We Make IT Happen

Project number: 2016-1-TR01-KA203-034482
Applicant: Anadolu University

Project Summary

The project gathers three important elements of education around a specific purpose. Those elements are policy makers (Local representatives of the Ministry), Educational specialists (academicians), and practitioner (teachers). Depending on a tough background from the literature and a clear needs analysis, the project offers two important outcomes for both pre-service and in-service teachers. The primary aim of these outcomes is to make pre-service and in-service teachers capable of making use of ICT tools pedagogically.

The partnership includes four foreign partners from Italy, Romania, Greece, and Spain. Moreover a local partner is also included in the project as this partner has a key role in implementation and production of the intellectual outputts. The roles of each partner are defined in detail and a clear task sharing has been accomplished among the partners. In order to reach the stated aims, a project managemnt and implementation team is established at every partner institution. These teams have important responsibilities such as conducting preparation duties, evaluating the quality of activities during the visits and so on. For the intellectual outputs, multiplier events are also planned. So as to manage the implementation of the project flawlessly, a contract among partners is planned to be signed before starting the project activities. Two project management and implementation metings are planned. One of them is at the very beginning of the projct and this meting is important for reviewing the form, signing the contarct and making all responsibilities clear. Apart from that, another management meeting is planned at the end of the project aith the aim of analysing and repporting the project results and outcomes, and more importantly, working on the final documentation. This project has local, national and international impacts and a dissemination plan is presented for dissemination of the impacts. There are also potential lom-nger benefits thanks to the intellectual outputs. After the project, its impacts do not end as the course content for pre-service teachers and in-service teachers will be available for relevant institutions and they will be suggested to the policy makers to use for the training of both pre-service and in-service teachers. Development of these contents will fill an important gap, as there is not a specific curricula designed for this kind of courses. Development of these course contents will have enormous impact on the quality of education in our respective partners. The target groups will benefit in terms of improving the level of learning / teaching, linguistic skills and entrepreneurial approach. Also the deeper cross – cultural understanding and transnational cooperation will be brought about. It will trigger modernization of our teaching techniques and will be successfully used after the project conclusion. We anticipate that by means of this project will establish very good working relationships between the institutions engaged in the learning activity, as key-decision factors, and that this partnership will continue beyond the period of the project implementation as well as all the invented educational tools.

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School development through staff training

Project number: 2017-1-SE01-KA101-034227
Applicant: Introduktionsprogrammen Borlange Kommun

Project Summary

Our school has over the past few years seen an increased amount of students with immigrant background and/or learning disabilities. This has forced us to develop new teaching methods and find new ways to reach our students as they are often traumatized or at the risk of early school-leaving. We are in need of new methods and developing our old methods in order to meet the needs of our students to help them have success in their studies. Many of our students have a history of failing in school due to their learning abilities and some have very little experience from school as they have lived in refugee camps for years before arriving in our country. The objectives of this project is to help our staff develop new methods for teaching our students and to develop a more inclusive environment for all students, regardless of their background. We will send staff members from various fields of study to participate in the training courses and also non teaching staff that work closely with our teachers and students (counselling staff, student aids and teacher assistants). The staff have been chosen so that we have as many different fields of studies represented as possible. By doing so we hope that the new knowledge aquired will be implemented throughout our whole school. In total we have 23 different mobilities planned for this project and they are divided into 6 different training courses where between 1 and 8 staff members will participate in the different training events. When there are more than 2 staff members travelling they will travel in groups at different times so that we can get as much out of the trainings as possible. It is always very rewarding to meet colleagues from other countries and if we spread out over more time we will be able to meet and get to know more colleagues from other schools and perhaps be able to form bonds that we could use in the future for other projects. Our experience from previous projects within Erasmus+ is that, aside from all the knowledge and competence you aquire from the training course, there are also a lot of positive outcomes regarding meeting staff from all over Europe who work in schools. It provides us with a unique opportunity to get to know what the schoolsystems are like in other European countries as well as sharing good practices with other teachers and school staff. We are expecting a deeper knowledge among our staff regarding how we can develop our teaching methods and our classrooms so that we better meet the needs of our students. This, in turn, will provide our students with the tools to help them succeed in their studies and be able to have success regardless of their learning disabilities or their immigrant background. We are expecting to increase our staff members' competence regarding many different fields of study as well as meeting students with special needs and students that are traumatized and need to be integrated after migrating to our country from countries of war around the world. As each training event has taken place each group of participants will share their experiences with the rest of our staff at meetings where they will be able to tell everyone about the course and what they have learned. We will also discuss how to implement the new knowledge into our work and what we need to do to develop out methods to better meet the needs of our students.

We will also have seminars and workshops where we use our new knowledge to show the rest of the staff, more hands-on, what can be done in the clasroom regarding for example ICT and using different learning platforms or apps. The workshops will provide us with an opportunity to use/practise what we have learned from the courses. Our vice principal will also be able to share her experiences with other principals as she has her regular meetings with her colleagues. Our project manager will also be able to share our experiences from the project with other project managers around the country as she participates in meetings regarding international coorperation organized by our national agency.

We continously evaluate our school in order to see what needs to be developed and what has been developed in the past. A few times a year all staff members sit down to evaluate many different aspects of the school, both regarding teaching methods as well as other things such as how to organize our students or our classrooms. These evaluations are a great way to also see how our participaiton in the project has lead to the development of our school. It will be obvious after a few years whether or not we have managed to help our students succeed more in their studies. It will be measurable in their grades and in the level of their studies.

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Blue-Blended Learning Usability Experience

Project number: 2016-1-DE02-KA104-003220
Applicant: Bayerischer Volkshochschulverband e. V

Project Summary

The adult education centers in Bavaria are confronted with new challenges concerning the continuing digitalization in the educational sector. The development and diffusion of e-learning tools and technology has deeply changed the opportunities for adult education. Therefore, the Bavarian Association of Adult Education (bvv) initiates an Erasmus+ mobility project called “BLUE - Blended Learning usability experience”.

We do not see e-learning as a replacement for traditional instructor-led training but as a complement to it, forming part of a blended-learning strategy for the adult education centers in Bavaria. We want to enhance the executive staff, the specialists and the teachers to continuously broaden their horizons, improve their qualifications and facilitate the exchange of know-how amongst the practice groups. Furthermore we would like to provide learners with opportunities for practical knowledge in very experienced institutions as far as Blended Learning is concerned. This includes rapid further development in pedagogy with regard to the use of information and communication technologies and their consistent implementation in teaching. Without a sustainable teaching concept, the technology is almost useless.

Corresponding to the migration movements in Europe, the target groups of our members are constantly changing. We try to develop frameworks to support easy and cost-effective access to a wider range of educational opportunities for adults that include elements of blended learning approaches. During the two year-term of the EU-financed project, we plan to send about 99 participants from our associated members, the adult education centres in Bavaria, to different educational institutions among Europe, which offer courses for adults that deal with blended learning issues and are really experienced in the use of it.

The bvv will be responsible for the project development, punctuality and proper billing. With our project work we would like to promote the intercultural exchange of ideas and knowledge, an exchange all sides could certainly benefit from. We are going to work with partners from Greece, Estonia, Ireland, Cyprus and Norway.