Welcome to ictwithcreativeactivities

                 

Concrete objectives

 

 

                  Our project basically aims to increase digital competencies by using ICT tools. Although our school teachers want to implement innovative methods that will increase school success and increase their own productivity, they do not haveenough knowledge and equipment and the necessary motivation for this.

             According to the results of the survey weconducted, 65% of our school personnel and teachers consider themselves inadequate in using digital tools. In addition, ourstudents do not know that they can make learning easier and more successful by using which ICT tool in which field,although they have a good command of digital environments.

                    On the other hand, 40% of our students are insufficient indigital since they do not have the necessary tools due to financial difficulties.In the light of these data, our primary goal is to promote the use of ICT tools in our school; however, we plan to integrate ICTtools with innovative learning methods in order to give our teachers and students the motivation they do not have.

                 Whiledoing this, we will use a teaching technique called "Rainbow Village". According to this technique, we have the followingscenario: Everything in the world is destroyed and everyone who survives has a task: to create an imaginary nature-friendlyworld in which they will reflect their cultural identity through common laws, flag, national anthem and election of mayor.

                   Through this global simulation, students interact to introduce themselves, describe their surroundings, organize their village,and prepare a big task-centered party. While doing all this, we will achieve the following sub-goals as well as realizing thecorrect and widespread use of ICT tools through activities:

               - Our students and teachers;

               -Will develop language and ICT skills;

               - They will have the chance to express themselves creatively outside of the classical classroom environment;

        - Understand the necessity of democracy for a high standard of living in an environment where democratic participation willbe experienced one-on-one;

              - While creating their new identity, they will learn about different cultures and learn to respect these differences;

         - In the new order to be created, all activities will be organized with an environmentally friendly approach and greenawareness will be developed;

              - Plan interdisciplinary classroom project work as a team and experience the collaborative approach;

              -The dropout rate will be reduced from 35% to 25% in a motivated school atmosphere.

            Thanks to the different activities to be implemented, we will both increase the use of ICT tools by the participants andensure this in an entertaining and interactive environment.

              Our communication with partners throughout the project will be via e-twinning, ZOOM, social media platforms. We willmaximize the number of stakeholders benefiting from the creative technique we will use by sharing the teaching outputs onschool websites, e-twinning and social media platforms.

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The target groups

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                        The target group of our project is our students, teachers and school personnel. In our school, students in the age group of 13-19 receive education. In our school, where 744 students benefit, there are 10 students with inclusion, 6 with physical, 2 with visual impairment, 1 with hearing impairment and 6 with asthma.

                        These students are also in the economically disadvantaged group. In addition, as a result of the study carried out by our guidance service, it was determined that 6 of these students in the disadvantaged group lived in broken families, and the parents of 30 students were unemployed due to the pandemic. In the last parent survey we conducted, it was determined that 76% of our parents do not even know which class their students are in.
                       Since the opportunities of the disadvantaged group are limited, they do not have the chance to acquire many technological tools. Therefore, ICT tools have remained an unknown part of education for our students. Their motivation, which is very low due to the conditions they have, falls even more when the use of ICT tools is tried to be taught in a classical way, and the repeated feeling of failure in students turns into learned helplessness.
                   Although 40% of our teachers and staff consider themselves digitally competent, they have stayed away from many new approaches. The other 60% do not have the necessary digital competences and cannot provide the necessary motivation and self-confidence to learn.
                    The inadequacies of both students and teachers cause our students to stay away from innovative approaches and efficient classroom atmosphere. As a result, our students fail academically, and our teachers feel inadequate professionally in the face of this failure.
                    Although our teachers and other school personnel are experts in their fields, they feel inadequate in adapting innovative approaches to their branches and state that they do not have the necessary motivation to learn. Thanks to our project, both our students, teachers and staff will contribute to their communication and language skills as well as being informed about this issue by using ICT tools through different activities.
                   Although our primary target groups are within the school, all educators in the local region, students, parents and all relevant persons at the national level are included in the group that will benefit from our project with the project promotion and dissemination activities.

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Motivation for our project

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                     In the ever-changing world, the world of education takes its share from all emerging technologies. The subject of ICT is not only in the world of education, but also in all areas of the business world and in our daily lives, which makes our lives easier, saves us time, helps us to achieve much more output in a short time, and to present this as permanent and imprinted results with different presentations, and to analyze the data we have without errors from different perspectives. It is the beneficial subject of our age, which allows us to make and store all the information for a long time. During the pandemic, when the whole world has been struggling for a long time, we have all clearly seen the conditions that the digitalized world can overcome. The education, business and trade world continued to carry out its activities on digital platforms without interruption. Besides the lack of hardware, the biggest problem faced was that people were inadequate about the functioning of the digital media they had to use in their fields. ICT tools continued to be a savior for many people in many areas during this process. In the process when the courses had to be continued online, in all partner institutions, especially our teachers tried to provide an interactive educational environment by using different ICT tools and to provide feedback to students with fast and accurate results in the evaluation process of the outputs obtained.
                   Even in innovative classroom environments where all ICT tools are used, there was one thing that was missing both at our institution and at other partner institutions, which was a lack of motivation for both the lecturer and the listener. We wanted to reinterpret the event from this perspective with this project that we created by coming together with our partners. We want to show a different approach to ICT by holding different activities within different themes such as science, art and nature. Thus, ICT tools, which have become an indispensable part of our lives, will be included in the classroom activities that all training participants willingly attend. Within the scope of the project, we will be able to closely monitor the use of ICT tools in different countries and we will try to contribute to the project with our own examples. When our project, which we will enrich with our partners, is completed, we will have students with high academic success and innovative educators who have achieved professional success in all partner institutions.

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Needs and goals

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                Sert, Kurtoğlu, Akıncı, and Seferoğlu (2012) examined 4 journals published in the field of educational technologies and instructional technologies in the database named Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) between 2000-2011, and in line with the criteria they determined, the level of technology use of teachers in the learning-teaching process. reviewed the studies.
                         The results of the research showed that the most studied subjects are the teachers' use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the factors affecting their use of ICT. It was also stated that the most used research method was quantitative research methods, the study groups were determined by means of convenient sampling, and questionnaires and interview forms were used as data collection tools. In order for teachers to use technology effectively in their lessons, they must first have knowledge about using technology and then how to integrate technology into their lessons.
                  Teachers are expected to make learning environments more flexible, binding and motivating by using technology. In order to clarify how this situation can be achieved, it can be said that there is a need for a better understanding of teachers' technology use situations.
                          It can be said that teachers' ability to use technology effectively in their lessons depends on first knowing how to use technology and then how to integrate technology into their lessons. Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby & Ertmer (2010) stated that the values and beliefs underlying teachers' use of technology are professional needs or student needs. Student Their needs were expressed as providing students with a better understanding of the subjects and equipping students with technological skills. Professional needs are expressed as preparing materials adapted to the teaching needs of the student group and making classroom management effective by enabling students to interact. It is important to organize training activities for teachers in order to meet this need, in other words, to ensure professional development. 

                         In this context, we created our project in line with the data we obtained through the SWOT analysis we applied to our students and teachers at all our partner institutions. We aim not only to integrate the use of ICT tools into the lessons through the activities we will do within the scope of the project, but also to provide permanent learning by equipping our teachers and students with useful information with interdisciplinary approaches.

 

Benefits of cooperating

 

            Our project has 3 partners. Accordingly, our 1st Partner, Agrupamento de Escolas Terras de Larus schools, received Erasmus accreditation with a plan based on the aims and activities of the School's Education Plan. In this respect, it is a school with clear goals for effective participation, digital competencies and digital security and combating climate change.
                  They have been operating as an eco-school for many years, and each year they win a green flag for the recycling and sustainability dynamics they develop at the school. With this feature, they will make important contributions to our project by sharing their innovative ideas and experiences in the realization of environmentally friendly activities, which is one of the goals of our project.
            In addition, they always develop various projects at national and international level in connection with the curriculum within the school. The internationalization of the school is also a concern for the institution, so Erasmus and E-twinning projects are very important for our partner.

                  Working with Agrupamento de Escolas Terras de Larus schools, which, with all these features and works, exactly overlaps with the goals of our project, can meet our needs will enrich our project in many ways.
              Our 2nd partner, Anamur Science and Art Center, has developed visual presentation preparation techniques in order to increase the motivation of teachers and students in the distance education process. Our teachers were able to both activate the students in the lesson by using these techniques in the live lessons given over Eba, and provided the students with documents that they could use outside of the lesson. Although having a disadvantaged student group seems to be the weakness of our partner, school teachers have participated in various trainings on using ICT tools planned at the national level in order to use the right communication channels with these students and to meet their social and psychological needs, so they have turned this situation into our advantage for teachers and students. . In this respect, we believe that we will contribute to other partners in many areas such as classroom management and problem solving.
                 Our third partner, the Humacapiact vocational training and research center, is working on projects related to the Green Deal. It also specializes in KA1 projects and organizes mobility. HCA collaborates with the ICT center and has members and its own expert staff who develop educational content and develop interactive and inclusive classrooms and management platforms (Coursera, Skillshare, Udemy, Codecademy, Edx, etc)
                  Our school COLEGIUL ECONOMIC “VIRGIL MADGEARU” TG-JIU has a well-equipped staff of teachers who will plan and carry out all the activities planned within the project, and a student group willing to experience innovative approaches with their teachers.in short, each of our partners will be able to benefit from different aspects to achieve the project objectives.

 

Project coordinator,

Sorin Dobrescu

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