“Everyday Math” eTwinning project continued efficiently for 8 months with activities from September 2021 to April 2022. Six countries from Europe, Asia, and America, 7 High Schools, 7 Teachers, and 112 active students worked together on this project.
All the activities specified during the project application form have been made and all of the 12 planned goals have been achieved. In addition to the planned tasks, in the last month of the project, we planned volunteer activities that referred to the connection of mathematics with other areas of everyday life (applied mathematics).
We fulfilled the project plan, which we set at the beginning of the work, although we implemented it with two modifications. The first adjustment took place in the January activity, in which we divided the task into two parts due to the bad pandemic situation of the project members, and extended the deadline for its implementation. This change has postponed the dates of other scheduled activities by one month. The second change in the project plan took place at the end of the project when we added a voluntary April activity at the request of the students.
The result of the project were common products - the e-book Play with us, Math is fun!, a common virtual exhibition of Handmade math education materials, the e-book Statistics about the pandemic, the common Multilingual Glossary of function terms, and a common New year wish card. The students during the project prepared common collections - the padlet collection with project logo designs, the Wakelet collections Funktion in daily life, Schow your ideas, Online presentations about Pandemic, Interviews about Pandemic and Summary posters and other files about Pandemic, and multiple collections in TwinBoard.
During the project, we regularly monitored and evaluated project activities and the achievement of set goals. We received feedback from students through the TwinSpace forum, where students shared their views after each activity. In total, we received 353 verbal evaluations for 5 activities. We obtained a further evaluation of the project work by questionnaires, which we applied at the beginning and at the end of the project work. Goals 1 and 2 we evaluated according to the first and last test scientific method. Other goals we evaluated according to the average of students'/teachers' surveys and concrete outputs.
Some of the results in terms of the goals set are as follows:
Of the 145 enrolled students, 112 (88 %) were active throughout the project. Most of the students also took part in voluntary April activities in their free time. We believe that the way mathematics is mediated through project activities (innovative methods) partially disrupted many attitudes and prejudices of students towards the subject of mathematics and increased the motivation of students in mathematics lessons (goal 1 was achieved with a significant increase).
As the name of the project Everyday Mathematics suggests, through selected activities, we tried to deepen the understanding of the use of mathematics and mathematical thinking in everyday life (goal 2). As many as 90.5 % of students said that "I saw in this project how mathematics is used in everyday life." Thanks to the project, students can better see and understand the use of mathematics in everyday life.
In order to develop student's creativity, support them in creating and sharing original ideas and creating interesting and useful products, we included activities such as e-book creation along with fun tasks that students created for each other (December activities Playing with us is math fun!), as well as the March activity Handmade Mathematical Material, in which students devised and created mathematical tools for their classmates (goal 3 was achieved with a success rate of 94.75 %). As part of these activities, students also developed the ability to think critically and solve problems (goal 4 was achieved with a success rate of 100 %). In the questionnaire, the students stated that through the project they were able to express their ideas and present their ideas and solutions, and contributed to the creation of common products. This means that we really worked with a focus on the student and the students worked together successfully.
We have offered students interdisciplinary project learning in several activities (for example mathematics and design - activity Project logo; mathematics and statistics, and sociology - activity Statistics and Science; mathematics and technical/manual work and work with different material - Handmade math materials) (goal 5 Experiencing interdisciplinary project-based learning, success rate 79.9 %).
To meet goal 6 Improving the ability to use foreign languages and goal 10 Improving communication skills and cultural exchange of students with peers, we included in the project activities work in international groups (December task - Play with us, math is fun, February task - online presentations on the results of statistical studies, March task - Handmade math materials), in which students communicated with each other in English. The project and project activities in international groups significantly contributed to strengthening the ability to communicate in English with peers (the success rate of goal 6 is 95.3 % and of goal 10 is 87,1 %).
Goal 7: Improving the knowledge and skills of teachers and students about Web 2.0 tools, we fulfilled our work in online applications (success rate is 93,6 %), which we included in the individual activities. For teachers who did not know the web 2.0 tool, we instructed at work meetings, which always took place before starting the task.
We focused the project work on working in national and international teams (Goal 8 Development of cooperative and coherent work skills - the success rate is 94.9 %). The students themselves chose a team on the basis of their interests. In the group discussions, students exchanged more than 1,100 messages. We, therefore, think that the project and the activities we contributed increase the students' skills in group work.
Goal 9 raising awareness of mathematical literacy, ICT literacy, media literacy, data security, and copyright, we have achieved 100 % success. To achieve this goal, teachers, and students discussed before working on the project e-safety and project rules, and we included one or more web 2.0 tools in each activity. The result shows that although students think they are good in ICT, the project has further developed these skills. We developed mathematical and media literacy in each activity through prepared mathematical materials for students.
For every project task, we used the platform eTwinning - we shared the materials for students in Twinspace, we used the Twin Forum for group work, for evaluation (feedback), we used Twinboard to create a common collection. We prepared dissemination events for other teachers and colleagues, where we showed and shared our work on the eTwinning platform. Introducing the eTwinning platform and our project to other colleagues and students (goal 11) we achieved a 100 %.
Improving the relationship between teachers and their international partners and creating partnerships for new eTwinning and Erasmus projects (goal 12) is evident with the active involvement of all partners in each project activity, many online work meetings, and rich communication through the WhatsApp application as well as personal meetings of some partners.
As can be seen from the evaluation results, the studies were successfully completed.
During the project, teachers disseminated every stage and every result regularly. We published the information about project work on school websites, on school profiles on social media (mainly Facebook and Instagram) as well as other online means. Further dissemination of the project results took place directly at the participating schools through notice boards and exhibitions.
Despite the complex pandemic conditions interfering with the implementation of the project, we met the set plan, met all the set goals. We worked mainly in schools. Some groups also used online education according to the pandemic situation.
Good relations are established between all partners, some partners have already met in person, which has strengthened working and friendship relations. This project may be further developed in the future as a new eTwinning project or an Erasmus project. We believe that many of the current partners will continue to cooperate in the future.
We would like to thank all the partners very much for their contribution and cooperation. I hope to meet the partners in new projects.
Monika Poľanská & Nevin Bilgiçli
project administrators