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Connected Classrooms
Connected Classrooms
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project "Connected Classrooms" is aimed at the establishment of a network of partner schools to help students and educators connect, collaborate, create and share. Together we intend to develop the so called 21st century skills which are essential for work and life in a continuously changing and unpredictable world. We aim at giving our students an interdisciplinary experience which stops dividing the curriculum into single-subject boxes and makes the learning experience more similar to a real world situation with problems to solve and new ideas to bring to life. We think that breaking down the classroom walls, opening to international collaboration and finding activities which are real, relevant and engaging is a good way to create a collaborative culture for staff and students, enhance the students learning potential, build strong relationships, improve motivation and reduce early school leaving as well as give opportunity to students and teachers to experience different cultures and develop a real sense of belonging to the European community. The use of new technologies will be essential to the implementation of the project activities. For the above reasons we have decided to base our collaboration on project based learning, encouraging students to handle complex problems and situations and to work with their peers in order to find creative solutions. Our project is based on the principle of "learning by doing" with the added value of sharing knowledge and competences with our international partners. The participating institutions will be five: Italy, Finland, France, Romania and Turkey. They have various profiles focusing on technical, artistic or more general subjects but all sharing a specific interest in integrating technology in the curriculum, developing the international dimension of education in their institutions and promoting initatives aimed at the development of the 21st century skills of collaboration and creativity. All the partners will work in teams contributing to the realization of three final products:
-a model of a wind power plant
-an app for Chemistry
-a LED light game sign to celebrate Europe
The choice of these products responds to the needs: 1. To raise awareness on the importance of the energetic problem; 2. To produce a learning tool to facilitate the study of a curriculum subject starting from specific students needs observed during teaching; 3. To celebrate the European spirit through the realization of a practical object as a symbol of successful cooperation, the sign could be also used as a prototype for the realization of similar ones for our schools.
Each partner will contribute to the team work according to their schools peculiarities since there are many aspects to take into consideration, from information research to graphic layout as well as the technical side and the communication area including the project website and the realization of a final documentation leaflet. The methodology followed will be that of project management with the steps of definition of teams, objectives, responsibilities, product and activity breakdown structure, identification of deliverables and scheduling of check dates and criteria.
We expect that this challenging approach will enhance the quality of student learning, capture students' interest and improve motivation for low-performing students by offering them a different perspective. We believe that team work will help develop a collaborative culture for teachers and students to the benefit of the whole school community. We hope that the experience will improve all participants' skills in project design and management by providing them an opportunity of training in this approach.
It will also produce greater intercultural awareness and appreciation of attitudes and cultures of other European countries , improvement of linguistic, communicative as well as digital skills and a greater understanding of ICT and how to use technology for collaboration.