The proposed project was described by the assessors from the British Council as being ‘innovative and…very relevant to modern teaching and learning.’ It was ‘far reaching, with applications in other educational establishments and organisations’.
Representatives from Dollar
The first activity undertaken was a meeting held at Dollar Academy in November of 2017. Three teachers from each school attended a week-long training event at which a Hull University lecturer trained them in the production of Windows-compatible ebooks and an iBook expert taught them how to make iBooks for use on Apple devices.
A small number of pupils from each school then began to work on collating resources to be used in digital books. Three of these pupils and three staff from each school then spent a week in Motril, Spain learning how to make widgets such as crosswords, galleries, quizzes, interactive maps etc., as well as how to make digital books using these widgets. The meeting was covered by the local TV channel and featured on the news that night.
‘Following two days of gathering resources and learning how to make widgets using these resources, a day was spent touring Granada, which was both beautiful and exhaustingly hilly!’ said Dr Payne (Erasmus+ Co-ordinator and Biology teacher).
The week ended with a workshop in which the pupils made digital books (diaries or guide books to Motril/Granada) and then presented their books to the group. The standard of the books was amazingly high given that the pupils had only had a few hours in which to produce them; this bodes very well for the future.
Staff and pupils at all five schools will continue to work on making widgets and ebooks over the coming year. Any staff or pupils interested in learning this technology are warmly invited to do so as part of a lunchtime ebook club, held at Dollar Academy.
The next meeting for pupils will be held in Rovigo, Italy in March of 2019. At that meeting three pupils from the lunchtime ebook club will train teachers from the local region how to make widgets and digital books. The widgets are of particular interest as they offer a varied set of resources which can be focused on any curricular area of any subject.
All of the resources produced as part of the outcomes of the project will be available on a dedicated website as well as on the European Shared Treasure website for public access. This superb website can be explored by visiting: https://www.europeansharedtreasure.eu/
