Partners

Finland

Pielisjoki School is a lower secondary school situated in the university town of Joensuu with around 75 000 inhabitants. Joensuu is the capital town of the province of North Karelia in Eastern Finland about 500 kms from Helsinki, our capital. Our school has about 270 13- to 16-year old students and about 30 teachers plus about 15 other personnel – teachers’ assistants, health care, kitchen and cleaning staff.

We have special classes for gifted children in mathematics and natural sciences. The atmosphere in the school is friendly and pleasant. Good manners and behaviour are in the school policy along with international perspective. We cooperate closely with the community outside school, e.g. with parents, enterprises, youth workers.

The previous Erasmus+ project KA2 Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices ‘Intercultural Creative Art Bridge’ 2017-2019 was a great success. Both the students and teachers involved in the project gained a lot of confidence with their English and learnt a lot from each others’ cultures and endangered art forms. Both the students and teachers made lifelong friends though the project.

We want to participate in this project because the number of students studying maths and sciences in general in higher education has dropped in Finland. We want to encourage students to deepen their knowledge in maths and sciences by helping them to create and develop innovative and interesting materials to study these subjects through ICT tools on non-traditional platforms.

Sinikka Lyyra will be the coordinator of the project. Kaisamari Åkerman (maths, physics, chemistry, ICT) will be the second in line, so she will take over the role of coordinator if needed. Sari Tiilikainen (maths, physics, chemistry) and Markus Ketonen (maths, physics, chemistry) will be highly involved in the project. We have the full support of our head Jouni Partti, which is essential for the participation. There will also be many other teachers who will be involved in the project along the way and especially during the LTT meeting in Joensuu.

We have had science classes in our school for almost 20 years. and the teachers mentioned above are innovative and eager to work with ICT tools and new methods to help their students to learn more. They have also cooperated closely with the Luma Centre at the University of Eastern Finland.

Sinikka Lyyra has been in charge of our school’s international projects and cooperation since the 1990s. She is very experienced in project work. This will be the first project in our school involving maths and sciences which is a great thing. The Comenius project (2013-2015) was about social sciences and the Erasmus+ (2017-2019) was about arts so it is time we had a project in maths and sciences.

Greece

1st EPAL of Piraeus is located in Kaminia, a well-known neighborhood of Piraeus, a few kilometers away from the biggest Greek port. Almost 60 teachers work in 1st EPAL of Piraeus and almost 400 students aged between 15-19 attend to the school curriculum. The departments that operate are Mechanical Engineers-Car, Electronics, Electrical, Structure, Financing, and Management, Healthcare, Tourism Management, IT: Informatics and Networking, Food Technology and Agricultural Field. There are well-equipped laboratories, in which all of them are located in the school building for every specialization, where the students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge. The school mission is to cultivate a suitable environment that will facilitate the creative activity, will educate and prepare the next generation, in order to satisfy the needs and the challenges of our modern time. Due to the location of our school, we have students from the whole Piraeus region, especially from Kaminia, a poor and blighted area. This creates a non-homogeneous social-economic profile of our students. A vast amount of them has serious family, personal and economic issues. For the most difficult of those cases, we have created an internal structure in order to help our students. A big enough student percentage is foreign. Many of them have issues with the Greek language. We came up against many problems such as learning, behaviors and social relations between the students. The continuous confrontation of these gave us a notable experience. Very important for our school is the development of its digital dimension.

The use of ICT-based teaching methodologies will develop the basic skills of students while being very effective in combating school failure and for social integration. This change in the teaching-learning process will allow students to improve their academic performance and integrate students with different types of educational, social, cultural or economic needs; allows the student to compensate for accumulated inequalities in their school life and provide them with practical knowledge useful for life in general and very specifically for the world of work. Mr. Pantoulis Diogenis will be the key people in charge of running the project in the school. Mr Dimitrios Dellaportas (Head Master) will take over his role if there is any problem. They have experience in European programs. The success of this program will be achieved with the assistance of other teachers too. Our school’s big advantage concerning the program is that is equipped with teachers with various specialties. There are mechanical engineers, economists, IT specialists, mathematicians, physicists, foreign language teachers, etc. Many of them have master degrees to their studies and also work experience in their subjects. Their education is continuous according to the developments in their science. Many of them have participated in European projects and their assistance will be valuable.

Hungary

Our school is located in Somogy county on the southern shore of Lake Balaton. Our town is a holiday resort with quite a few tourists especially during the high season. We have 388 students at our school who are specialized in modern languages maths, sciences and humanities. Our school is well-equipped. We have a swimming pool, a modern science lab, computer rooms, white boards.

We have good academic results (most of our students are accepted by universities, we have good competition results. Most of the teachers are rather motivated and open to new challenges/ideas/possibilities. We are strongly committed to international cooperations (projects and exchanges programmes) and getting to know new cultures/habits and good practices. However, we need to face some difficulties. There are fewer and fewer students so we are forced to accept students whose academic results are lower than the average. It means we need to offer some extra classes in the afternoon so that these students can catch up with their classmates. We also have some students who are professional handball players and because of their trainings and matches we need to provide them extra lessons so that they can keep up with the other students and we also need to deal with the conflict between them and the other students for whom it is difficult to put up with the high number of lessons these professional athletes skip. In addition, the financial condition of the school is not as good as it used to be, so it is getting difficult for the school to support extracurricular activities and those students who have difficult financial situation. 

We believe that in the 21st century sciences can provide good career opportunities for our students that is why we put emphasis on our science specialisation. We would like to raise as many students' interest towards natural sciences as possible. Our experience is that there are a lot of students who do not choose science programmes since they believe natural sciences are far too difficult for them. With this project we would like to change this unfavourable tendency and with the help of our students' creativity, talent and knowledge of ICT tools, we will show them that natural sciences are possible to understand plus we will show the beauty of these subjects.

We have an enthusiastic team who is eager to take action. Rita Kaszala is the leader of our science lab. Under her coordination the 5 science teachers and the laboratory technician will provide the professional background of the project. Gergő Babodi is the IT admin at our school and he is training to became an IT teacher. His expertise in IT and ICT tools plus his previous experience in Erasmus projects will contribute to the success. He will be in charge of the quality of the products and the financial issues. Gabor Szilasi will be responsible for the inner and outer communication and the dissemination of the project results. He will also keep in touch with the educational authorities.

Lithuania

Klaipeda Lyceum is a secondary school which consists of over 80 employees and over 700 students aged 6-19. The institution covers primary, secondary and higher secondary levels. From September 2020 the school will become an International Baccalaureate. The school specializes in science and engineering subjects integrating them in other subject areas as well. The subjects taught in our school are: English, Russian, Germany, Spanish, Italian. We have a typical set of exact sciences - mathematics, astronomy, physics, as well as natural, social sciences, art and music. The priority area of education at school is the mental abilities training. To achieve this, the school has developed and constantly improves individualized and differentiated educational programs.

In order to teach the students entrusted to us, we, as educators are committed not only to follow the path of classical education but also find ways to incorporate modern  approaches as well. The initial targets of the project perfectly bridge with the fundamental values we are seeking to instill in our students. Students' autonomy, taking responsibility for one's own learning, negotiation of content and methodology, task-based learning are themes which should motivate all participants of this project.

We believe that this project will enable students to become the creators of more practical, peer-to-peer based learning and information sharing approach. The students will have a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other, identify areas that need more attention and research. Increased responsibility and accuracy, sustained motivation and participation are the key competences to be improved during this project.

The people involved in this project are: the headmistress, the administrative offices' directors, administrative staff, teachers of English, Natural and Exact Sciences, IT teachers. Key persons who will help to develop and implement ideas will be: Lijana Šmaižienė (the English language teacher), Ingrida Rimkienė (Biology teacher), Lukas Vaitkūnas (IT specialist), Marius Žadvydas (Physics teacher). In case of their withdrawal Laineda Dausynė (the English language teacher) and Inga Navickaitė (Biology teacher) will be able to continue the project.

Administrative staff in this project will help with all the organizational support to ensure the smooth project flow in terms and conditions. Our students take part in National and International Competitions and most of them become the winners, especially in Science subjects. Last year, the school was ranked in the top3 best schools in Lithuania according School Leaving Exam results. We have a professional and dedicated team of teachers (of expert category), who could contribute to this project by sharing their experience, emphasizing the importance of empirical studies, noting that the knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and must be capable of being verified by other researchers working under the same conditions.

Portugal

Idães School is in Felgueiras, Portugal. There are 98 teachers and 957 (Kindergarten to High School) pupils who come from various socioeconomic backgrounds. The school has been undertaking a great effort for internationalization, through several eTwinning projects and Erasmus+ Projects. eTwinning project has won several national and European Quality Labels and a national honorable mention. These prizes brought the recognition of its quality and it became a European eTwinning school.

The main motivations to run this project are the development of knowledge and new methodologies to increase the educational success, reduce the school dropout, improve synergies between school and community, and develop innovative practices using new digital resources. The school has also invested in paedagogical differentiation, through a project promoted by the Ministry of Education, according to the guidelines of OCDE about the curriculum innovation named "Flexible Curriculum". Curricular integration of this Erasmus project will be done in classes, during which students will learn through Web2.0 tools just like we have been doing with cultural heritage. This was the main topic of Erasmus + Project Achieve+, one of the projects we intend to disseminate through this one. All topics studied broaden students’ knowledge by allowing them to learn with the other partners’ experience. Having this in mind, we believe that our school’s contribution will be impressive, considering our experience in running Erasmus+ Projects and the experts working in our team. We can count on the cooperation of teachers that are running the school project related to the Flexibility Curricular project. We are used to developing activities in a collaborative way, in a cross curricular scenario. School’s headmaster will also be involved, since he is the responsible person for this and other projects in school. Besides, he is always trying to take school to high levels of cooperation and innovation.

The team is made up of: an eTwinning ambassador in Portugal who will ensure the successful use of eTwinning platform; an IT teacher who is an expert in web2.0 tool; a Biology teacher, an Chemistry and Physics teacher, an Portuguese language teacher, an English teacher and an Arts teacher, who are also involved in CLIL methodology. In case of someone leaves his/her place in the team, the vice-headmaster of the school, will take over his/her role. The contact person is now the main coordinator of Erasmus+Project K229 (a Portuguese project awarded with the national second place in best Erasmus+Projects). She also has a Master’s in Physical Education teaching. Also, this teacher has been asked by the Portuguese ministry of education to publish her work on “Digital Formative Assessment teaching scenario using apps and mobile learning”. The teachers directly involved in this team have been collaborating in all Erasmus+

Turkey

Şehit Ferhat Ünelli Science and Art School established in 2002. The students are chosen in terms of their intelligence and ability so all of our students are gifted. They take the exam when they are at primary school andı if they can enter our school they continue until they graduate from high school. The students come to our center after they finish the classes at their normal schools in the evenings. We provide them to develop themselves help them to achieve their goals. The students are applying Project based education multiple intelligence method, learning by doing approach and, collaborative learning that are very important to develop students' skills. Our school's aim is to ensure that students will grow as a creative and problem solving individuals and combine the scientific thoughts and behaviours with aesthetical values,at the same time they are trained to learn opportunities in real life with special education activities. Therefore they should search, renew their knowledge and produce. All our classes are like labs equipped with suitable instruments and equipments for students. The number of students in classes is 1 to 10.

We want to join this project to share our knowledge with other European schools and also learn and implement the new things, add new experiences to our students. Our students willing to join international projects and implement new ideas, create innovative tools for projects. Via this project the students and the participant teachers will impreove their speaking skills in target language. By the way we will also strengthen the cooperation between students and teachers, raise our cultural awareness, motivation on learning and producing new things.

We have experienced teachers and students who have been preparing robots, software and programmes for many years . The students participated in youth projects, scientific projects, environmental projects and social responsibility projects. In addition, we also organize project studies and meetings on the expectations the problems and expectations of gifted and talented young people.

Our ICT teacher did a master’s degree and now studying engineering at university. He is Professional about robotics and mentoring the students in the fields of competitions. In 2015 he was the world fourth with “sumo robot” in TÜBİTAK-MEB-EİT 9. International Robot Competition. Like this He competed in 15 national competition and got degree and awarded in 5 of them. The students of his class which will be participant for this Project are good at in robotics. By the way the English teacher Sibel ERBAŞ will participate to the Project. She is the Erasmus+ coordinator of the school and took part in educations about preparing projects. She attends etwinning projects actively. In 2016 She completed a KA101 project with England successfully. In 2019-2020 educational year she is coordinating a Youth Exchange programme with Hungary and Romania about Robotics.