“If I Were” – Arts and Digital Democracy to Raise Participation to Social Activities Against Loss of Motivation and ESL Erasmus Project

Project Title

“If I Were” – Arts and Digital Democracy to Raise Participation to Social Activities Against Loss of Motivation and ESL

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: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

One of the main reasons motivating us for beginning this project was the reality that most of our pupils were socially non-active, non-communicative children/youngsters and had unwillingness to participate into social activities by themselves. We had realized that non-active, unsociable behaviours of our pupils and their unwillingness to take active roles in social groups and in the process of planning and handling of the school subjects and environment had been causing many problems to increase. One of the most important of these problems was their loss of motivation and willingness to success and to join school life and social activities. It was becoming more problematic for some of our students and it was even causing an increase in ESL in our schools, in long term. If we could regain these students by including them into the process of formation of our school culture, we would be able to decrease levels of unsuccess and early school leaving, both of which, had been the common problems of all our.partner schools.
Throughout our project’s implementation process, we tried to intermingle the artistic approaches with educative methodology of problem-based learning (PBL) model and we extended the results and implications of that intermixture through an “Internet/Digital Democracy” platform based on interactive communicative rules of discussion and sharing in a “game-like environment”. We tried to achieve to increase social/active participation of our students into the social and cultural life of their school and the local society they live in. First, we formated voluntary, problem-definition/solution-suggestion & art intermixturing work-groups. The groups would produce artistic adaptions for the definitons of pre-given problems and solutions to these pre-given problem set, at the beginning and end of every semestre. At the beginning of every first semestre of the year, we defined/gave a social/cultural/educative problem-area for our students and wanted them to produce an artistic explanation of the problems they saw related with the given area -by applying art, ie. painting, music, dance, literature and especially theater…etc.-. At the end of every second semestre they created/prepared another artistic explanation as the solution of that problem. At the end of both semestres they exhibited/performed their artistic creations in front of the other teachers and students from their schools and in front of the visitors of our transnational partner schools. At the last semestre, if we could have enough time, we were planning that every partner school would choose the problem of the other partners and create a solution for their problematic situations and then, we would exchange the problems and the solutions transnationally. However, due to Covid-19 pandemics, that planned mutual exchange of problems could not be realized.

All the partner schools uploaded the art performances of their pupils about the problems and the solutions to our “digital election e-platform”. In the e-platform other member students and teachers evaluated/voted/liked/commented and counter-commented about these performances and the other commentators. In total, more than 600 students had created and upploaded work-group activities and art-performances and these performances were voted and commented by more than 2000 students and teachers in our partner schools.

Our e-platform (website supported by extensions and modules simulating the rules of digital democracy) was setup as just similar to social sharing websites like facebook or instagram. The website gave all our students the opportunity to understand the main cornerstones of the “digital voting systems” and “virtual” democratic, participatory, multi-cultural, interactive, communicative rules of discussions. Besides practising the rules of European digital democratic citizenship, they could become more ready for “distance education” which became a reality of daily lives of all of us. The e-platform had helped them not get caught unprepared for the days of “virtual education” caused by covid-19 pandemics process.
Our methodology of intermingling art with PBL our students learnt to engage problems collaboratively and work toward their resolution. Our methods provided our students to inter-connect their experiences and knowledge with real-world problems. Especially the voting e-platform increased their motivation to solve problems/create new art-works and participate in the school life rapidly. In the long term, this project will enable our students to develop different consciousness and “motivation to learn” and to use and transform this consciousness and motivation into the appropriate form for “developing solutions to any problems they come accross with in their schools, education lives and in the society they live in”

Project Website

http://ifiwereproject.net

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 87445,14 Eur

Project Coordinator

Anamur Anadolu imam Hatip Lisesi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• IES ISABEL MARTÍNEZ BUENDÍA
• Szkola Podstawowa im.Jana Pawla II w Lagiewnikach
• Jurmalas pilsetas Mezmalas vidusskola
• Scoala Gimnaziala Grigore Moisil