“theeuroschoolreporters”
2015-1-ES01-KA219-015927_1
(http://1dim-paian.att.sch.gr/)
The 1st Primary school of Paiania is located at a suburb of Athens.
We have 350 students from 6 to 12 years old and about 30 teachers. There are 25 students with special needs in our school.
All our students will be involved in the activities needed for the realization of the projects. As we have learned to be engaged and organized towards the final goal we feel that all the stuff and students will be divided in smaller groups and will implement the given tasks of the project.
In this particular project, at least 10 teachers will be in charge and responsible for the whole program and the distribution of the tasks and roles within our school.
With the knowledge and experience of having participated in a Comenius program, two e-twining projects, being in charge of the website for the previous project and having the support and engagement of the local community and students’ parents, the project will give our school, as well as the community a great chance to variously take advantage of the project, open up in new experiences and be involved in challenging educational endeavours.
The Greek school will be in charge of creating the website of the project due to our experience in doing this task during the previous project.
Creativity, knowledge and children needs are some of the core values that lead our goals and lay the foundation of our everyday engagement within school activities, European projects, technology, creativity, cultural and environmental education, and academic subjects, in a constant effort to achieve the best for our students and accomplish our vocation as teachers.
As a result, we are trying to offer our students the opportunity to develop qualities such as creative curiosity, independence and self-paced learning. We try to inspire students with dynamic exploration, participation and implementation of various learning skills within their family, community and European partners.
Striving to inspire innovative and socially aware practices, we are offering variable and varied educational experience, as well as a balanced involvement of our students within our school, local communities and at the same time European projects.
It is very important for the education to share, evaluate and advance confident, and accomplished individuals to achieve the above aims.
Our school has been engaged in various initiatives over the years such as:
1) We have participated in a Comenius projects as partners in 2012-2014. During the implementation of the various educational activities we were happy to incorporate methods and creative activities, develop projects with our European partners and give our students the opportunity to acknowledge the importance of co-operating, sharing and communicating as well as being part of a multicultural project partnership.
2) During the current school year (2014-2015) our school is coordinating an e-Twining project -“Be creative, make comics, learn European fairy-tales”- which is given our students the challenge to work along with their mate-students from partner’s countries and develop innovative ideas, and experience the value of team work, especially among people who speak not the same language and have different backgrounds, customs and culture, while at the same time, they share common need to learn, communicate and enrich their world.
Regarding the skills and expertise of the persons engaged in the present project we are happy to mention that the foundation of our experience is our passion to excel and constantly promoting the idea of better formulating questions, which seeks not the one and only truth, but the dialog that takes place within communication. That means that our expertise is directed towards doing and being creatively motivated by challenges such as European projects as well as local community and interior projects.
Our teachers are very much passionate workers, and they have all been involved in different projects, undertaking initiatives to engage students to achieve strict deadlines, to implement demanding tasks, and always to enrich educational experience.
Our Headmaster has proved to be constantly supportive in giving us his knowledge and broad experience in educational, European, ICT, and administrative subjects, as well as his inspiration and acceptance towards the realization of the projects.
Our teachers have been taking the advantages of our educational system to be engaged in various seminars and have been attending courses and workshops regularly in order to keep updated and enrich their skills as well as expand and excess the learning of their students.
Allow me also to mention that since most of our teachers have been variously involved in local and European projects they are highly capable to organise projects, to use ICT resources and incorporate them within their learning methods; either in inner school projects or European ones.
Our school ICT specialists will be in charge of the website for the current project offering us their valuable knowledge to support the demanding part of it.
I will also briefly mention that our teachers have been involved and organized during the last years social and community integrated activities such as the creation of an artistic decoration of our school where students, parents and members of the local community were involved in painting and decorating art compositions on the inside and outside school walls. Such activities have given us rich experience and, above all, have brought together towards a final goal, the students, members of the community, and parents, giving a valuable outcome as a final result.
Our teachers and about 60 out of 230 students have been involved in the e-twining projects mentioned above. That experience have given them the ability to advance their ICT skills, to be in charge of direct communication with other European partners teachers and students, to work hard and be persistent in achieving the final goal, to use and become familiar with European online digital platforms and make use of the web and other social media tools, as well as to broaden their horizon beyondthe limits.