Description of the Project

Parents and teachers want the students to study all the time and students want to chat, surf on the Net and play computer games. Many of today's teens spend much of their time with their faces burried in a computer monitor or a smart phone. As a result of this, we have a generation, who are unaware of the world they live in; they don't care about the environment and the society. Most students are technological natives. This affects them badly and causes some issues as loosing empathy skills, can't control their anger, have little interest in arts and sports, don't have active participation in society and education. Development of health problems such as eye deformations, obesity, sleeplessness and lack of self confidence. This is a common and serious problem in all of our countries and in Europe as such.

In today's world, we are in need of teaching academic information to our students. The labour marked requires young people with digital skills, the school in our areas are running behind, when it comes to modern methods for teaching the children digital competences. Academic education is not enough, students are bound to technology. Students need to be competent users of technological devices in order to have academic success. Since they use their devices freely, we need make them aware that this kind of technology can be a very useful tool and not just a toy. And to teach them about safer Internet, mobile addiction and programming. The thought of programming reflect aspect of life that is very usefull to the students in a life-long perspective. They need to develop skills where they categorize, organize and structure. That is also necessary in a modern life, with all the options and choices young people have to make. We want to prepare our students to active competent EU citizenship.

In the phase where we developed the ideas of this project, we tried to observe the obstacles the education system is facing.
In order to see how technology affects students' academic and social life we conducted a survey on students. According to the result of the online pre-survey on Google Drive, which has been conducted on 250 students (ages between 11-14 years students among all stakeholders), students use technological devices inconveniently. It means students overuse technological devices and it affects their social and academic life badly.

When we consider our partnership, each country has their own background, life-style, culture, attitudes to life and every school has their own school system, methodology, ways of teaching, different student profiles; but we have the same problem; students are bound to technology and they are isolated from society. We all need a generation, who are having active citizenship identity and who knows how to live in a World with easy access to other countries. By organizing this project in strong communication and interaction between partners, we aim to gain a generation who will be aware of their morals, values and have success in social inclusion. The sustainability of this project is secured by providing our students innovative skills.

Our main goal in this project is to recognize that screen are a basic condition in our students livres. Electronical devices are a time-demanding tool, so we wish to prepare the students to qualify their digital posibilities and improve their digital skills. We also want to present them to alternatives to the digital World through awareness of cultural life and its richness. In the LTT meetings we will strengthen the feeling of togetherness through cultural experiences. The aim is to help students to be aware of themselves and their social life and also help them control their boundness to technology. We will obtain success in the school lessons, because students will learn to use technology effectively not unconsciously. An awakening will occur and they will gain intellectual outputs; they will have adaptation to the society, improve their self-confidence, cope of technology as it should be. Through the cultural awareness, the students will overcome prejudices, appreciate what they have, show empathy and sensitivity to the nature and have acquisition of human feelings such as mercy, compasssion, tenderness, willingness to learn foreign language, active EU citizenship, multilinguism. They will develop methods to get rid of health disorders such as eye deformities or obesity.

By working collaboratively with our partners (Turkey, Hungary, Estonia and Crotia) we will, with the help from experts, learn to program at teacher- as well as student level. We introduce digital platforms, where students can communicate safely through computer games and we use the nature for teaching activities, perform a theatre play and write a project song to put focus on the cultural parts of the project.

In the past years, there has been a rapid change in many different areas; especially technology has been developing in such a speedy way, that it is nearly impossible to keep up with it. Consequently, in our hands we have a generation, that in some ways are disconnected with the real life, unaware of the beiing citizens in a society, ignorant of how to live, insensible to the nature, obsessed with the phones or online communication and games, reckless of the art and sport and also closed to innovation. They have their own world since they act like imaginary characters. Moreover, it is a highly new manner.

Since youth means future, we need to save our future as World and European citizens. With this project, the talent of youth and active participation in society willl be strengthened in a way, which is totally new for our teachers and close to the interest and needs of our students. And moreover the students can enlarge their vision and can realize that they're living with a whole World, not by themselves.

In partner schools we are going to develop a set of activites, which will help the students socialize. Teaching programming and using mobile technology for creative tasks is a completely new offer for our students and a new perspective for our teachers. This will make our schools more modern and innovative. The innovative perspective is a new way of thinking, because the teachers at our schools and other schools will learn how to help students use technology constructively instead of forbid the use of technology in schools.

The other innovative dimension of our project is outdoor teaching, in which the coordinating school has experience and is going to transfer the knowledge and experience to other partners. and upgrade own competencies in that metodology. We aim at; all partners schools should be able to use nature as a class-room. Instead of only playing games on their cell phones students will be able to play games, where they socialize and develop language skills, such as wider vocabulary, better pronounciation and grammar. The english language will be used creativly not just as a language of communnication, creation and expression but also as a professional language of computing.

European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda)and Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou (Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth) say "Promoting coding skills in EU is part of the solution to youth unemployment" in a joint letter to EU Education Ministers urging them to encourage children to get involved in EU Code week. Same letter underlines some more realities as a facet that youth unemployment is one of Europe's biggest challenges. At the same time Europe is experiencing a growing skills gap in the ICT. The European Commission's Digital Agenda forms one of the seven pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy which sets objectives for the growth of the European Union (EU) by 2020.

Innovative project goals:
- Achieving the digital single market.
- Enhancing interoperability and standards.
- Strengthening online trust and security.
- Promoting fast and ultra fast Internet access for all.
- Investing in research and innovation.
- Promoting digital literacy, skills and inclusion.
- ICT-enabled benefits for EU society.