We believe that the participation in the programme Erasmus KA1 will help our school to make progress in all parts of the school life. We believe that new ideas, new skills and competences will have a positive effect on motivation and educational performance of our students. We also believe that our experience from foreign schools will encourage other colleagues co-workers to seek for new possibilities to broaden their minds, encourage them to discover new tools and increase motivation to help them do the demanding job of teachers and pre-school teachers even better.
PROJECT LOGO:

WHEN: 14.10.2019 - 19.10.201

COURSE: Tablets and Smartphones: Using Mobile Devices as Educational Tools

ORGANISATION: Europass

 The course will help the participants to:  

 

Smartphones and tablets are not only for playing games and communicating on social medias. If we know how to use them properly, they can be very useful in the classroom.

Aurora Calvet and Damjana Nanut wanted to learn more and get fresh ideas on how to incorporate technology into their lessons. Lorenzo Gaspari, our professor, was excellent, well prepared and had high quality performance. We learned how to use software, platforms and apps to communicate, to manage groups and to foster collaboration. We also had the chance to experience how learning can be enhanced by using serious technological games and quizzes. Every day he presented some apps and we tried using them and experimented on how to use them in the classroom.

We will present this apps and activities to our teachers and we hope that teachers will be more inspired to use ICT tools in a motivating and pedagogical way. 

We would recommend this course to all teachers that are interested in ICT with or without any previous knowledge. We also improved our English and we met a lot of new teachers with whom we exchanged ideas, problems, good practices etc.

WHEN: 7. – 11. 10. 2019

COURSE: Design the positive: positive thinking, positive communication and positive school spaces

ORGANISATION: Europass Teacher Academy

GOALS: The course helps the participants to

 
EXPERIENCE:

Guided by an experienced mentor and teacher, Susan Galiano, the participants acquired new competences in the fields of positive psychology, stress reduction, mindfulness, burnout prevention, constructive communication, assertivness and also gained knowledge about new findings in the fields of ergonomics and design of the contemporary learning enviroments.

Through the theory and practical work, the mentor presented some of the latest research results from the fields mentioned. At the same time, she encouraged the participants to reflect on the themes given in comparison to their day-to-day working experiences and sh also promoted the discussion. The course combined theory with dinamic activities. Besides the frontal mode of teaching of the theoretical basis, it also included group and pair exercises and moreover, the mnemotechnics and active listening practice were also applied.

Twelve participants of the course arrived from 5 countries: Slovenia, Malta, Finland, continental France and French Reunion Island and Germany. Most of the participants were high school teachers, but their different schools' social backgrounds enabled them to exchange a broad variety of  experiences.

While the course was basically firmly structured, the excellent mentor gave an example of flexible teaching, inviting every single participant to reflect and upgrade his prior knowledge and to exchange experiences with others. The course title »Design the positive« also proved itself to be just the right one, as the participants, besides gaining new knowledge, skills and competences, also received a lot of encouragment and inspiration to design the positive after the return to their local enviroment.

 A group of teachers from Malta, Germany, France, Poland, Estonia and myself gatehered at Barcino School in Barcelona. Course teacher Marta Mandolini introduced mindfulness to us from the early starts to now.

She combined theoretical knowledge and practical activities that we all can benefit from. The best part of this course was that you cold really feel the difference in your own phisycal and mental wellbeing, concentration, level of stress … so there is no limit in introducing it to pupils.

 We discussed and learnt the meanings of physical activities, numerous automatisms that disturb our conscious presence in the given moment, corelations between body, mind and emotions, neurological findings that support the usage of mindfulness, mindful eating … 

The task for our last day of our course was to write a mindful activity that could be implemented in our schools. I chose mindful eating and decreasing the level of noise in our canteen. I believe in my project and with the support of other afternoon teachers, we will implement it at our lunch time.

I can only speak in superlatives about this course because the tacher was really flexible and full of knowledge. I would recomend it to everybody because it really gives you tools to relax pupils, to increase their concentration and makes them feel better.

Dissemination is of outmost importance in Erasmus+ project. Tanja Sivec Rutar and Nina Levpušček Melinc made a presentation of the course to their colleagues on 6 November 2019. The topics presented were the Finnish culture, Finnish educational system and dealing with stress among the teachers.

In the classroom or with groups, Google Expeditions allows a teacher acting as a 'guide' to lead classroom-sized groups of 'explorers' through VR tours or show them AR objects.

These are just some of the questions that many experienced eTwinners but also new members of the community addressed throughout this period. 

WHERE: Barcelona, Katalonija, Španija

WHEN: 5. do 10. julij 2021

COURSE:
Active Art: Understanding and Enjoying Art in the Classroom and beyond

ORGANISATION:
Europass Teacher Academy
(European Academy of Creativity)

TEACHER TRAINER: Marta Mandolini
GOALS:

There were 10 female participants at the July course in Barcelona, most of them from Poland, one from Hungary and me from Slovenia.

Marta Mandolini, using her excellent teacher trainer skill-set and experiences,  managed to push the relativelly calm group towards a productive team- and individual work, inspiring creativity and interesting discussions. The participants connected during five days and also visited some interesting Barcelona sights together. 

Creating Art is a valuable activity in the classroom and beyond, as it helps us to overcome biases and thought patterns. Experimenting with new materials and ways of thinking and creating is not only allowed in Art, but desired. Art approaches are very good for the Autistic children as they help them to express themselves in the visual language, which they can understand better than spoken language.

Art creates possibilities to express ourselves, to appreciate the natural beauty and harmony, and to function in the society in acceptable ways -  and it even does not have to be Art in a classical sense, egg. Painting or composing music, but it can emerge through everyday activities as dancing, singing, cooking … Sublimation through art is a natural defense system and a kind of analgetic and at the same time, as Freud discovered, the sign of one's maturity and civilisation.

-      Distinguish between various kinds of games;

-      Identify principles and definitions of game design (e.g., reward mechanisms, activity loops, habit creation, fun, immersive experience, emerging and branching storytelling);

-      Use games for educational propose;

-      Draw from their personal experience or design entirely new game-based activities;

-      Include game design elements in their educational work (gamification);

-      Exploit games to spread or reinforce values in communities and society.

 EXPERIENCE:

Tanja Sivec Rutar and Nina Levpušček Melinc participated in a course Game-Based Learning and Gamification in the Classroom which took place in Prague, from 23 to 28 August. It was organised by an Italian teacher trainer Carmine Rodi Falanga. Sixteen teachers from different parts of Europe (Portugal, Spain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia) and different levels of education (nursery school, primary school and secondary school) participated in the course. 30-hour course was based on hands-on approach, group work, discussion and exchanging opinions.

The main theme of the course were both board games and video games and the benefits of putting the elements of games into the educational process itself. We learnt how to motivate the students to learn while playing games and having fun. Every well-structured educational game allows us to become aware of our and other players' personality, emotions, thoughts and values. Consequently, when we become aware of some aspects of our personality or other players' personality, we can accept them.

A well-structured educational game can also help us to recognize how we and other players function within a group (are we flexible, patient, conflictual, leaders or do we tend to stay invisible). Besides this, a good game can teach us how to control our emotions that arise (aggressiveness, patience, frustration, disappointment etc.) and how to develop critical thinking.

Last but not least, during playing a game, a number of hormones are released (serotonine, dopamine, oxytocin) and thus students  motivation and engagement are increased.

To finish with the words of Carmine, our teacher trainer: »Every game is a learning experience.« 

 
Učteljica Anita Daru iz Madžarske je vodila narodnostno mešano skupino. V njej smo bile Slovenke, Poljakinje, Bolgarke, Madžarke in Avstrijke.
Učiteljice Aurora Calvet, Urška Mlekuž Vončina in Martina Zorč Melinc smo si želele pridobiti nove ideje kako sprostimo stresne situacije v razredu in kako lahko s svojimi značajskimi lastnostmi pripevamo k klimi v razredu.
Pomembno je, da učitelji in učenci ozavestimo različnosti in hkrati ugotovimo, kateri stil učenja in poučevanja nam najbolj ustreza. Naša različnost je zanimiva, spodbuja kreativnost in iniciativnost.
Poseben poudarek smo namenili stresnim situacijam v razredu, ki jih sprostimo z gibanjem, dihalnimi tehnikami in v iskanju stika z naravo.
Znanje s seminarja bomo uporabile v razredu, saj bomo bolj razumele zlasti tiste potrebe, ki temeljijo na značajskih lastnostih učencev, njihovemu razmišljanju, čustveni inteligenci posameznika. Z boljšim poznavanjem lastnih značajskih lastnosti ter stilov poučevanja, ki so na to vezani, bomo lahko izboljšale kvaliteto izvajanja pouka. Hkrati pa ne bom pozabila na minutke za gibanje in sprostitev, ki so v današnjem času še kako pomembne.

Erasmus is a synonym for mobility, going abroad, international student and teacher exchange … all that is inevitably connected to travelling.

 

The Green Erasmus project strives to improve the environmental sustainability of the Erasmus+ Programme and raise awareness across the European Higher Education sector about the importance of sustainable internationalisation. Green Erasmus focuses on developing an Educational Portal on Sustainable Internationalisation and carrying out a comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of Erasmus mobilities.

The objectives are:

To decrease the negative impact of the Erasmus+ Programme on environmental sustainability;

To raise awareness across the European higher education sector about the importance of sustainable internationalisation;

To empower student organisations to be the agents of change, pushing for improvements on the topic of environmental sustainability (taken by https://esn.org/green-erasmus ).

 

When we plan a mobility at our Erasmus KA1 “Step by step on the way to success”, we always look for possibilities of Green Erasmus travels. Up to now we have already done two mobilities by car and six by train. We have checked the carbon footprint calculator to see the difference in traveling by train or a plane to the given destination.

 

 

Every single act counts and small steps towards fighting climate changes leaves us satisfied by knowing we are helping to create a better tomorrow and contributing to change.