Proyecto

The CRA Villaquilambre expects, through ERASMUS+, to make a leap towards an innovative methodology that improves the quality of its pedagogy, the learning and motivation of its students, the professional growth of its teachers and a high standing achievement in the European framework of teaching. It is expected that the acquisition of key competences will shape its organization, in a meaningful way, with regard to the training of European citizens with wide knowledge, skills, behaviors and attitudes that prepare them to integrate into adult life with the greatest guarantees of personal success. All of that tries to modernize educational methodology, changing it for a more innovative one, replacing the traditional textbooks by a tool with a pedagogical utility of incalculable possibilities: the TABLET.

            We aim that our students do not use the tablet as a simple "digital backpack", but as a tool that allows them to learn to learn, to acquire languages, to discover the world around them and, in short, as Ján Figel (former European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth from 2004-2009) declared, giving them the necessary skills to make the most of a new and moody digital world.

            Such a significant change requires being prepared at the organizational level, having a highly well-informed teaching staff and having the best ICT resources at our disposal. At the moment, we can say we have been getting all these challenges by professionalizing the management and the school organizational model, through the participation of the CRA Villaquilambre in different quality experiences and thanks to the continuous training of our teaching staff.

            Another factor we consider to be very important is experience. Our school has been participating for six months in a research project that measures the impact of tablets on student’s learning in the curricular areas of Language, Maths and English. We can regard the results as a huge success. However, the sample used to carry out the experience (eighteen students and two teachers) is clearly insufficient to evaluate the impact that it could have on the whole school, so it would mean at the organizational and formative level both for the school and its teachers as for students and their families. This is the issue where the ERASMUS+ project could provide us the opportunity to observe and learn from other organizations in which the methodology we want to implement is part of their DNA, The Netherlands being our bet, as long as it is a country of reference at European level in the use of this pedagogical tools.

            The aims we pursue with this project are:

1.      To observe and to import an educational model based on the use of tablets as the main pedagogical resource, both for teachers and students.

2.      To provide innovation and creativity to our teaching.

3.      To know a model of management in which tablets are integrated in the administrative and organizational processes of a school, in order to import it.

4.      To improve the quality of our teaching and learning processes.

5.      To enable lifelong learning and mobility to our teaching staff.

6.      To improve the acquisition of key competences in the students and faculty of the CRA Villaquilambre, giving special importance to digital competence and communication in foreign languages.

7.      To internationalize the CRA Villaquilambre

8.      To improve the techniques and work of attention to diversity in our students.

            To achieve these aims we have designed four activities: a structured training course and three learning activities by observation.

ü  The training course in the field of ΄Management and organization of an educational institution that uses tablets as the main tool in pedagogical processes΄ will be received by the School Principal. He has a highly skilled professional profile, adequate training and experience to transmit to teachers, the educational administration and families the most significant changes that will occur, as well as to prepare the educational center (organizationally and administratively) for such a situation.

ü  Three ΄job shadowing΄ periods (movilities) will be used by Pre-school, Elementary and Bilingual Program Coordinators to acquire knowledge, skills, behaviors and positive attitudes regarding the methodological model developed by our European partners in their education systems, with special attention to the mother tongue instruction, foreign languages learning, reading promotion, ICT pedagogical treatment and educational attention to diversity. These teachers, contrasted experts in their respective fields of action, will transmit their experiences to our educational community on their return to the CRA Villaquilambre.

           

            In short, this project, whose essence responds to the ERASMUS+ slogan ΄Changing lives, opening minds΄, is realistic, innovative, useful and has the absolute support as much from the Faculty as from the School Council of the CRA Villaquilambre, making evidence of the mentioned agreement through the attached minutes to this project.