English Teaching With Innovative Web Tools Erasmus Project

Project Title

English Teaching With Innovative Web Tools

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: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Turkey, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Italy carried out a project on integrating ICT to language learning. As English is considered as a global language, we used it as a tool to manage activities, share experiences and show learning process. The EU, like many other unions, has recognized that the digital agenda is incredibly important. The document “​The Digital Agenda for Europe” under the Europe 2020 strategy suggests that 90% of jobs today require some form of digital skills. It also highlights some of the shortages that we may encounter by 2020. We tried to make our pupils be ready for future with this project. So, the partners carried out their activities depending on “designing the classrooms of future” strategies; pupils were encouraged to work on the real problems or subject matters they face in their lives, analyse the problems, develop methods and materials to solve the problems, and use English to explain all their works. While doing these, the pupils were led with the help of innovative methods of teaching and encouraged to use ICT tools to enrich their learning process, improve their digital and language competences and enhance peer teaching/learning. The target group of our project was the pupils aged 10-15 who had some knowledge of English.
Through the project, we aimed to:
encourage the pupils to use their skills of technology as well as science and knowledge of English in an effective and creative way;
create awareness among pupils and teachers towards the interdisciplinary learning and teaching;
motivate colleagues from partner schools to teach language in an interdisciplinary way using technology;
motivate the pupils to learn English integrated with other subjects and related to real-life environments and use it in their lives more effectively;
introduce other cultures and languages.

Taking into consideration all objectives of the project and also the age of target group, this project certainly made a real difference in the lives of these young learners. They had a chance to see the lifestyles of their foreign peers, to perform some activities together abroad, to practice English in a real life environment and to learn English in an integrated way with other subjects.

During the project the pupils worked on some subjects. For example, to sensitize people about the necessity to use eco-friendly energies and promote sustainable development, our students created an Eco-Calendar with endangered animal species of their countries with innovative web tools. The environmental and technological part of the project led pupils to carry out research about local environmental issues and work with environmental associations for the creation of posters called “bETWIN for a greener Net “.The knowledge they got regarding ecological energies and materials enabled them to propose their own innovations through the models of eco-friendly “EcoTWINLAND model” which were presented as a 3D version, as well.
Students worked on entrepreneurship, based on common sets of values to overcome prejudice, guarantee a peaceful future, promote intercultural knowledge and foster a common European identity. Regarding this issue, our students created an ETWINET book about the economy and artistic values of the countries with “Sing for EuropeTWINET “activity. Pupils learnt and rehearsed local folk songs. Each school wrote and acted one part of “ETWINET play” .The subject of the play was “Hope for Europe” in mother-tongue and English. The actions carried out in the project enabled pupils to develop core competences of the future (ICT, foreign languages), as well as personal skills like entrepreneurship, initiative, teamwork, autonomy, creativity, problem-solving, etc. We engaged them with computational thinking-one of the future skills that foster algorithmic thinking and problem solving with”I do my first ETWINET App” and short SCRATCH story activities. A project website-www.ETWINET.weebly.com- was first created to present our work and all the productions made by students throughout the project. We hope to see that this project will bring beginnings of solutions to the issues we all face as European citizens. The impact of our project was significant on students themselves, as they developed their own competences and also on teachers as they opened up to Europe through the exchange of skills and practices. An enduring spirit of initiative and willingness to pursue international cooperation constituted sustainable benefits in each school. We expect a long-term impact on the local community as a whole (municipalities, institutions, NGOs, associations, other schools) as local stakeholders who helped with the project should get concrete benefits from our work and will be able to keep and re-use our productions for future actions. To finish, our experience was shared with the lifelong learning community on a national and European scale to make our productions available to the public and inspire other European projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 85730 Eur

Project Coordinator

T.C AFYONKARAHISAR VALILIGI DUMLUPINAR BILIM VE SANAT MERKEZI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• Mazeikiu Kalnenu pagrindine mokykla
• Scuola Media Statale Giuseppe Mazzini
• Colegiul Auto Traian Vuia
• Kandavas Karla Milenbaha vidusskola