Virtual and Real in Our Life Erasmus Project

Project Title

Virtual and Real in Our Life

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

The project “Virtual and Real in our Lives” deals with the problem of mixing the real world with the virtual one. New ways of perceiving our surroundings, working, consuming the media, having fun, communicating, learning and creating are developing, we call them the virtual, mixed or augmented reality. But where is the difference between the virtual and the real? What is the influence of the virtual in our social life, how does it influence spending of our free time, how can we use it in our schools? And do we understand the technology that makes all this possible?
The imminence of such a question is undoubtedly real, the virtualisation of our world is part of the present. But are we questioning the impacts of the mixing of both worlds to their daily lives? Answering these questions, we searched for the potential but also threats of the mixing of virtual and real in our school and daily lifes.

5 European schools (4 former partners and one new school) collaborated on this project, mostly with pupils 13 to 16 years old. As all the partner schools are facing the same problems described above, we worked together to see and understand the difference between the “real” and the “virtual” in communication, art, work, creation, technology or social life. We understood the process and technology of creating something virtual or saw better the risk of manipulation between virtual and real. We used the virtual paradigm for the educational purpose, implemented a new methodology in the school curricula which enhanced our skills during the COVID-19 era. We proposed workshops to our pupils and other teachers and prepared them to recognise the possible dangers of virtual leisure activities. The historical point of view virtual / real dilemma was also treated. Digital skills in the virtual/mixed reality domain for the future employability as well as the teachers career enhancement were reinforced.

Our key activites were: the definition of Virtual and Real in the past and in our present and technology behind it all was the goal of the first project event in Základní škola, Mládí 135, coordinator of the project (Prague, Czech Republic). Virtual and real in our social lives was treated during the event in Heinrich Heine Europa Schule (Dreieich, Germany). The third event focused on virtual and real in our leisure and was held in ISISS SCARPA (Motta di Livenza, Italy), forth, hosted by IES Alkal´a Nahar (Alcalá de Henares, Spain), concentrated on the use of virtual reality for educational purposes. The project activities meant to be finalised in Collège Saint-Exupéry (Saint Jean de Braye, France), but we had to achieve this goal using the virtual meetings context. We focused there on the present and future of the “virtualisation”, use of the virtual tool in our daily school life and sustainability.

For a better insight to the project topic, teachers training in the field of VR, ICT and 3D printing in education was provided by the coordinating school.

We also planned several long-term exchanges in the partner school where students from other countries would observe and evaluate the implementation of the project activities. Only 2 of 6 long-term activities were finally done, one Italian and one Spanish students could act as project ambassadors. To complement this unplanned change, we created link between all the other project activities using the chatting forum about the project related topics with mostly 50 students and teachers included.

We also started a new “virtual/real” collaboration between pupils that exchange virtual letters and artefacts (photos, videos) as well as the real ones (paper letters, gifts).

As the main result of our project, we can mention the innovative educational documents and methods to deal with the mixed reality paradigm for our daily school life. Students produced a variety of products, such as posters explaining the topic related themes, virtual and real journals, guides of a responsible behaviour in the virtual space, art and videos related to the topic, analysis of their virtual/real life etc. We created a “resource book” with samples of education activities with activity descriptions, methodology and concrete implementation in the school curricula and we published it in our TwinSpace web.

We are convinced that the impact of our project is much larger than our schools, because all these activities claimed to achieve a better sense of citizenship for teachers/students of our school communities. We gave us the strengthening os some key competences for the digital era. We clarified the virtual/real paradigm in a responsible way and saw the opportunities and threats of mixing the two realities surrounding us and creating our lives – the real and the virtual. Knowledge of the legacy of the past, a better understanding of the present and pro-active attitude to the future are a key civic competence in the world where mixing things up is one of the main strategies of manipulations and confusion.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 120119,8 Eur

Project Coordinator

Zakladni skola, Praha 13, Mladi 135 & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Heinrich Heine-Europaschule
• IES ALKAL´A NAHAR
• COLLEGE SAINT EXUPERY
• ISISS SCARPA