Despre

Starting date: 31st December 2016

Ending date: 31st March 2019

Project reference: 580325-EPP-1-2016-1-ES-EPKA3-IPI-SOC-IN

Financed by: European Commission

Budget: 493.163€

Partners: 6

Coordinator: University of Girona, Spain

InventEUrs is a European Erasmus+ project that promotes Global Citizenship Education and social inclusion in schools with high percentages of newly arrived migrant children. It is founded on an innovative methodology that combines virtual exchanges, digital storytelling and creative computing. Therefore, besides empathy, global awareness and social engagement, the project is also promoting the development of digital skills as relevant as coding, blogging or co-creation of multimedia projects.

The project is born with the aim of replicating a successful experience that has been carried out during the last five years with underprivileged schools in Catalonia, India and Colombia through an initiative called “Inventors4Change”, implemented by the University of Girona.

In the case of InventEUrs, not only the good practice is replicated within the European context, but two extra results are also generated: an online platform for teachers (which allows automatizing connections between schools and facilitating co-creation) and a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) to train teachers from all over the world in this new methodology for connected learning.

Upscaling: 3 waves

During the two years of the project, we are increasing the number of participating schools. First, only the partner schools (1^st wave), then partner schools and guest schools ((2^nd wave), and finally the project is opened to any school that want to participate (3^rd wave: Tsunami).

Transformation of the first small group of disadvantaged schools (4 schools).

At the beginning of the second year: at least 8 schools (each participating country adds another one).

During the last months of the second year, simultaneously with the work of the 8 schools, the Project will be open online.

Methodology

Participating schools choose one or more classes, which are then connected to classes in other countries. From then on, the process they initiate follows this methodology: (1) classes are divided into teams, and each team has its counterpart; (2) teams investigate a topic related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; (3) teams share their findings through a blog and begin to know each other by exchanging messages; (4) classes see each other and debate through videoconferences; (5) mixed teams (with children from both countries) co-design a story linked to the topic they have researched; (6) mixed teams co-create the digital story/animation by using the Scratch programming environment; (7) teams share their projects and present them to the rest of the school classes.

The main target of the project is newly arrived migrant children from underserved schools in Europe, but in the end through the online platform and MOOC, the initiative is open to any school and country. In fact, there is no better way to promote social inclusion than by creating relevant long-term connections between children from different contexts.