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DIGITAL TOOL FOR MENTORSHIP AGAINST DROPOUT
2020-1-RO01-KA201-080088
DIGI-TOOL MENTORS is a project to tackle with dropout among students between 14-19 years at High Schools in partner countries using technological and educational changes throughout the world. Early School Leaving (ESL) has always been a problem for governments for years and has never lost the priority. The rate of truancy and dropout, in a sense, reflects the quality of the education. The fight against early school leaving forces the educational intuitions to find new solutions.
There have been many preventions to cope with this issue but DIGITOOL MENTORS aims to find a different solution to that problem. Since we are in a digital era, all students are highly in computers and mobiles so, we have decided to create a digital tool for them so that they it will increase the feeling of belonging to the school which will prevent dropout and truancy, can express themselves, improve their skills, get help on some topics, make their career plans… The rate of dropout among partner schools led us partnership to have a solution for this problem.
The partners got in touch through social media, School Education Gateway or previously been in a project together. Our project aims to increase the attendance level of partner schools and encourage them for higher education so that they can plan their lives for a good beginning. For this reason, we have arranged a team of experienced teachers in each partner school for mentorship according to the results of the situation, factor, risk and needs analyses. We thought that it will be a good idea to have a university partner.
The University will give us scientific data about the analyses. However, we have thought that it will be a good idea to have NGO partners that will cooperate with us about the form and the content of the digital tool. These partner NGOs have some studies and activities on youth so that they can help schools find the needs of the youth to include in the tool. At the end of the project all analyses and studies related to the project will be collected in a guidebook to deliver the schools around to be an example.
The students will be able to log in the tool and share their talents, things related to education. They will be able to choose mentors on specific topics that is going to be studied after the NGOs led activities. The tool will give chance to the students interact with mentors and students of other partner countries as well.
The brief activity plan of the project is:
1. To have present situation about dropout and truancy of the partner schools with SITUATION ANALYSIS. It will be prepared by the Lusofona University in Portugal and the questions will be same for all partners
2. Applying RISK ANALYSIS survey on both students and teachers to find the risks of the schools. Lusofona University will prepare the questions to be applied on partner schools.
3. Applying FACTOR ANALYSIS will be prepared by Lusofona University to find out what factors cause dropout.
4. Applying NEEDS ANALYSIS to find out what the needs of the students and schools are to include in the tool. The results of all analyses will be reported by the University.
5. Preparing a GUIDEBOOK including all intellectual outputs to be used as an example of prevention studies for the schools which have same problems.
6. The DIGITAL TOOL, that will allow students to share their talents, ask questions to the mentors from even other countries, feel belong to the school.
The content will be decided after the analyses and the activities led by the NGO (JOVESOLIDES from Spain).
However, these topics can be considered:
a. Career planning
b. Talents and interests
c. Chat
d. My youth club and so on
We have planned four Transnational Meetings and one LTT activity to complete the tasks for the project. The results of each output will be evaluated and preparations for the next meeting will be arranged in the meetings. The LTT will be the evaluation of the results and definition of the needs of the students in PORTUGAL.
The teachers will have seminars in Lusofona University to reveal skills and interests of the students. It is clear that if we know the students, their problems, potentials and problems, we can help them more efficiently. The student will be online when they interact with the tool and this will give them the chance to find similar things among partner schools.