Digital Green Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital Green

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: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Energy and resources; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The two-year project (2016 – 2018) “Digital Green” was a partnership of six European public secondary schools from Portugal, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain and Turkey. Nowadays it is essential to be an active EU citizen working towards sustainable development, and we wanted to focus on the development of iT skills which we considered useful and attractive for the students.

The main objectives were:
– to implement ideas with the purpose of uniting Europe using digital technology;
– to understand the concept of “sustainable development” and act as sensitizing agents in the communities involved;
– to create and implement replicable and transferable practices;
– to intensively use mobile technologies including augmented reality and the use of QR Codes.

The project partners dealt with:
social sustainability including a comprehensive approach to the theme heritage.
energy sustainability to deal with the questions of energetic efficiency and understanding the production of energy.
environment sustainability to treat issues related to environmental sustainability, identifying them in each country and sharing the different solutions.

The project started with the development of a deeper knowledge of the local community as well as provide all participants with the skills to produce mobile Apps using augmented reality and QR codes.

> in September 2016 we held an e-conference during which partners met, shared their first ideas, and planned the first TPM. The tasks and responsibilities were distributed.

> in October 2016, coordinators had a training session with their national agencies. A contest was in each school where students made proposals for the project logo and motto, basis for social media presence. This raises students’ interest, awareness and sense of belonging to the project. Furthermore, informative meetings with parents were held.

> in November 2016, representatives from the six countries met at the first TPM in Romania to plan the activities to take place in the project, chose the project logo and motto and get acquainted with the Romanian partners, their educational system and local stakeholders.

> in January 2017, Portugal held a training activity to provide the participant teachers with the skills to produce mobile Apps and using augmented reality.

> in February-March 2017 the students worked on sustainable energy. They researched the topic and made Mobile Apps (quizzes) which were then subjected to a voting in a process in which local stakeholders were also involved. The winners were offered to participate in the Blended mobilities and the winning APPS were made available worldwide in Google Play Store.

Three blended mobilities followed: Spain (May 2017), Slovenia (November 2017) and Bulgaria (April 2018) with different moments: before (virtual mobility), during (Physical Mobility) and after (virtual mobility).
The last TPM was held in Turkey and aimed at assessing the whole project, preparing the final report to present to the national agencies and establishing the best ways to make the results of the project useful and relevant in the future.

The impact of the project included direct and indirect results: higher awareness and deeper knowledge of sustainability, improved quality of the use of the iCT, collaborative online tools and mobile technologies, producing videos, presentations and documents throughout the project, developing Mobile APPs (Quizzes), teachers’ professional development through a training course; increased self-initiative, better competences in English and the languages of the partner countries, deeper understanding of social and ethical diversity, improved software skills, a higher sense of belonging to Europe, higher motivation and satisfaction in everyday working activities, promoting civil and intercultural competence as well as social inclusion and well being in the area, the intensive use of the communication technologies as well as the virtual collaborative methodologies.

As predicted, long-term benefits have proven to be plentiful. We can mention:
> strengthened collaborative efforts between partners
> continuing teaching of app programming as it has proven to be an attractive way of learning for students motivating them to want to learn more and continue working on it
> the continuation of the contact between students and their host families
> better perception of the importance of learning languages
> higher appreciation of the value of diversity, also by discarding certain cultural prejudice
> improved student self-confidence as they have seen themselves able to be independent and to present themselves and their work in a foreign language
> sharing experience with local stakeholders to be more active sustainability-oriented citizens
raising of popularity of participating schools, making them attractive for potential future students

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 121310 Eur

Project Coordinator

Agrupamento de Escolas Dr. Serafim Leite & Country: PT

Project Partners

• Osnovna sola Toma Brejca
• Sredno obshtoobrazovatelno uchilishte Lyuben Karavelov
• IES Ipagro
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA NR.1 UNGURENI
• Darica Ogretmen Fusun Erdemir Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi