Kick of Meeting - CREATEskills project -Dec 2017 / Newsletter in English

INTRODUCTION

Chania Directorate of Primary Education participates in a very promising European program focusing on contemporary educational policies in the field of logical thinking skills. The project is entitled as "CREATEskills - Social Welfare for STEM in Primary Education" of the Erasmus + KA2 (Cooperation for Innovation and the Strategic Partnership for School Education) program. The participant-counties are Portugal, Spain, Greece and Lithuania, two partners per country.

In December 2017, CDPE representatives participated in the Kick of Meeting in Porto, Portugal for presenting the GR educational system as well as to show in detail the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan of CreateSKILSS project and specify involvement of CDPE school units.

The Greek Mission was represented by MILIARAKIS Emmanouil, the Chief Education Officer of CDPE, KAVAZIDOU Eleni, School Activities Coordinator of CDPE (Contact Person) & ANDREADOU Chara, the School Councelor of Primary Education of the 3rd District of Chania.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE KICK OF MEETING

Day one: 13th December

Welcome of participants, agenda presentation

Marisa Rodrigues from Mentortec (the hosting organisation) started the meeting by welcoming all participants, introducing the Agenda (Annex 1) and explaining the main goals of the meeting, which were the following:
Get to know each partner;
Clarify all aspects concerning coordination, financial and internal quality evaluation aspects;
Clarify monitoring and evaluation of IOs results and projects
Clarify IO1, its tasks and next steps.
Partners were informed that some alterations to the Agenda could happen, since our main concern for the moment rested on the points listed above.
All practical and logistical aspects were also discussed.

Tour de table: introduction of partners

Marisa Rodrigues started this section of the meeting with a presentation of the leading organization focusing in its main areas of work and specialization. Examples of past and current projects were provided. Marisa also presented Mentortec’s role in CREATEskills project along with Mentortec’s team that will be involved in the project;
Following, Paz Prendes and Marimar made the presentation of Universidad de Murcia, taking the opportunity to describe some of its areas of work, in particular concerning the Faculty of Education’s Research Group in Educational Technology (ET). Additionally, they also presented Universidad de Murcia’s tasks and responsibilities in CREATEskills project;
Alexandros Koukovinis presented Science View to all partners explaining that its great focus is on the activities for awareness raising towards science and technology. In terms of projects, Science View mainly concentrates on the area of Science Education, Entrepreneurship and RRI. Concerning CREATEskills project, Alexandros took the time to present Science View team and Science View tasks and responsabilities;
Metis Baltic, was represented in this KoM by Gabrielė Keraitė, who also took this opportunity to talk a little about it, presenting it as an innovation-driven company which offers project management and communication services. Gabrielė introduced Metis Baltic team along with its role in CREATEskills project;
Hortensia Prat Andreu and Ambrosia Fernández Martínez participated in the KoM representing C. P. Consolación, which in this project will be collaborating directly with Univ. de Murcia. Hortensia explained to partners how this school is also very focused on developing ICT skills. Hortensia also took the opportunity to expose C. P. Consolación tasks and responsibilities in CREATEskills, finishing by showing to all KoM participants a very dynamic and thematic video of the school (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQEck87Eenk).
From Chania D. P. E., a cluster of schools with expertise in promoting innovative programmes in education, and which provides school management at local and regional levels, there was Emmanouil Miliarakis and Eleni Kavazidou, who are the team members who will be contributing directly to CREATEskills project
Aurelija Dauginė from Lituania, presented Karalienės Mortos Mokykla – Queen Morta School, which is a private school with innivative approaches to education, which teaches from Kinderganten until the 7th grade. Arelija took this opportunity to present to the partnership the team involved in CREATEskills project as well as Karalienės Mortos Mokykla tasks and responsabilities in the project;
Finally Angela Gordino and Augusta Marques, presented the school A. E. De Loureiro, which is the Portuguese school that will be working close with Mentortec. This is a cluster of 9 schools (2 secondary and 7 primary e Kindergarten), with a total of 998 students, but the school that will actually be working in this project will be EB1 Areosa (1 class with 26 students).

Project Management and Coordination

After a very brief coffee break, Marisa (Mentortec) followed-up with the Agenda of the KoM by proceeding with the presentation on how the project management and coordination will be implemented. For that, a thorough explanation of the Project Roadmap was presented (please see Annex 2), where the following topics were discussed:

During the discussion about the priorities, aims and objectives of the project, it was decided that some key-concepts as “STEM studio classrooms”, “Social Learning” and “21st century skills”, which are essential to CREATEskills, should be clearly defined in IO1, right at the beginning of the project;
Concerning the target groups, it was clarified that what is meant by “Local Community” are all the different organisations acting at local level in the areas of the STEM subjects;
In relation to all IOs it was also clarified that:
Every result or product needs to be available as an Open Educational Resource (OER), not only to the countries from which partners are from, but at European level as well;
Results and products must continue available as an OER after the official end of the project, in 2019;
Results and products need to be available in English and in every partners’ language (except for the internal documents);

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The majority of the country partners had a great experience in European programs. Each partner contributes equally and in a different way in the actual implementation of this project. In particular, MENTOREC (PO) shall be the coordinator and supervisor of the project for all participants. Meltis Baltic (Lithuania) shall be responsible for the development of contemporary internet & website tools enriched with a digital library, forum, blog and other useful tools, interesting for all the teacher community.

The University of Murcia (SP) shall coordinate a study on the educational system background per implicated country as far as STEM-related pedagogical practices are concerned in cooperation with Portugal, Spain, Greece and Lithuania school units.

After the study of Murcia University a special training program will follow aiming at the Pilot Implementation of innovative ways of STEM Teaching; all the participatory schools will take advantage of that training course and will apply the pilot program. The main project’s objective is the teachers’, pupils’ and parents’ involvement in studying and learning creative processes in the field of Science, New Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics. The main purpose is to shift upwards the average student performance indicator of STEM topics and to eliminate low school performance in relevant cognitive skills.

A periodic newsletter concerning the project’s development shall be uploaded in the European Portal of CDPE and in the Local Career Network website: http://schoolcareer.sch.gr.