Track it, don’t lose it

Project Title: “Track it, don’t lose it”

Coordinator of Cyprus School: Venediktos Hadjisavvas

Partners: France and Portuguese

Period: 2017-2019

Website: http://www.trackitdonotloseit.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Track-it-dont-lose-it-168001097286507/?ref=bookmarks

Twinspace: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/44911/home

Link for our IT programme: https://issuu.com/trackitdontloseit/docs/working_assests_code

Pedagogical Innovation and Creativity

Track it don’t lose it enabled students to work together on the subjects of the writing an IT programme and creating mini companies in an innovative and original way. In order to keep interest in this project we alternated personal work, first of all we did ice breaking activities, where students introduced themselves by writing acrostics with their names. Then individually or by couples they created a logo for the project to submit all them to vote. They worked in national teams to present their schools and countries to the other nationalities. They collaboratively worked in the creation of a multilinguism dictionary, in brainstorming on computers, in the creation of the mini companies. We created transnational work team for the students and the teachers worked transversally, the English, the Art and the IT teachers worked together to manage the success of this project. In addition to the main activities, the project visits gave the students the chance to gain direct inside into school differences and cultural backgrounds. They gained confidence along the project and ideas in relation of themes became deeper and more serious. Our students got involved in all different procedures required to communicate with each other in authentic situations. They used their imagination, their creativity, their collaborative skills and their knowledge in the classroom and outside the classroom to work in a virtual partnership using twinspace. They used their knowledge and skills share it with others and used it in the English lessons. Teaching and learning became more enjoyable. Sharing ideas and experiencing benefits of team working on different tasks chosen by our students had added great value to the work itself and the idea of being part of the same project has been really stimulating.

Curricular integration

This project fits in one of our school objectives which is the "opening on Europe". Different subjects were tackled into this 2- year- project but the main ones were English, Art applied, digital and management. English was the principal way of communication between the participants of this project so our participants spoke, read, listened, wrote in a natural way in English, and they all made progress, English was necessary for a real purpose and not because it is done during an English lesson. They improve a lot theeir communication skills. The project was done during the hours of "projet pluridisciplinaire à caractère professionel". They worked for two hours a week and a group of volunteers was participating actively to the different tasks. And thus the students were able to write a digital programme for a real purpose. They were also pushed to acquire more knowledge on digital than in a "normal" lessons. In management lessons they were able to act as if they wanted to create their own company and thus learnt all the steps you have to do before opening your own companies. It was not an easy tasks because our students had to exchange in English with their partners but with effort they managed to create their own companies. But our students and teachers acquired much more knowledge than the academic ones. They all progress in different competences such as autonomy, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, etc....

Collaboration between partner schools.

Collaborative activities were numerous; they first had to decide which words they wanted and decide who translated what and recorded them in the creation of a multilinguism dictionary. Then they conducted a logo contest and vote and gave their point of views. They collaborated in international teams for the writing of the different newsletters, leaflet, posters, videos, choosing the photos to use, for the creation of the IT programme, they had to teach their peers how to do it. They also work in international teams for the creation of mini companies by making brainstorming to decide what companies to create, then they had to elaborated the business plan and decide among themselves who would present during the meeting in Portugal. Collaboration was enhanced thanks to the Meeting in the three countries. Then they left messages on a collaborative wall to say goodbye to their partners and they evaluated the project. Teachers collaborated to write the Erasmus+ Application, to supervise the plan during the two years, to write the final report.

Use of technology

We used the TwinSpace as a workspace with its tools at our disposal: “Home” to give news about our project and activities ; “Pages” to give objectives and plan of the different activities, embed our videos and other tools, Forum to communicate and share our views and to collaborate on various topics ,”Materials” to download our photos, the “email” to send personal messages, To create videos we used IMovie and then these videos were uploaded in YouTube. To work collaboratively we used Pictochart to create our leaflets, Google docs to write collaboratively the application, the final report, newsletters, Answergarden to achieve Brainstorming, Padlet to share greet us, Tagul to create games, Tricider to vote, Audacity to record our dictionary, Genially or Publisher to create our posters, Oracle to write our IT programme and ISSUU to publish our final production or newsletters.

Results, impact and documentation

Getting to know other people their age, where they live in a funny and original way. Confront other cultures and opening to other ways of thinking. Discover the countries, food of our partners Gain autonomy and social maturity through their active participation in collaborative and cooperative exchanges Develop their skills in various language activities (reception and production, oral and written) Highlight the work of young people by publishing the IT programme. Share responsibilities and work together effectively within national and international groups. Use of ICT in a concrete continuous, original way to perform the various activities and become internet responsible. Learn and discover to work in group and restore the confidence of our students who are failing in school. Strengthen the links between teachers. Continue collaboration with European schools in which our school is involved. My most successful result is to see my student volunteers and to present their project with their own words which were so true and convincing during the different presentations done at school. On the Twinspace you can see the plan, responsibilities, the progress, and the final results and the evaluation: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/44911/home

Other Awards

All partners got the Quality Label (QL) in their countries and then they got the European QL