Romanian Meeting "Life Of A Digi"

Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils

 

On 18 – 22 February 2019  the Erasmus + project meeting took place at the “Gheorghe Lazăr” High School in Sibiu, Romania. This was the first mobility work with students and teachers. Representatives from the partner countries made all the preparations for this mobility work and participated in the teaching/training/learning activities.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the following countries:

1. Poland (Roman Catholic Secondary School named after RomualdTraugutt) – teachers: Rafal Maliszewski, Eugenia Majewska; students: Weronika Kłopotek Główczewska, Zuzanna Bielecka, Zuzanna Niemczyk

2. Spain (SEC - Atlantico S.L.) teachers: Katharine Therese Murphy, Sara Bouzada Sanmartin; students: Iria Turnes Sanchez, Antonio Carro Pereira, Andrea Nicieza dos Santos, Andrea Regadas Bouzas, Patricia Gutierrez de Saa

3. Portugal (Agrupamento de Escolas de Casquilhos) teachers: Cristina Ramalho, Maria Leonor Inacio; students: Lúcia Gaspar, Ilona Nacu, Sofia  Pinto, Isabel Cruz

4. Croatia (XI. Gimnazija) teacher: Matija Basic; students: Tena Juricic, Lara Radenovic, Goran Neven Paleari, Noa Rettig

5. Turkey (Tevfik Ileri Anadolu Lisesi, Rize) teachers: Esra Esin Poyraz, Ayşe Yıldırım, Tuğba Özüm Birol, Ilkfer Erdem Kurdoğlu; students: Mualla Midilli, Nurşah Onay, Emine Bilge Bayrak, Ayşe Betül Gür

6. Romania - (Colegiul National Gheorghe Lazar Sibiu) teachers: Octavian Gabriel Negrea, Iohannis Carmen, Cornelia Stela Negrea, Anuta Steliana Mărginean, Adina Mihaela Stănculescu, Doriana Dorca, Laura Brie, Raluca Filip, Ana Marinescu, Claudia Fugaru, Daniel Mașca, Gabriel Cojocaru, Marioara Marin; students: Alboiu Daniel, Banciu Diana, Bratu Teodara, Bumbuc Ioana, Cîșmăroiu Alexia, Dicu Maria, Dragoe Karina, Morândău Felix-Alexandru, Motronea Raluca, Nuțu Alexandra, Paroș Beatrice, Popa Adina, Rățoi Răzvan, Șerb Radu, Toader Andreea, Văidian Iustin, Vasilescu Deniz, Ordean Daniel, Pascu Patrick, Tîrziu Larisa.

All the participants of the meeting presented the specifics of the work of the schools they represent and outlined their profile. They also discussed previous experience in implementing European projects.

All teachers and students who participated in Sibiu mobility, took part in the "teaching/training/learning activities", which included issues such as:

-the Romanian team presented all the logo created by each country for this project, the voting process of the logo contest and the project badge containing the winner logo of this competition. The voting process was made online, using google forms, and the winner logo was declared the Romanian team logo. So from now on, the project logo will be the one created by the Romanian team.

-the students presented their intellectual work, a selfpresentation in the form of a film containing information about their country, region and school.

• European Citizenship

- everyone attended the workshop ”What it means to be a European citizen”. The main purpose of this workshop was to make every participant realize what it means to be a real European citizen and to learn how to improve their knowledge about it. In order to do that all the participants used technology, playing also a Kahoo game ”Two truths, one lie” about it, developing an active European citizenship, based on collaboration and problem solving in a creative and inclusive way. They also managed to develop critical thinking in order to build opinions and make decisions in daily life as a responsible European citizen.

- Doing collaborative work the students and teachers created posters about the European Union and what it means to be part of it.

• Digital citizen, Digital Identification

We focused on an active learning method including various learning and teaching modalities.

-everyone attended the workshop ”What digital citizen is and witch are its 9 criteria”. The workshop aim was to promote awareness on the responsible use of online internet resources and technology in every aspect of life, keeping in mind the 9 essential pillars of being a digital citizen. Living in the 21st century with continuous advancements in internet technology forces us as digital immigrants and our students as digital natives to use this technology in our daily life, education, career, as well as entertainment. We must exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity and demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning. All the participants understood what it is like to live in a digital world safely and responsibly. Everyone discussed about topics to promote an active digital citizenship. They understood that, by dialogue, we can develop and promote moral values like active participation, responsibility, cooperation, and collaboration in problem solving.

 - we gave a strong emphasis on how to be a digital citizen in the real sense by teaching our students how to benefit from digital tools and virtual environments without confronting any negative effects that might be caused by the online digital world.

-the location for the other activities was the IT Lab for the introduction of web 2.0 and ICT tools workshop. There we had a PowerPoint presentation about what means safety on internet, what is an avatar and how we can create it. The aim was to learn about and understand Education in the 21st century within its 4Cs: online communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. The Romanian teachers presented some applications, like DoppleMe, Sitepal, Gavatar and Voki, used to create an avatar and a digital identity card.  Each student learned how to create their own avatar and a digital identity card using these tools. They used digital tools in order to display information and communicate with other students via internet, networks or mobile tools. They also practiced their communication skills when learning from each other and learned how to use technology in learning and knowledge construction.

-the Romanian teachers also made a PowerPoint presentation about creating your own site using different tools. After they presented different options, they choose to create the students site using weebly.com.

Students from each country had to create together one site for all, assisted by the teachers and Romanian students. They had to respect some criteria for their site such as: each site should have a minimum of four pages (Home, School presentation, Identity cards and Contact), they all had to put the same elements (project logo, map location), etc.

In the Home page they had to insert the project winner Logo, the name of the project, the country name, the logo that each country created for this project and a short introduction about what this project means to them.

In the School Presentation page they had to insert a picture representing their school, the name of their school and the non-speaking avatars with all the team members. Here, they had also to embed the speaking avatar created using Voki tools. Through this speaking avatar, they tell us a few things about their school/town/country and about them self.

In the Identity Cards page each member of the team had to insert their own identity card containing some short information about them, like country, school, grade, first name, hobby.

In the Contact page students had to insert a way to contact them, a map with the location of their school and the school address.

We managed to improve students’ communication skills and the use of ICT tools with texts, photos, searching information, blogging, publishing opinions, and to use virtual platforms for civic participation. Students learned how to make use of virtual platforms to facilitate learning and teaching.

The final result can be found here:

Croatia: https://lifeofadigicroatia.weebly.com/

Poland: https://lifeofadigipoland.weebly.com/

Portugal: https://lifeofadigiportugal.weebly.com/

Spain: https://lifeofadigi1spain.weebly.com/

Romania: https://loadromania.weebly.com

Turkey: https://lifeofadigiturkey.weebly.com/

 

• Cultural, historical and traditional knowledge

- Students did research to know our history, democratic institutions, geographical locations and elaborate digital documents with the result of fostering the use of new technologies;

- in this project, we tried to make the students to understand human, cultural and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behaviour. To achieve this, students visited the town hall, the city center, the Bran castle and the main fortress of Transylvania region. Also, they participated in: Dragobete show, traditional folk dance, sport activities in which they had the opportunity to know the history, traditions and culture of the Romanian people. During these meetings they discussed about the other European countries’ traditions.

-the most important thing is that by participating in these activities, they improved their language skills, learned basic vocabulary of the languages of their partners, and mainly they improved their English

- by living with families during these meetings they managed to know their very rich and important linguistic culture;

-they also participated in a workshop called “Traditional Trinkets” in which everyone managed to create something special, painting a traditional model on clay objects, to remind them of Romania.

 

Rafał Maliszewski Ph.D. as the main coordinator, presented the tasks to be accomplished until the next mobility and the things that have been done so far.

• Arrangements:

-tasks have been assigned in accordance with the entry in the project application

-the main tool for project results dissemination and communication between project participants will be the Twinspace platform. For this purpose, Eugenia Majewska presented the Etwinning platform, the Twin space of the project and a detailed work that each country has to do on the Etwinning platform was discussed. Teachers responsible for the project work on a national basis will monitor the communication between students from different countries and will add all the work that has been done since then on the platform.

-Matija Basic from Croatia presented the project website.

-the dates of the two nearest foreign trips for the students (Portugal 20-24 May 2019 and Turkey October 2019) and the form of their implementation were set.

-the next stage of the project work was discussed in detail between February 2019 and May 2019 as well as the type of intellectual work that young people involved in the project should prepare.

• the students will prepare an interview in the form of a film containing information about digi law, digi health and wellbeing in their region and school which will constitute the intellectual work product presented in Portugal;

The above arrangements will be monitored and discussed during subsequent project meetings. All the partners agreed on the possibility of modifying particular points of the project plan in order to make the work more productive and obtain better results of intellectual work.