General Info
The practice is one of the preliminary results of an ongoing international collaboration of 6 countries, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Croation and Poland, based on an Erasmus+KA229 project entitled “STEAM Strengthens European Cultural Heritage” as well as its corresponding eTwinning project. The main goal of the project was to use each element of STEAM so as to promote cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, and consequently affiliate students with STEAM applications and also raise pupils’ awareness about their own heritage as well as discover the cultural heritage of the other European countries.
Audience and Educational Framework
Educational Details
STEAM strengthens European Cultural Heritage is an educational practice which involves a a cross-curricular methodology to teach the contents in our school that include: a) the scientific-technological-mathematical background of the STEM subjects, b) the creativity added by Art to expand it to STEAM, c) the Social Sciences environment provided by the historical heritage and d) the international scenario of an Erasmus+ and a corresping eTwinning project where all these contents are cooperatively studied and the English language is learnt in real situations. The partner schools of the project share common necessities in order to turn their pupils to the real world with transversal methodologies rather than individual subjects.
Each country focuses on a different aspect of STEAM. The virtual meeting in Portugal has already been completed. Students learnt abour Micro bit coding and attended a 3D printing Workshop. During the Virtual meeting in Greece, students will focus on the use of on orienteering application in order to explore the European Cultural Heritage as well as on the Art of Debating to promote their active citizenship. Croatia will focus on digital mapping, digital posters as well as photo editing. Spain will involve students in activities with the use of videos, infographics and digital tourist magazines. Cyprus will refer to the digitalization of cultural heritage and blend intangible cultural heritage with art. Poland will explore the use of Audacity, the visualisation of the music with the means of graphic programmes as well as the use of GPS for mapping.
To apply STEAMS methodology to promote the historical heritage locations studied. This means that we propose to add Social Sciences, in terms of Heritage, to the STEAM approach, so it becomes even more cross-curricular.
To discover European cultural heritage and use modern tools and apps to present heritage to their local, regional, national and international communities in order to promote and preserve them.
To improve the English language competence of teachers and students. This is a very important goal in European projects which embrace countries where English is not the mother tongue. The use of English is closely related with soft competences such as communication, interpersonal skills, responsibility, team work, etc. that are enriched by this practise both in teachers and students.
To exchange teaching practises. This is an important part of the school exchange partnerships where, even being the pupils the center of the project, the teamwork between the teachers is vital to plan and implement the project. In particular, there is an important part of organizative work when applying the educationsl practice in the school curriculum. Moreover, each partner school shares the topics they are experts in, for example eTwinning, ICT or Heritage. Each school is in charge of boosting and transferring these topics to the association, while the other schools have to put them into practise at their own classes after the project is finished, which is called sustainability.
Implementation
(where and how the practice was implemented)
Continuous Internal and external Evaluation.
Each activity is internally evaluated in order to decide whether the same procedures should be followed or whether certain changes should take place.
After each virtual meeting an evaluation process takes place and both teachers and students evaluate the procedure followed.
For example, after the virtual meeting in Porto, we used the following evaluation forms:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeG-ZqZv4HH6gDX4865ec60kArK9nee_AkDDLj-zOAGyzUWzA/viewform
Since the evaluation and the program is still ongoing, each step of it provides feedback in order to improve the program. So far, students have already been familiarized with coding, that is how STEAM can connect to cultural heritage, using Microbits and 3d printing techniques. According to the feedback, the procedure followed was very succesful.
Educational material/resources (file/URL) accompanying the practice
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