International Culture and Traditions- Young Explorers on the Start !

"The aim of the project ""International Culture and Traditions- Young Explorers on the Start !' ( ICT- YES! ) promoted students' awareness about different forms of European cultural heritage and enriched students’ knowledge through innovative teaching and learning methods, using ICT and digital tools. The goal of the project were achieved trough these objectives: • making the students familiar with their own and other countries’ cultural heritage, promoting local and national cultures • giving a chance to disadvantaged students such as students coming from low socio-cultural background to promote an open perspective and a multicultural view • improving of the level of key competencies and skills in ICT and STEAM subjects group. • encouraging students to learn foreign languages with particular emphasis on English and communication in this language, • including a new methodology CLIL in schools’ curricula and improve educational effectiveness of partner schools. All six partner schools from Lithuania, Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey and Romania in the project experienced similar needs to develop their students awareness of European cultural heritage as well as their knowledge of ICT and STEAM, with particular attention to English as the universal language of international communication. The target group of the project were students aged 13-17 years, 100 of them with fewer opportunities and teachers working with them. In order to facilitate the teaching learning processes about cultural heritage partner schools in this project partners agreeded that it is a great idea to be able to present, experience, analyse, compare and possibly to try to describe the meaning of various elements being parts of local, national and international cultural heritage. To achieve the aim partners selected a number of areas of cultural heritage and divided major responsibilities among the partner countries accordingly to their available elements of cultural heritage: literature , food preparation, traditional medicine, traditional craftsmanship, architecture and digital heritage, natural heritage. Due to the worldvide pandemic situation project was extended for 6 months and by common agreement of all partners the results were implement during virtual mobilities hosted by Turkey and Italy. During 4 short physical learning exchanges and 2 virtual, because of COVID 19 outbreak, students explored a certain type of heritage and created a common results, as it was planned, such as: Spain- research on readings of national pieces of literature, Italy- international cook book of traditional recipes, Poland- catalogue of natural medicine heritage, Romania- a brochure about traditional arts and crafts, Lithuania-online route of architectural heritage, survey of digital heritage, Turkey- a research about protection ways of natural heritage and exhibition of natural heritage. Participation in virtual and physical mobilities was confirmed by Certificates of attendance in order to confirm skils acquisition. Including local activities, virtual mobilities, eTwinning and learning exchanges during the project there were about 600 students involved. The project’s outcomes and outputs have a high potential. The project’s products are available both on the project’s website and also on the other schools’ websites, eTwinning, Erasmus results platform. The website will be available even after the project ends. All materials are available and could be used in any European school. The project was designed to encourage participants’ critical thinking. The intense learning process behind this project had an effect on participants because their changed being better equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to face the challenges ahead. Participants had better knowledge and experience, increased skills and achievements, improved cultural awareness, better language skills and all these were assessed through observation, interviews, and self-assessment. Created outcomes about cultural heritage are foreseen to be used during different lessons. Moreover, we expect that some of our results will be used during the future events in Kaunas, as in 2022 it will be the capital of European Culture. Also, coordinating school and Turkish partner prepared Erasmus ka1 prorposal for teaching assigments and recieved a grant for further exploration of the project topics. This will ensure the sustainability of final results. As one the project objectives is including/improving a new methodology CLIL in schools’ curricula, the prepared lessons plans, methodological advices and courses were implemented and used as a results of the project.Moreover,implementation of virtual activities allowed to use a bigger variety of IT tools and methods and ensured wider integration of different school subjects into project, enhanced virtual collaboration between local and European schools."