2nd year   3rd year

Concrete aims of the whole project

• To have a policy for the use and development of ICT in schools.
• To raise the profile of ICT in the curriculum as a learning tool and in the administration of the institution.
• To provide strategies to effectively manage the use of ICT in the classroom with the provision of exemplar teaching material.
• That all areas of the curriculum will have identifiable activity of ICT.
• To increase the number of teachers using ICT in the classroom by 10% per year of the project.
• To provide training material for all staff in the use of ICT.

The aims of the first year (academic year 2003/2004) of the project are:

• To establish across the institutions an audit of staff ICT expertise and needs.
• To establish an audit of students experiences of ICT in the curriculum.
• To develop in Languages and Geography, teaching schemes focusing on multicultural co-operation which can be enhanced by the introduction of ICT.
• To trial these lessons with students in different institutions and provide feedback in terms of student material.
• To provide training material for staff that will enable them to have the necessary ICT skills to follow this methodology.
• To quickly establish through a website, e-mail and fax, a secure means of communication.
• To use the website to promote these teaching and learning materials as well as information on the structure of the school's curriculum and administration.

The impact of this will be to provide a source of material which is accessible, transferable and relevant  to staff and students in gaining a greater knowledge and use of ICT as a resource and means of communication.

Activities for the project

• Using as a starting point, those areas of the curriculum which promote multi-cultural co-operation as they will cross national boundaries, we have identified two curricular areas initially for study.  Staff from these areas will meet to examine and compare their curricula and identify a few areas for enhancement for ICT.  They will then produce teaching schemes, expected outcomes and material for class use.  These will then be trialled both within their own institutions and also in another institution.  The resultant student outcome will be provide feedback to the whole group.  Dependant on this, the work will either be refined further or be disseminated to other groups via the website.  From this specific teaching material, generic ICT material will be developed, enabling all staff to have the ICT expertise needed to carry out a lesson based on that branch of ICT skill.

End-products

• Through the website, we will provide exemplar teaching material using ICT for 50% of the curriculum.  This will contain generic ICT training material for staff and students based on their needs rather than the published ones that concentrate on the computer application.  It will also provide feedback from staff and students as well as student work.  By the end of each year, interactive CD's will be produced and given to staff as a means of updating them with the project's work.  These will repeat information on the website.

Evaluation

• We will be seeking advice from Ray Kirtly, ERC Hull University on this issue.  It is intended use the objectives from 2 as a check list.  Staff expertise and curricular ICT mapping will be evaluated with a questionnaire throughout the project to monitor change.  In addition to this, interim reports will be produced from the results of student, staff and Headteacher questionnaire to ascertain yearly progression and to assist in the production of the final report. Therefore evaluation will primarily take place at an institutional level with all reports being collated by the UK co-ordinating institution and report back at project meetings. This will enable early intervention, if remedial action is required to the project.

Dissemination

• The website will provide the central focal point for our work, containing a brief description of the institutions, their national education system as well as the education structure of the institution.  Within this, for each area of the curriculum explored will be teaching schemes, teaching materials, student work, staff comments, reports and ICT training material for the staff.  The curricular areas will also be produced on interactive CD for each member of staff.  These will also be disseminated to local and national agencies, such as the education departments and libraries. A final launch event is planned to act as a end of project dissemination.

Specific measures

• All students and staff will be involved within this project and as such will represent the social, economic, physical, race and educational diversity of our institutions.  Member of the special needs department in the U.K. will monitor all work and using their expertise develop additional support material.  In using areas of the curriculum that will promote multicultural activities, it will promote the concepts of understanding and co-operation in an European dimension.

Role of institutions

• The UK will be responsible for co-ordinating the project, the production, collation and dissemination of all reports, all staff and student ICT training requirements and monitoring the effectiveness of the institutions in maintaining the timescale of the project's tasks.
• Estonia will be responsible for the establishment, amendments and additions, maintenance of the website and the production of the CD's for dissemination.
• Poland will be responsible for the development of ICT in language in the first year.
• Romania will be responsible for the development of ICT in geography the first year.
• All institutions will have responsibility to each other in developing, trialling and evaluating work as earlier described and for the production of exemplar work.

Use of new technologies

• The focus for this work is the use of ICT and as such will use a range of new technologies such as scanners, digital cameras, Internet, e-mail, presentation projectors etc.  We will also use chat sessions on the net at fixed times through the year with students and staff.

Active participation of students

• The project is a school development one and the participation of students is integral to this project, not only as end-users, but also as evaluators of the project.

Integration of the project

• During the project, the work selected for ICT-enhancement will form part of the teaching programme for the school and as such become integrated into the schemes of work.  This will then be used by the school to provide a cascade model for implementing other ICT-based work into those areas of the curriculum that have not been addressed.  This evidence will be asked for by the co-ordinator as part of the monitoring and evaluation. 
  

1st year   3rd year

Project activities for the second year (academic year 2003/2004)

• We intend to continue our general theme of ICT enhancement of the school curriculum, focussing on the two areas of Arts and Mathematics.  As with the previous curricular areas, a study of the use of ICT will be carried out to determine the extent of ICT usage and competence as well as to collate existing material.
• Within the Arts, the focus will be the production of presentation packages to introduce and show the diversity of the Arts within a national context i.e. sculptures, paintings, architecture and music.  Each institution will develop teaching material that sets the work in its historical and cultural context.  This will then be trialled in the various institutions.
  
• All institutions felt that the learning of Mathematics caused the greatest disenchantment amongst student and ICT could be used to partially address this issue.  A survey, using a sample of students across the age range in all institutions, will be carried out to determine possible causes of student disenchantment and which aspects of Mathematics that have the greatest learning problems.  These will be collated and compared.  From this, three areas will be agreed for further study and development.  These will be assigned to Estonia, Poland and Romania.  These countries will then produce ICT-related teaching schemes – addressing the issues raised by the initial study.  A fourth area will be that of computerised assessment and record keeping which will be developed by England. 
•  Within both areas, teacher exchanges will be used to demonstrate how these packages are to be delivered in schools to students.  Evaluation of this aspect will be through the use of headteacher, staff and student questionnaires as well as by student outcomes.
• This year will also trial the final evaluation technique for the whole project and to formulate ways of continuing this work after funding.
• Lastly, the curricular area for the last and final year will need to be decided.  This is likely to be Science and Technology. 

1st year   2nd year 

Project activities for the third year (academic year 2004/2005)
 

• This for the project is the most important year being the final year, as such we intend to continue our general theme of ICT enhancement of the school curriculum and focus on 2 areas; one of science and the other of administration.  A general theme running through this year however will be sustainability of the project beyond the three-year funding.
• Within the area of science the focus will be the production of presentation packages to introduce, enhance and elaborate new concepts in science.  This may include information regarding the history of scientific discoveries, scientific advancement, methods of demonstrating scientific laws and rules and also the use of data logging as a means of collecting data.  Each institution will develop teaching material, again which will be trailed in the various institutions through teacher exchange.
• The increasing administrative role being placed on schools, teachers and ancillary staff can in part be addressed through the use of ICT.  A survey will be carried out to determine the variety of uses of ICT in our institutions and which areas may need further enhancement.  It is intended that each institution will send a member of staff to a different institution to explore and examine further their administration and how ICT is and can be used to enhance and further develop it.  During the course of this survey, the teacher will spend time carrying out both a pupil pursuit and a teacher pursuit so that they can gain some idea of the variety of ICT experiences that both pupils and teachers have during the course of a day and the workload involved.  In addition to that, through interviews of staff and their responsibilities and also on other matters such as their examination system, pupil records etc to produce a report outlining the schools position and how this could possibly be improved by the use of ICT.  This will also explore how we can sustain the development and progress that we have already made over these 3 years.  A project meeting will then be held after this to look at the variation in reports between the various institutions and to draw up an agreed plan for maintaining and improving the links that have developed through this project.  For this teacher exchange, the partners will be paired up as follows
• Estonia with Poland and England with Romania
• i.e. Estonia will visit and report on administration in Poland and there will be a reciprocal visit.
• A similar situation will occur in the English-Romanian pairing.