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Description
The project called “Digital Technologies without Borders” brings mainly the partnership between the Czech and the Norwegian secondary schools focused on student exchange and job-shadowing among their teachers. The main goal of the project is to establish a partnership in the areas of sharing of good practice examples and methodology of teaching foreign languages and social sciences using digital technologies. Both schools regard the development of digital competences of their students and teachers as their top priority and thus see a huge potential in their cooperation. The Norwegian school, as the more experienced partner in the field of digital technologies, will provide its Czech partner with support and expert advice. However, the Czech school does not intend to be a mere beneficiary, its ambition is to contribute to the partnership with the knowledge and experience acquired through the application of digital technologies in the teaching process. From each country, there will be 15 students and 3 teachers involved in the project. The subjects taught will be either foreign languages or social sciences. The main outcome, apart from the implemented mobility, will be a Student Portfolio of Activities for the given subjects, a Handbook of Teaching Ideas, teacher workshops and student presentations. Both partners will actively incorporate the findings into their working procedures and will promote the innovative approach among parents and general public as well as colleagues from other educational institutions. The presented project is the first project realized within this particular partnership, nevertheless cooperation between the schools is expected to continue in the form of many follow-up projects implemented through the EEA Grants, Erasmus + or eTwinning programmes.
Summary of project results
The main reason for the implementation of the project Digital technologies without borders was the effort to share the knowledge of partner schools in the use of digital technologies in teaching language and humanities subjects. The aim was to compare the schools'' approach to the use of technology, to share examples of good practice and to enrich each other with new knowledge in this area.
The implementation of the project included pupil (15 Czech and 15 Icelandic pupils) and teacher mobility (3 Czech and 3 Icelandic teachers). The aim of the pupil mobility was to show the students the teaching in the partner school, while in the case of the pedagogical mobility, the main focus was to shadow the teaching of colleagues, to gain information about the teaching organisation, facilities and structure of the school. All participants gained new experience, knowledge and information, which they then translated into the creation of project outputs and dissemination of this knowledge as well as awareness of the EEA funds to other groups, i.e. mainly school pupils, teachers, parents and other public.
Student presentation – the participants of mobility prepared a presentation for their schoolmates, teachers, parents and other interested members of the public in their hometown. In their talk they summarized the key moments of mobility and presented the main benefits of their participation in the international project.
Teacher workshop – was prepared for the colleagues, the school management and the staff, who did not participate in mobility. Each partner school prepared a workshop in their country. The purpose of the workshop was to present and share the innovative ideas, know-how and skills acquired abroad and encourage the teachers to implement new approaches into their work with students.
We consider the implementation of the project to be very successful and we can see that its impact on our pupils, teachers and the wider public is great. We are very pleased to see the interest in information about the programme, partnership opportunities and overall information about international cooperation from other schools in Ostrava and we are glad that as a school we can share this knowledge with other schools.
Summary of bilateral results
We consider the cooperation with the Icelandic partner (the original partner from Norway decided to withdraw) on a project on the use of digital technologies to be very beneficial and we dare say that we would not have been able to gain the same knowledge from another mainland European country as in the case of Iceland. Besides the cultural, social and historical enrichment offered by the partner country, the knowledge about distance learning, which has been commonly used in Iceland for many years, is very important. In particular, the functioning of the Moodle system for distance learning and the use of digital technologies and software selected with distance learning in mind. Although this way of teaching has become widespread in the countries of mainland Europe thanks to Covid, it still does not reach the level of Icelandic education. The main results of the cooperation are materials comparing teaching in Iceland and the Czech Republic, as well as a comparison of the education systems of both countries in general. This material is a very valuable source of information and inspiration both for the teachers of our school and for anyone who can view the materials on the publicly accessible website. Another type of material produced within the project are concrete descriptions and suggestions for activities for teaching, developed by both pupils and teachers of the two partner schools. In the course of the visits, teachers from both schools also shared their teaching methods, ways of communicating with pupils and specific tips for conducting lessons using digital technologies. It is this sharing of knowledge that we consider to be the most important result of the project. In the future, it is planned to continue the cooperation between the two schools.