May ICT be with you Erasmus Project

Project Title

May ICT be with you

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

We are worried about secondary students’ little interest in foreign language learning. They appear not to be motivated enough to reach higher than intermediate level in their first foreign language, and even less so in other languages. Our second concern has to do with European identity. Globalization, migration and irreversible shifts in social norms have caused a lot of confusion among European citizens, and the same is true with us. The third urgent matter we would like to address is a lack of student achievement despite increasing use of ICT. In fact, our experience tells us that digital shift per se has not improved most of our students’ learning outcomes, nor has it modified most of our teachers’ classroom practices.

We wonder to what extent will teaching language with technology motivate students to work harder and achieve higher. Also, to what extent will teaching content with language help students become more knowledgeable of important questions in real life and better at language proficiency? Finally, to what extent will combining e-learning with face-to-face instruction encourage teachers to modify their teaching practices, and students to improve their learning skills? In order to find out we have decided to run a language project which revolves around European values and stands for smarter teaching and learning. More specifically, we aim at modernising foreign language instruction in our schools, building European awareness in our students and teachers, as well as enhancing their digital competences in five key areas.

Our first objective is to promote film to help our students at intermediate level considerably improve their productive language skills. In order to do so, we will have our teachers develop students’ analytical and critical thinking skills, in parallel with their language skills, through authentic and culturally-rich texts film provides. Our second objective is to instil coherence and common European identity at times when many people are afraid of losing their own national identities. With this purpose in mind, we will adopt the soft CLIL approach in the foreign language classroom to discuss such European values as human dignity, freedom, humanity, democracy, the rule of law and human rights more thoroughly. Our third objective is to help the participants achieve next level at using digital technology for more effective teaching and learning. To this end, students and teachers will be developing their information processing, online communication, content creation, online safety and problem solving skills while working on the project themes.

This two-year school exchange partnership will be run by Tartu Tamme Gümnaasium, 10iCampus, Maria Goretti Sekundarschule and Pater Damian Sekundarschule, Wilhelm-Leibl-Schule and C.E. Rivas Luna in close collaboration. Altogether 108 students aged 14-18 and 42 teachers will participate in the project activities directly. In addition, a great number of the partner schools’ students and teaching staff will be able to be part of the project locally.

What teachers and students do is of equal importance, but slightly different. In fact, we have designed our activities so that they would help us tell a story about teachers passing on essential skills to help the students capitalize their strengths and build upon their limitations. Inspired by the pedagogy of Star Wars, we have further decided to call our learning, teaching and training activities Episodes I, III and VI (teacher training events) and Episodes II, IV and V (exchanges of groups of pupils). All six activities will follow the Six-T’s Approach by Stoller and Grabe (1997), which stands for six curricular components: themes, texts, topics, threads, tasks and transitions.

Upon successful completion of this project, the partner schools will have become keen supporters of a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages, their teachers and students more aware of the importance of European values in today’s world, and everyone considerably better at using ICT meaningfully, effectively and safely. The impact we desire is greater prestige locally and regionally, and a say in educational matters nationally and Europe-wide. The potential longer term benefits for those involved will include language teachers using increasingly more of blended learning and CLIL in their classrooms, and the partner schools being better prepared to help their people find common ground in the ever plurilingual world. Most importantly, however, this partnership hopes to have displayed true grit in pursuing smarter teaching and learning among teachers and students across Europe.

Project Website

http://griterasmusplus.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 142640 Eur

Project Coordinator

Tartu Tamme Gümnaasium & Country: EE

Project Partners

• 10iCampus
• Wilhelm-Leibl-Schule
• C.E. Rivas Luna
• Maria Goretti Sekundarschule
• Pater – Damian – Sekundarschule