Integrating ICT into Foreign Language Studies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Integrating ICT into Foreign Language Studies

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 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Digital technology is built into our students’ life, so it is a good way to involve electronic devices into the learning process and make them part of their
daily language learning activity. It’s teachers’ responsibility to search and find effective ways of teaching, because ICTbased educational methodology provides a more attractive way of language learning. Having a better language proficiency, participants in the labour market can obtain greater employment chances as employees of the future Europe.
There were six participating secondary schools in the project (applicant: Hungary, partners: Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Turkey) and all schools found foreign language proficiency an important focus of the teaching and learning process in their schools. So the project topic announced by Hungary provoked huge interest at each institution showing positive motivation and determination towards innovation and improvements in ICT supported education. Here is a list of software solutions students used at the meetings (partner’s country is in brackets), and later taught their mates at their own schools. They managed to share ideas with Microsoft Publisher (Hungary), Madmagz (The Netherlands and Italy), Flyers (Italy, Poland) and Collage (Spain). They used Google Apps for education with the help of Hungarian teachers and created Apps with the assistance of Turkish teachers. The students and teachers practiced searching for information at the American Corner in Hungary and prepared interesting PPT-s and Prezis about their experiences in different partner countries (Italy, Hungary). Producing Powtoon (the Netherlands), Wevideo (Poland), Youtube, goanimate-4schools, padlet videos (Turkey), audio files and comics, Timeline (Spain) the students studied how to demonstrate interesting topics in a foreign language in a fascinating way. They also studied various assessment and evaluation solutions by creating Redmenta and Kahoot tests for each other (Hungary) Quizlets, Kahoot (Poland) and using Google Drive (Italy, Poland and The Netherlands). They also enjoyed some extra topics like working with lego robots (in Hungary) and taking part in an online competition (with the assistance of Turkey). We also motivated teachers to use more ICT tools made by publishers (OUP, MM Publications, Pearson). During project implementation we could involve professional help (the lecturers of the University of Pannonia), teachers (mostly ICT and language teachers) and learners of foreign languages. Our common activities were launched by a week’s staff training in Hungary with an overview of the recommended fields (for teachers mostly) of possible ICT tools and visiting some classes as samples of ICT supported teaching and learning. The lecturers from the University of Pannonia organised workshops at Bródy Secondary School. Due to technical difficulties it could have been more effective to organise these workshops at the university in Veszprém and transform them to a more practical, “secondary school” level. In the first year of project implementation teams of participants (4 students accompanied by 2 teachers) visited their partners (in The Netherlands and Italy) but in the second year after the students’ exchange in Hungary in early autumn partners decided not to visit Turkey (because of unstable political reasons) and take more students (6) and teachers (3) to other partner countries (Spain, Poland) instead. The Turkish partner conducted the planned workshops at these visited schools and online. The partners studied and continued common practice of the above mentioned particular fields of ICT tools.The main idea for all schools was to become aware of the importance of good command of foreign language proficiency in order to communicate with other nations, to develop a positive approach and tolerance towards different cultures as well. During the students’ exchange all participants were able to take part in cultural events as well. It can be considered the weakness of the project implementation that we couldn’t work out more definite control or instructions for students how to use their Iphones or other smart ICT tools for improving their language proficiency on their own. We also tried to exchange good practices between partner schools mostly at the students’ exchange while visiting classes. Evaluation and dissemination was an evitable process after meetings and project events.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 213625 Eur

Project Coordinator

Ajkai Brody Imre Gimnazium es Alapfoku Muveszeti Iskola & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Vereniging voor Christelijk Voortgezet onderwijs Rotterdam en omgeving, Christelijke Scholengemeenschap Comenius College
• IV Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. C. K. Norwida w Bialymstoku
• LICEO GINNASIO STATALE ” M. BURATTI “
• Bagcilar Barbaros Anadolu Lisesi
• JASO IKASTOLA, S.COOP.LTDA