LITTLE RESEARCHERS CODING WITH STEAM Erasmus Project

Project Title

LITTLE RESEARCHERS CODING WITH STEAM

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

We have been looking for a way to solve the problems of low school motivation, hyper-activity, decrease of academic achievement and distractions in schools. In this context, STEAM based coding training, which has recently been implemented in our country, has attracted our attention. As an institution, we decided to design an ERASMUS+ project for STEAM based coding training. While our project team is designing the project, Europe 2020 objectives and targets and The world’s educational expectations has been viewed in a detailed manner.
“Little Researchers Coding with STEAM” is an Erasmus+ school exchange partnership project. The project duration is 24 months and consists of 5 countries including Wales, Turkey, Portugal, Romania and Bulgaria. The background of the project lies in the growing student and school success (Sociological and Academic) between technology-based education schools and other schools. Our schools within the project have identified the need to improve the quality of education and training of students and teachers concerning their imagination and creativity skills and competences. The motivation of our project is the lack of STEAM based coding programs in the implementation of the national curriculum at primary level. The motivation list can be seen as shown below:
1) Lack of STEAM based coding application culture in classes
2) Lack of teacher competencies in the integration of STEAM programs into the curriculum
3) Lack of STEAM resources that can be applied within the class
4) The inconvenience of the curriculum for STEAM based teaching, constitutes the motivation of this project.

Project objectives:
1. Increasing awareness of the benefits of STEAM programs in children’s education
2. Increase the number of trained teachers to at least 30% to include the national curriculum in STEAM programs
3. Developing tools for integrating STEAM activities into the classroom by incorporating classes into STEAM applications and creating opportunities for STEAM
This project will bring together 136 teachers and 2437 students. Approximately 2500 parents will be reached in the project member schools and at least 1000 teachers will be reached within the scope of the project impact. Except for the participating institutions of the project, there will be indirect beneficiary institutions supported by the project.

The main activities of this project related to STEAM are based on 3 axes:
1. Implementing STEAM based coding activities in the classroom
2. Bringing creativity and enthusiasm into class
3. Exploring STEAM based coding activities as part of the curriculum.

If we briefly talk about the activities, STEAM based coding programs in the classroom, teachers’ educational activities, initiatives to improve social participation, exhibitions, workshops, short-term exchanges of groups with the participation of teachers and students in schools, development, testing and implementation of curriculum activities and joint staff training activities will be included.

The methodology we will use to implement our project:
1. To provide teacher training in the first part of the project, share best practices and create a draft for the outputs
2. Implementation of STEAM based coding activities in the second part of the project as well as theoretical knowledge
3. Effective project management provided by the Project Management Teams of each school with Functional Monitoring Plans.

The results of the implementation of this project support the development and dissemination of quality and effective skills and competencies.
These results can be summarised as follows:
1. A greater awareness of the benefits of STEAM based coding programs in education in the community
2. At least 80% of project partner school teachers have been trained to integrate STEAM based coding programs into education
3. More equipped classes and Technology areas for the discovery of STEAM classroom kits and STEAM based coding programs
4. Reflecting the advanced and effective connection of the curriculum with STEAM based coding activities in the Good Practices Guide.

Expected impact of the project:
1. Having 5 different national schools, which blend STEAM programs naturally and efficiently with national curricula and provide benefits of developing students in academic results and classroom interaction
2. Approximately 2500 parents know the minimum 10 benefits of using STEAM programs with questionnaires and direct participation
3. Approximately 1000 teachers can integrate STEAM based programs into the curriculum with training courses and workshops.
4. Approximately 5000 students know what STEAM programs are and can use STEAM related resources and kits.
Project outputs will be published on eTwinning, Facebook, YouTube, project web page, schools’ own web pages, and will be enriched with more output and activity examples for at least 3 years after the project is completed. Schools will continue to develop the opportunities they obtain during the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111392 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sully Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Gradinita cu Program Prelungit “Vis de Copil”
• Agrupamento de Escolas Dr. António Granjo
• BESOCAK ILKOKULU
• kindergarten 8 “Bodra smyana”