Short-term exchange of groups of pupils

virtual mobility in Poland

7.06-12.06.2021

On June 7 - June 12, 2021 a virtual mobility as part of the Erasmus+ project “Bridges over opened minds” took place. Teachers and students from the following partner schools participated in the short-term students exchange.

• Scoala Gimnaziala “Nicolae Iorga” from Bacau in Romunia
• Instituto Comprensio Statale Adelaide Ristori from Neapolu in Italy
• Osnovna skola “Matija Gubec” from Cernik in Croatiai
• Szkoła Podstawowa im. Prymasa Tysiąclecia Stefana Kardynała Wyszyńskiego from Fanianowo in Poland

The mobility event was hosted by a school from Poland.

Due to the pandemic situation in the world and the related limitations, the date of the visit was postponed from May 2020, and the visit took place virtually via the Google MEET.

The purpose of the visit was to prepare, in cooperation with partner schools, a multilingual dictionary, a puppet theater and a smartphone application. All these goals were achieved through the use of distance learning and collaboration methods.

            After the ceremonial welcome on the first day, students attended a meeting where they introduced themselves and their schools. Using various ICT tools e.g.PPT presentations, YouTube, Genial.ly participants presented interesting facts about their countries, culture, history, geography and their communities. The students also prepared a common greeting Padlet. They posted and read greetings from other participants on the virtual board and shared the photos. This task was aimed at increasing the awareness of other cultures, languages ​​and tolerance towards differences.

Then the students were given a task consisting in breaking the ASCII code to find out what the motto of virtual mobility in Poland was - "All different, all equal". The students also commented using the “Mentimeter” tool, what that slogan meant for them. The keywords of the virtual visit were defined: tolerance, respect, friendship and freedom.

Initial work on creating scenarios for a puppet theater has begun. Students from partner countries worked together to create 4 stories focused on the keywords. All participants were involved in the task. In accordance with the established order, each of them was created (started, continued and ended) by the involved students of the partner schools. They were the ones who decided about the characters and the plot of the stories. Google Docs, which can be edited together at the same time, helped to accomplish this task. The collection of stories has been named "The Tales of Human Flash".

The second day of the visit was devoted to work on another result, which is a multilingual dictionary. Due to the pandemic, the partners jointly decided to start work on the dictionary remotely before the virtual visit to Poland. The purpose of its creation was to prepare a tool that will enable immigrants, refugees and foreigners to have the access to the basic vocabulary and phrases used in a given country easily.It was decided during the videoconference to create two multilingual dictionaries using two different online tools.

The first one, "DICTIONARY & BOOM", was created with the use of Google documents. After determining the thematic scope of the vocabulary, the students started working remotely. Their task was to find the equivalents of English words in their mother tongues and complete the table. After entering them in the appropriate place, it was necessary to attach a photo made by students or a drawing to illustrate the word.

The second dictionary, "Dictionary for BOOM", was also created in several stages. First, an online meeting was held, when a teacher from a school in Croatia presented a tool Book Creator, and shared the prepared material in English for joint work. The task for the students was to complete the dictionary with equivalents in the mother tongues, and to attach recordings showing the correct pronunciation of given words. This is how an interactive multilingual and multicultural dictionary was created - the result of international cooperation.

During a virtual visit to Poland, the joint work on the dictionaries was summarized and presented. They were also used to perform interactive tasks involving participants. First, the students took part in the “Do you know these words?” Challenge. Their task was to write on the virtual Jamboard the equivalents in four languages ​​for the displayed English word. The second activity was solving an interactive Kahoot quiz, in which the students answered questions about the dictionaries they prepared and checked their knowledge of words in other languages.

Wednesday was a day of intensive work on the puppet theater: the script, the puppets and the scenery. The work began with reading the prepared stories about respect, freedom, friendship and tolerance. The students later created scripts for puppet theaters using them. The topics were assigned to individual countries. Then, the students watched the film "Lech, Czech and Rus" prepared by the Polish school. It was aimed not only to familiarize the participants with Polish culture, but above all to inspire them to create interesting scenery for the puppet theatres.

 Then the students participated in a workshop led by Anna Senkowska, who demonstrated how to prepare interesting puppets. The pupils worked in groups on the preparation of the puppet theater. It was decided to record the results achieved by students and share them on a joint project Google drive.

On that day, work began on the next result of the project, which is the smartphone application "B2B app". The task for the students was to prepare a tool needed, in particular, by foreigners, refugees, immigrants who do not know the language of a given country to find the most important points (schools, hospitals, police stations, banks, pharmacies, hotels, etc.) in the place where they were. Work began with the collection of contact details, links to the institution's websites and photos in the shared Google form.

In addition, on Wednesday, students and teachers from partner countries also participated in a workshop led by Maria Pirecka on using Toony Tools to create comics.

The next day, the participants of the project met at a workshop conducted by Lidia Sroka-Polowy to learn about the tool where the smartphone application was to be created. Students and teachers learned how to use the data they had collected to build applications in App Inventor.

The students' work on the stories was summarized. The teams worked on preparing a version in their native languages ​​and on illustrations for the joint book. The students also shared their effects of working on a puppet theater and photos taken during their work on Padlet. They also worked on consolidating the puppet theater in the form of a movie.

Then work on the comic began. To create it, the students used the stories they wrote and the Toony Tool they learned the day before. The comic book themes were also divided into individual countries. Upon completion of the work, they were all published on a shared project drive.

Friday was the day ending and summing up the work during virtual mobility in Poland. First, a video showing the smartphone application "B2B app" was presented - the rules for its download, installation and possibilities of using the application.

The students also presented their puppet theaters and listened to the opinions of their colleagues about their work. It was proposed to prepare a poster for each play. Participants of the project took part in a workshop conducted by Maria Pirecka on creating posters using the Pizap tool. Students' work has been shared on Google Drive.

Then, comics prepared by students were presented. The participants watched with pride and enthusiasm the achievements of their colleagues, admiring the creativity and ability to use new tools in practice. After completing the work, the students shared their impressions of a virtual visit on Padlet and completed the project evaluation questionnaire using Survey Monkey.

Padlet_BOOM.pdf

On the last day, the project closing ceremony took place. After the ceremonial opening by the Polish school, the head of the Romanian school and the project coordinator made their speeches, thanking the partner schools for their cooperation and enormous effort put into the implementation of the project. Then the students spoke up and shared their opinions and impressions about the project and the virtual visit. They repeatedly emphasized that the project was a great adventure and a priceless experience for them. It allowed them to develop not only language, communication and digital skills, but thanks to it they had a chance to meet new friends and they found out that despite cultural, religious and linguistic differences, working in an international environment is invaluable.

Then students from Poland invited their partners to watch the performance. They could watch Belgian dance, greetings from other students of Polish school and listen to the songs recorded the previous day at school. Other partners also prepared some songs.

Finally, project coordinators in partner schools and teachers shared their opinions and evaluated the project with the use SurveyMonkey.