STEAM Strengthens European Cultural Heritage Erasmus Project

Project Title

STEAM Strengthens European Cultural Heritage

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

“STEAM Strengthens European Cultural Heritage” is a project that combines STEAM and Heritage by means of a European partnership with six high schools from La Sénia (coordinator school from Spain), Porto (Portugal), Thessaloniki (Greece), Zagreb (Croatia), Aradippou (Cyprus) and Lowicz (Poland). This partnership proposes STEAMS, which is a cross-curricular methodology to teach the contents in our schools that include: 1) the scientific-technological-mathematical background of the STEM subjects, 2) the creativity added by Art to expand it to STEAM, 3) the Social Sciences environment provided by the historical heritage and 4) the international scenario of an Erasmus+ project where all these contents are cooperatively studied and the English language is learnt in real situations. The partner schools of the project share common necessities in order to teach their pupils with transversal methodologies rather than individual subjects. The partnership focuses on offering the students a more meaningful set of contents to make them more motivated and, at the same time, more oriented to the real world outside school.
The aims of this approach are 1) to make the students more aware about theirs and their partners’ cultural heritage, this is, to discover together the similarities and differences of their cultural origins and strengthen the European consciousness; 2) to make the pupils an active part of this process by applying STEAMS tools to promote their homelands cultural legacy; 3) to motivate the teachers by sharing teaching methods during the project and give them an opportunity to shape their curriculum around a transversal tool like this one; and 4) to improve the English level of both students and teachers.
The plan of activities starts opening an eTwinning project which is used in all the steps of the project. To start with, the timetable and the activities of the project are arranged on the Twinspace. The programme includes six exchanges, one in each partners’ country, and cooperative activities between meetings. The teachers and students who participate in the exchanges are chosen by clear and public selection criteria. Before the exchanges, the host school introduces themselves on the Twinspace with ice-breaking activities using Web Tools 2.0 that are completed by the guest schools. During the exchanges all the materials and results are also posted on the Twinspace. After the exchanges, it is used for transference, dissemination and cooperation with activities which involve all the pupils at all the partner schools.
The exchanges in each country follow similar patterns. The guest delegations are welcomed at school where teachers and students are immersed in the daily activities. The host city is visited and the guests guided around them. The host school organizes several visits to local or regional heritage sites or traditions where the meeting members participate in workshops, exhibitions or guided tours. At the same time, they record multimedia information about the patrimony that is used to create ICT outcomes such as leaflets, infographics, interactive images or videos.
During the exchanges, the teachers meet and transfer their didactic expertises, for example eTwinning or the STEAMS activities prepared in the meeting based on their own resources and context. They also evaluate the advance of the project and propose corrections or changes if necessary.
After the exchanges, the group of teachers and students who attended the meetings are in charge of transferring their experience to their colleagues and schoolmates. All the partner schools also have to disseminate the results of the project in and out of the school. Moreover, the whole group of students in each country is involved and engaged in the project by means of cooperative online activities carried out in the Twinspace (videoconferences, quizzes, lessons prepared by pupils).
The final products are eMagazines, a website and social networks which collect and present all the outcomes of the project. It is published one eMagazine issue per partner to compile all the materials related to their country, while the website is filled with the contributions of all the schools.
The advance of the project is assessed by the participants with satisfaction surveys, checklists of the objectives and rubrics to all the presentations and outcomes prepared. The teachers summarise and figure out the results to draw out conclusions of the project to be included in the mid-project and the final report.
Finally, the long-term benefits of the project will be: the inclusion of curricular STEAMS activities in the Educational Project of the partner schools, the increasing number of students and teachers involved in European projects, a better cohesion between the school and the families due to the positive rating of these experiences and a raising interest for the heritage sites and traditions of the school regions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 196005 Eur

Project Coordinator

Institut la Sénia & Country: ES

Project Partners

• II Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Mikolaja Kopernika w Lowiczu
• Agrupamento de Escolas do Cerco
• Lykeio Aradippou
• Geodetska skola
• GENIKO LYKEIO DIAPOLITISMIKIS EKPAIDEFSIS EVOSMOU