Smart&Cooperative Skills

"<< Background >>School closures due to the pandemic adversely affected student achievement through several channels, including a decline in skill accumulation and a disruption of peer effects and peer-group formation. The lack of interest for students in school, the increased discomfort of students in their relationships with others, and the perception of danger that we have all experienced, are at the root of young people's disaffection with studying and school commitment.This was the starting point of the Project. One possible key factor in which to invest to reduce disaffection and prevent early school leaving could be ameliorate the life skills, as a tool to improve the ability to gain a “better life”. So, the Project was designed to combine the life skills learning using digital tools, to better involve and engage students in this activity. At the same time, the Project aimed to address teachers/trainers to test new digital didactic tools and to improve their skills in using innovative tools and methods in didactic activity and in creating a more engaging environment. << Objectives >>The project intended to develop and disseminate a pedagogical method, based on the theoretical foundation of the “Didactic Digital materials” focused on life skills, aiming to prevent and/or address the early school leaving phenomenon. The project partnership experimented territorial interventions in schools to encourage and thin the dynamics of contact between the school system and the youth population (in secondary education) in order to reduce the phenomenon of school drop-outs, with particular regard to the SEN, using ICT as a key enabler of innovation and change in education and training and for learning in general. ICT, digital, new tools, life skills, cooperative learning have been the keywords of this Project.<< Implementation >>At methodological level the core elements of this project were:life skills, understood as skills to be enhanced to improve the relationship with oneself and therefore also with learning and with the schooltechnology as a factor enabling learning and cooperative learning, even at a distance, and as a factor that reduces the distances between students with and without special needsBoth of these elements favor the improvement of school performances and the permanence of students with SEN (but, more generally, of all students) in schoolThe activities implemented by the project has been:-the production of ""Digital didactic materials"" on life skills (for cooperative learning)-the creation of a Training course for teacher and a validation of a specific curriculum-a methodological Manual for the production of ""digital tools on life skills for cooperative learning""<< Results >>The project produced the following outputs and results:digital didactic materials to acquire ability in exercise of life skills, also using collaborative approaches and methodspractices of learning developed to help develop autonomy, commitment, creative action, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.Teachers and students have:-Improved their knowledge of new technologies and interactive tools as an educational medium, also useful to improve-integration process of SEN students-Increased digital literacy (knowledge + skills + tools)improved forms of collaboration and communication virtual and face to facePartnership tested and perfectioned intervention models:-on the phenomenon of early school leaving to be replicated and exploited, focusing on inclusion-to educate young people to use mobile devices and technological tools as a work and integration instruments-on non-formal education methodologies in order to combat early school leaving In the long term, looking at the result obtained, we think that the potential long-term effects could be the following:-a reduction of school dropouts and a consequent reduction of skills misalignments between education systems and the labor market-students will get in touch with ICT and learn to use them wisely while carrying out the activities-learning will become more interesting and attractive for each student, and therefore will increase their interest and participation during the lesson-teachers will learn how to integrate new technologies into classrooms and improve their learning approaches, including through collaboration with teachers from different countries-through the use of ICT in education, classrooms will become active organizations, as each student will be actively involved in lesson activities in various ways-each school will collect educational resources (platform with content, e.g. lesson plans, software, interactive games, video presentations, educational videos etc.) which may be available to all teachers in each school. These will be useful to improve the functioning of distance learning, useful for dealing with situations such as the pandemic we are currently experiencing."