia content providers such as Youtube, Slideshare, Soundcloud, etc.
Undoubtedly, the opportunity to work with professionals in the field of energy and sustainability and in the field of production of educational digital content will be a great value experience both for the teachers and the students, and will broaden their future academic and working options.

The teamwork methodology we will use in most parts of this project will aim at developing our students’ skills in researching, writing, performing, debating, addressing an audience, and managing a project, thus enhancing their creativity and their social abilities and promoting their initiative in the combination of resources and skills to carry out a project of excellence. Our students will participate in all the stages of the project, including decision making and planning. Key-competences such as digital skills and foreign language acquisition will be subject to special dedication.

We want this project to have a long-lasting effect in our schools so that the new methological approaches we intend to promote become a permanent way of learning in many areas of the curriculum. Once the 2-year period of the project is over, all the 6 schools intend to continue working together. Our intention is that this kind of teaching and learning we promote with the project stays with us once the project is closed. We will continue working with active methodologies with our students, and using the newly acquired technical skills in our classes. We will use all the materials produced in the project in our classes as they will be available for us and for the public.

We would also try to find new funding for school visits as we believe that they are very convenient if not essential in the learning of a second language. We all want School Exchange Patnerships to be a distinguishing feature of our schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 235478 Eur

Project Coordinator

Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligtoria Vía de la Plata & Country: ES

Project Partners

• COLEGIUL VASILE LOVINESCU
• Rigas Klasiska gimnazija
• ITE P.Savi
• Escola Dr. Horácio Bento de Gouveia
• Newark School