40 Ways to make a great Erasmus+ Project
Raquel Sanchez
Created on March 28, 2021
Ideas and advice based on our Erasmus+ experience
More creations to inspire you
Transcript
to carry out a great school project
Result of the Erasmus+ KA229 Partnership
Beginn
40 ways
This list of advice was created on the basis of an Erasmus+ project called “Robots ‘R Us”, with students in Upper Secondary and Vocational Schools which included students who needed some more support. Experience with other Erasmus+ projects was added to this list.
Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
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Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
PROJECT DESIGN
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Make sure the final product or outcome is interesting for youngsters and society!
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With your project, address some need that your school really has!
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Make sure that this subject matter is relevant for your partner schools as well!
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Make sure you have or can buy the necessary equipment!
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If possible create a new course at your school for the field of your subject matter!
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Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
With your project, address some needs that your school really has! Choose the subject matter according to a focus of your school and your fellow teachers: Examples: learning about Europe among intercultural learners or dealing with robotics for boosting your students’ computer skills and encouraging girls for technical professions, as we did in “Robots ‘R Us”
Make sure the final product or outcome is interesting for youngsters and society! Example 1: Scheme for inclusion for weaker students with practical elements, to be implemented in your schools.Example 2: A functioning industrial robot baking wafers for school festivals as it was an impetus for our project “Robots ‘R Us” to prepare students for industry 4.0
Make sure that this subject matter is relevant for your partner schools as well! Then participating teachers will be very committed to a work-intense project! Example: Intercultural learning with students from different parts of the world (from Syria, Finland, Spain and Germany)
Make sure you have or can buy the necessary equipment! Ask help from your principal and make a list of costs beforehand (you can take money from the management budget for relevant equipment or find other sponsors). Don’t apply for unaffordable projects!
If possible create a new course at your school for the field of your subject matter! If that’s not possible, plan regular extra times within your and your colleagues’ timetable for this particular project. Examples: In our students’ timetable we implemented a weekly course called ‘robotics’ which now is part of our curriculum
PROJECT team
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Find at least 2 schools from different cultural/geographical backgrounds
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Find at least 5 teachers at your school 6 months before you write your application who are experts
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Find at least another 4 teachers at your school
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Make sure you work with flexible colleagues!
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Fix time slots for working together!
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Make clear schedules for all participating staff allocating responsibilities
Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Find at least 2 schools from different cultural/geographical backgrounds to take part in your project with your school, so that the international meetings give new insight into other parts of Europe/other cultural backgrounds. SpainFinlandNorwayGermany
Find at least 5 teachers at your school 6 months before you write your application who are experts in this field (robotics, history, pedagogics, what your subject is) with a lot of experience.
Find at least another 4 teachers at your school who will help you with the application of the project, the constant documentation, continuous contact to international participants and the finances who have enough endurance to stay in the project.
Make sure you work with flexible colleagues! Because there will always be changes in the schedule, and possibly in the direction the project takes.
If the participating students come from different departments of your school (as was the case in our project) fix time slots for working together! (Maybe before school in the mornings – as our Spanish participants did - or in time slots in the afternoon). Example: afternoon workshop at LHB
Make clear schedules for all participating staff allocating responsibilities: Who is responsible for project meetings? Who is for virtual meetings (via Skype, Zoom, Teams)? Who is in charge of the work phases with the students during their common working time at your school?
students
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Choose participants out of the group of interested students in an application process
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Inform those students you want to include that you have a focus on their participation
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Test students’ interests and knowledge about the chosen subject matter
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Fix special project days or project weeks!
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Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Inform those students you want to include that you have a focus on their participation about the subject matter you intend to deal with and give them time to decide whether to take part.
Choose participants out of the group of interested students in an application process or/and by a credit point system and by interviewing them, as we also did (with Felix).
Test students’ interests and knowledge about the chosen subject matter regularly to evaluate the outcome of the project. Test your students’ performance in a broader sense so that adjacent fields are tested as well. Then you will have a greater variety of objectives to check on (example: robotics as the focus, the broader field is ICT) and you get a more complex view on their achievements. Example: with a questionnaire or a simple survey using adhesive dots
If a common time slot is not possible in the given time table of the students, fix special project days or project weeks for the students to come together and work only on the project (without any other lessons). Example: Project day at LHB
PROJECT DEvelopement
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Plan clear phases of the project (before writing your application) and then do the fine-tuning at the beginning with the students
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Form teams mixing your students who need more support with more advanced students
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Always start a new work phase with a new ‘challenge-orientated’ task or a ‘problem’.
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Use cooperative learning techniques
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Make sure your students work in international teams
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Make sure your students have regular contact
Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Plan clear phases of the project (before writing your application) and then do the fine-tuning at the beginning with the students, formulating clear tasks and aims which have to be reached in the given time spans – include the students in all planning phases with effective methods and all responsible positions as far as possible right from the beginning. Example: metaplan technique for collecting and sorting ideas, structured results
Form teams mixing your students who need more support with more advanced students by starting with a practical task, a little (technical) challenge that your ‘special’ students can manage well for raising their self-esteem and easy integration into the work groups, as we did with a little soldering course before dealing with programmes.
Always start a new work phase with a new ‘challenge-orientated’ task or a ‘problem’ to solve so that your students can try to find the way and the solution themselves. Examples: deciding between a tracked vehicle or wheels for a robot as in our project “Robots R Us” and practical handcraft challenges
Use cooperative learning techniques in your group work (see Norm Green, German materials: Gerold Brägger), so that each student gets a task he/she is responsible for in his/her team, meaning all students are necessary to reach the aim (principle of mutual dependence). https://www.mindmeister.com/de/15844358/cooperative-learning-norm-and-kathy-green Cooperative Learning (Norm and Kathy Green)Why? ✓ Elements of cooperative learning ✓ Good Teams ✓ Feeling of self-worth ✓ Activities ✓ Basic...MindMeister
Make sure your students work in international teams, choose one teacher to coordinate them.
Make sure your students have regular contact via virtual conferences (via Skype or e-twinning or Teams) or messenger services to keep track of the tasks and intermediate results of all groups. Examples: Skype and Whatsapp
activities
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Formulate fields of risks, solutions and consequences
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Do team activities to form the team at international learning, teaching and training acitivities
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Guarantee intensive work phases with all students in teams and carry out great leisure activities
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Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Do team activities to form the team at international learning, teaching and training acitivities Examples: Building a snowman in Finland. Ice breaking games organized by hosting students
Make sure all work is done in an environment of safety! Formulate fields of risks, solutions and consequences as we did on the basis of the Norwegian scheme and form
For the schedule of an international Learning and Teaching Activity, guarantee intensive work phases with all students in teams and carry out great leisure activities Example: Choose a remote youth hostel so that all students also the residential students stay together for best group processes (like our Finnish team did). Example: Maretarium KotkaExample: Fishing Trip in Norway.
dissemination
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Publish all activities in Social Media and in press, radio and TV, if possible.
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Publish interim results!
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Take the minutes of all work phases and meetings for your reports!
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Project Design
Students
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Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Publish interim results at your school so that the whole school (or even more people) know what you are doing (and colleagues become motivated to join the project or start a new one).
Publish all activities in Social Media and in press, radio and TV, if possible. Examples: Instagram, Facebook and on the radio e.g. in Fuerteventura
Find at least one teacher who takes the minutes of all work phases and meetings for your reports and uploads them onto your school website and another web platform of your choice (e.g. etwinning, facebook, twitter etc.).
support
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Use interesting and efficient ways and methods to carry out work phases and their intermediate evaluations.!
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Find at least one teacher who helps students with attractive visualisations!
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Practise presentations and rehearse them with students so that they carry out attractive presentations!
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Project Design
Students
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Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Find at least one teacher who helps students with attractive visualisations for the documentation and presentation of their results in order to enrich the presentations and enlarge students’ competences in this field (like our Spanish participants who showed us how to do it). Example: Preparing presentations with different media and editing them with ICT tools
Use interesting and efficient ways and methods to carry out work phases and their intermediate evaluations. This example is very useful to detect faults (introduced by the German team): Fishbone diagram for evaluations Morphological Box for decision making processes
Practise presentations and rehearse them with students so that they carry out attractive presentations (nonverbal communication, language skills) so they can be proud when presenting their results.
reports
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Participants and coordinators, give your reports to your partners for checking before you publish them!
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Coordinators, start writing the intermediate report right from the beginning!
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Document all your expenses in an Excel-sheet right from the beginning and regularly!
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Upload all interesting materials on etwinning and outcomes in the Mobility Tool regularly.
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Write all of your reports in the common language of the project!
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Project Design
Students
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Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
Coordinators, start writing the intermediate report right from the beginning, so that you don’t miss important steps or changes in the process. Do so for your final report as well, straight after the intermediate report.
Participants and coordinators, give your reports to your partners for checking before you publish them. Discuss and edit them with them. In this way, you make sure that you haven’t missed important information about their work!
Document all your expenses in an Excel-sheet right from the beginning and regularly, at least after each learning, training and teaching activity or simply once a month so that you keep track of your accounting. Find a colleague to support you. Keep your Mobility tool up to date.
Upload all interesting materials on etwinning and outcomes in the Mobility Tool regularly. It’s much harder to collect them all at the end for your interim and final reports. Example: drawings, texts, pictures, films, all project documents and results for etwinning page.
Write all of your reports in the common language of the project (ours was English) because then all of your partners can profit from all texts by sharing them (e.g. in google docs) and use parts of them for their reports. It also gives your partners a help how to formulate future applications and reports in future projects.
Final presentations
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Make sure to carry out a great presentation at the end of your project with authorities and parents!
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Make sure that weaker students or students who need more support have a great share in the job of preparing and carrying out the festival!
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Reward students’ performance with little “European presents”!
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Mention your students’ achievements on their school reports!
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Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
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For the final presentation, make sure that weaker students or students who need more support have a great share in the job of preparing and carrying out the festival, according to their abilities and the achieved skills, theoretical and practical, always on eye-level. Chefs Photographer Handy(wo)man
Make sure to carry out a great presentation at the end of your project with authorities and parents and fellow-students and -teachers in a nice festival so that your ‘environment’ can take part in this great project and can see what your students have achieved. Example: A festival on stage with invited parents and authorities like in Spain for the previous project “Recording Our Europe. Unfortunately Covid-19 stopped our plans.
Reward students’ performance with little “European presents” like flags, pens, pencils, bags, computer sticks, a T-shirt with the project logo and other little items to show your appreciation of their achievements and for ‘corporate identity’.
Mention your students’ achievements on their school reports and on exam festivals so that they can make use of the participation in the project for their future career!
Keep cool!
There will be phases when you think you can’t manage and you will not reach the goals of the project. Don’t worry! These phases only make you more alert to aspects that should be improved! Analysing them with your partners leads to improvement and great results! Sure!
Project Design
Students
Team
Activities
Project Developement
Support
Dissemination
Reports
Final presentations
All pictures of students and teachers are from our common Erasmus+ projects.