MODERN CLASSES FOR DIGITAL NATIVES Erasmus Project

Project Title

MODERN CLASSES FOR DIGITAL NATIVES

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The summary is divided into five different aspects based on the result and effect part, which is described in the application.
The background to the project is to take students’ perspectives on using new technology around their upbringing as digital natives, find ways to increase motivation and achievement in school, learn new things about foreign cultures and how we can reduce the number of students who drop out of school.

Practical skills in the design of classes
Throughout the project, students and teachers have designed classes together for the digital context. In retrospect, you can see that the students have gained as much influence as they thought from the beginning, they have participated and designed lessons yes, but not always and not fully. The teachers should have been even more interested in learning from the students and their views on new technology and what they think can work in a modern school. The lessons focused on mathematics, religious studies, stories and art. The advantage of designing classes together as a teacher student has been to let the teacher explain the classroom to the students. This has made both students and teachers more aware of how to design classes and understand the teacher and student aspect of the activity. Throughout the project, it was shown how the schools were equipped with ICT tools and how these were used and evaluated by teachers and pupils. Although some schools had less advanced equipment, they used it to and sometimes beyond the full potential.

Cultural awareness
The background of the participating students has been different. In the project, the students met and interacted with students of different heritage and religious background, an important part of being European today. All visits during the meetings have included guided tours, cultural classes such as the European Day in Poland where the whole school participated. The participants talk a lot about this just after the end of the project, after they have come home from their journey or time they had with new acquaintances at their school where they have shown around, how much they have grown during the project. How their language developed when they had to use their school English to understand themselves among the other participants. How they themselves feel that they dare and move in new countries, new cultures more freely and unimpeded than before and how they learned new things.

Language Performance
Throughout the project, students have been motivated to speak English and make themselves talkable among themselves. During the project it was noticed early on that the language performance was different in the different countries, the Swedish students’ English was generally high quality, while other countries had difficulty communicating fully verbally, using digital aids, other ways of communicating such as body language and imagery. At the end of the project, they noticed that the participants practiced during the project and that they got better and better at communicating with each other, which led to friendships across the previous language boundaries.

Platform for collaboration and exchange of ideas
The meeting and activities have served as a platform for students and teachers to learn from each other and exchange ideas. Between the meeting, we chose to use Google’s collaboration platform that included websites, documents and presentation. This collaboration between the meetings has been sporadic, one can now see in retrospect. If we had done about the project then from the beginning there would have been more from each country involved so that the workload could be spread among themselves. What we see now at the end is that it stopped during the course of the project even though the project rolled on.

Results and impact
The results show to some extent increased goal achievement around the students who participated in the project when it comes to grades. Some have not elevated others. The project has also created a good start for a new lesson bank full of lesson plans where new technology is used in a natural way by both teachers and students.

However, our problem is that the result of the project’s impact on the students’ goal achievement has been difficult to see when it has not been saved or worked with sufficiently during the project. But to some extent this is evident, especially in the interviews with the participants where they themselves experience a higher goal achievement, motivation etc. In other words, it seems that the impact on the participants was greater than the actual result around the goal achievement. And it might rather indicate more lifelong education than short-term educational efforts on new technology and digitalisation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 107009 Eur

Project Coordinator

Santosskolan, Sektor utbildning Lundby & Country: SE

Project Partners

• Szkola Podstawowa w Kolczyglowach
• ALVAR ORTAOKULU
• ISTITUTO COMPRENSIVO STATALE N. 1 LANCIANO
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA GRECI