WELCOME TO OUR BLOG AND OUR PROJECT

In this blog we will show materials that will be prepared by our students, linked to the KA219 - Erasmus+ project "Our regions in a click". 

In this project, students from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece will cooperate in creating different online and offline multimedia products, allowing them to gain insight and experience in different fields. The participating schools are general secondary schools, with similar problems in learning a foreign language, as well as a quite important drop-out rate, difficulties in inclusion of immigrant students and lack of motivation from our students. Large differences exist between our countries as far as early school leaving and attachment to the European Union are concerned. We plan to embrace this diversity and use it as a motivator for our project participants, both students and teachers. 

The students will learn about the importance of research, of asking questions and develop an understanding of our regions’ heritage and environment sites. They will practice descriptive writing in their language and a foreign language (English), photography, graphic design, as well as ICT skills, when they have to create and edit audios and videos about those cultural, artistic or natural places. These activities will stimulate their creativity and innovation.  The students will learn to access these materials from their mobiles applications. In this way, these videos can be useful to their local and regional authorities, because anyone would have access to that useful material, it will encourage a sustainable tourism, besides it would be a way to promote and stimulate tourism in our towns or regions. 

Our students will also get a chance to put their language skills into practice in authentic communicative tasks as well as meet fellow students in other European countries. Through the stories they tell each other students will learn about different cultures and countries in a way they wouldn't otherwise. Teachers will be able to compare school organisations, exchange teaching material, work together with different colleagues and improve their language skills. Several online courses will be imparted with the needed knowledges from the ICT teachers to the rest of the teachers and the students. And we will create clear and simple manuals with the steps to follow in each situation. 

The goal of the project is twofold. To introduce secondary school students from many different backgrounds and with varying skill sets to the exciting field of new technologies, especially those close to them, such as mobile applications, and media production, thereby giving them an introduction into a world they would otherwise see little of at school. In this way we hope to motivate and inspire them to continue their studies and dissuade any who might leave school early. 

While on their assignments they will learn about different tasks, and they will collaborate in small international groups, this will help to find inspiration and motivation.  The learning by doing methodology will help to integrate immigrant students. On the other hand we hope to foster among the students a sense of attachment to Europe and the European Union, by understanding more about what makes them different and what makes them the same. 

The project OUR REGION IN A CLICK will grow in four phases, over a period of two years:

PHASE 1. Creation of the different teams (research, writing texts and translation; photography; audio recording; video edition) and a schedule to prepare rotations in those groups. Another group will be settled to research and identification of elements/themes related to the history and culture of the participant countries and the making of a digital presentation by each of the partners (short documentary); Written and spoken contact between students/teachers. Teachers in each country will select eight outstanding natural, artistic or cultural places to prepare videos and look for information about them. 

PHASE 2.  The groups will work with two sites during four months, they will prepare all the needed steps: texts, translations, audio recording, pictures, video edition. At the same time, teacher will coordinate them. 

PHASE 3. The groups will learn to link these materials to augmented reality applications and QR-code readers. Fostering a sense of community, interpersonal relationships, an atmosphere that encourages citizenship and pupil participation in decision-making. 

PHASE 4. They will create posters or signs to show them to the rest of the partners, as well as local/regional authorities.  

Creating video clips, short movies (role play), newsletters, logos, posters, blog posts, podcasts. etc. Creation of teaching guidelines and material which can be used by the teachers to develop a new way to learn. 

The project aims to help students better understand their own national identity and its significance in a greater European framework, making pupils aware of belonging to a community at a local, regional, national and European level.