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Talent Maker Day 5th

On the 5th of May, the Talent Maker consortium hosted Talent Maker Day in the three schools involved in the project in Greece, Romania and Spain.

During the event, not only each organisation introduced the project, its journey and its results to the attendees, including teachers, school principals and policymakers, but also put on a day to remember for all participants.

Concretely, in Escola El Pla (Salt, Spain), upper primary pupils, with the teachers’ support, organised a talent fair in the morning, where kindergarten children and attendees could observe Talent Maker workshops demos and some of their final products.

Then, after a brief formal presentation of the project, there was a round table discussion to listen to pupils, teachers and the school board about the experience of implementing an Erasmus+ project like Talent Maker and its benefits for education. The reunion finished with a standing lunch.

We are sure that Talent Maker Day inspired the attendees to reflect on the future of talent promotion and Maker Education in academic contexts and the transversal use of creative technologies considering the needs of multicultural schools in Europe.

With that event, the partnership gave closer to this two-year Project which they will keep carrying out without European funding.

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Biblio Zen: The Sea in a Fishbowl Talent Maker in El Pla School, Salt, (Spain)

In El Pla School (Salt, Spain), we recently enjoyed a new capsule of the Library Talent (Biblio Zen for us in Catalan). 

In the first session, we entered the marine world, thanks to the cosy ambience prepared by our teacher, and explored books and words related to sea life.

Furthermore, we collaborated to create ocean dioramas in shoeboxes, a workshop described in the Talent Maker Capsule The Sea in a Fishbowl. As you can see, some very cool fish tanks came out! And we used and got familiar with some new and specific vocabulary! 

In the next session, we took our creations into the digital world. We learned about coding and played with Scratch Jr. Through this programming language for children, we made our fish move and talk by recording our voices. We even got into the screen by taking a picture of ourselves and placing it as the face of a scuba diver sprite (Scratch Jr gallery character). We animated our aquarium and brought its animals (fish, sharks, whales, starfish) to life! Moreover, it was fun sharing and seeing our classmates’ projects while learning coding tips from each other. It was fascinating getting to know and delve into this field.

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Talent Maker in Constantin Ianculescu School, Carcea (Romania)

Talent Maker in Constantin Ianculescu School, Carcea (Romania)

Building a garden into the classroom

Gardening is a great way to meet science standards, no matter what grade you teach. For years, students have been writing about plants in their notebooks, but actually this was the moment I could see them planting the seeds and watching the plant grow in their classrooms.

"For years, students have been writing about plants in their notebooks, but actually this was the moment I could see them planting the seeds and watching the plant grow in their classrooms."
Delia Pîrvu
Constantin Ianculescu Teacher

At first, they planted the seeds into plastic cups and could also draw whatever they wanted on their cups.

During the next phase, they just had to place the cups on the window shelf and watch them grow.

The students had to take care of the plants until spring, water them and make sure they had enough light.

 

Then they built a garden somewhere in the schoolyard so that they could move the plants, now too big for the plastic cups.

The students had great fun painting the tires and filling them up with soil.

During the final stage of the process, the student moved the grown plants from the cups, now too small for them, into the garden they had created with the tires outside.

Shortly after, they could observe small tomatoes on the plants.

Earth structure

th graders learnt about the structure and composition of the Earth by recreating it out of Play-Doh.

After creating the model, they also made small labels where they named the different layers.

We used the model they could see and touch to talk about interesting facts such as the composition and thickness of each layer or information about the density and temperatures present.

Each team prepared a short report explaining the different layers of the Earth.

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2nd Transnational Meeting in Crete (Greece)

The 1st Primary School of Nea Alikarnassos received representatives of the Erasmus+ Programme ‘Talent Maker’ consortium on the 24th and 25th of May 2022 at the school premises. The participants were  the University of Girona and El Pla School of Salt (Spain), the University of Craiova and Constantin Ianculescu Primary School of Cârcea (Romania) and the institution Action Synergy of Athens (Greece). The host organization, namely the teaching staff of Alikarnassos, showed the attendees around the school and the city of Heraklion.

On the first day, the youngest school pupils welcomed the participants with a music and dancing performance. Then, attendees observed students and teachers in action working on the Digital Educative Capsules.

Later, they took part in a guided tour of the school premises carried out by the students themselves. Afterwards, they had lunch in the school dining room. Finally, the first day was completed with the participants attending a creative workshop based on new technologies organized by the University of Girona.

Pupil’s tour

On the second day, the attendees discussed the steps that have been taken so far, as well as the following steps towards the project’s completion. They exchanged views, ideas and concerns about the project with the aim of taking collective decisions regarding the implementation of the Talent Maker programme. A briefing about the digital educative capsules making followed, presented by the organizers of the programme.

Later in the evening, in a friendly environment, the participants shared their experiences, entertained and arranged to meet again in Girona (Spain) in February 2023.

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Promoting inclusive education

On the 24th of March, the Girona representatives of Talent Maker were invited to a conference on experiences to promote inclusive education and social inclusion organized by the Inclusive Education Master at the University of Girona. 

El Pla school team explained their original project Talents; and how it has evolved into our current Erasmus + project: Talent Maker.

They focused on the social reality of the municipality of Salt and the difficulties the multicultural schools with children from vulnerable families have to face to guarantee equity an inclusive education.

They presented the project as a universal measure to attend diversity as it applies to the individuality of each child, encouraging their multiple intelligences, learning by «making», and global personality growth.

On days like this, when sharing Talent Maker, we recognize the importance of this European cooperation. We value having the opportunity to discuss, design, implement and share this pedagogical project and adapt it to different country realities and their possible lock-downs.

Because the way we see it, from the inspiring practice of El Pla School, three schools with social inclusion problems are working together with research groups of universities that also care for children from vulnerable families, and this is how we can make a real change.

We believe that cooperation is the way to improve and promote transformative educational practices.

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Talent Maker Anniversary

Last Monday, Talent Maker reached its first year.

However, its origin dates back to October 2020, when the Education Technicians of the City Hall of Salt brought the University of Girona (UdiGitalEdu) in contact with El Pla School. Inspired by El Pla programme Talents, together they wrote a proposal for a K2 Erasmus+ call in Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices. Simultaneously, they sought partners in order to form a consortium.

On the 26th of February of 2021, Talent Maker was accepted and, on the 1st of March, the first project result of the collaboration of the Cathedra Tekhné (University of Girona and City Hall of Salt) commenced.

On the 13th of May, 15 representatives of the partnership, assembled by University of Girona (ES), El Pla School (ES) the University of Craiova (RO), Constantin Ianculescu School (RO), Action Synergy (GR) and Alikarnassou school (GR); held a virtual Kick-off meeting. This event allowed gaining a common understanding of the project’s timeline, its goals, the responsibilities of each partner and the communication channels of the consortium, among others.

In the first phase of the project, the Talent Maker team put forward a new Methodology that blended Talent-based learning and Maker Education approaches, intending to improve face-to-face and distance education in elementary schools. Its theoretical framework provides a rigorous foundation for their pedagogical and didactical scheme which includes: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, Lifelong Kindergarten’s Creative Thinking Spiral, and Seymour Papert’s Constructionism.

During the second phase, which will be on until the end of the project, they have been working on the configuration of a Digital Capsules Catalogue, which will collect several activities classified by age and Talent, and the design of the Digital Capsules Templates. Both will be available in the Project Website on September.

Additionally, the partnership had a face-to-face Transnational Meeting in Craiova (Romania) in early November with 17 attendees.

They discussed the Methodology after participating in Talent Maker Workshops, the Digital Capsules Catalogue and its templates, as well as the first steps of the Teacher’s Guide. It served as a Consortium Training, which was extended with Creative Technology Sessions for the partner schools’ teachers, as it established the basis of the implementations that will follow.

Currently, the consortium teachers are designing ad testing their own Digital Capsules while phase three started and are developing the Teacher’s Guide with the rest of the partnership. The Teacher’s Guide, which will be available on paper and online in January of 2023, will contain the essential ideas of the Methodology, some examples of Digital Educative Capsules, case studies and lessons plans. It will be addressed to teachers, although it will contain some hints and indicators for families.

Gardening
Literature
Cooking

There is still a lot of work to do. Nonetheless, the Talent Maker team is proud of the done work and is looking forward to sharing the Intellectual Outputs for teachers to use along with Training for teachers and schools outside the partnership.

Because if we face it together, we can contribute to reducing the unfair gap generated during lockdowns between schools with resources and a majority of local students and multicultural schools with fewer resources and wider class diversity.

 

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Our 1st Transnational Meeting

In the first week of November, the University of Girona (UdiGitalEdu) team coordinated a face-to-face meeting in Craiova (Romania) to review the work done and discuss the following steps of the Talent Maker Project (Erasmus+).

During the meeting, the partners visited one of the consortium schools (Constantin Ianculescu), discussed the Methodology (IO1) and the format of the Digital Educative Capsules (IO2) and participated and created some Talent Maker Workshops. Moreover, they assigned tasks and organized the next phases.

Representatives of all partners attended the meeting hosted by the University of Craiova and Constantin Ianculescu School: UdiGitalEdu (Girona, Spain), El Pla School (Salt, Spain), University of Craiova (Craiova, Romania), Constantin Ianculescu School (Cârcea, Romania), Action Synergy (Athens, Greece) and Alikarnassou School (Crete, Greece).

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Talent Maker a cooperation result

On the 8th of September, the Cathedra TEKHNÉ originated from the collaboration between the University of Girona (UdG) and the City Hall of Salt celebrated their first year with a Meeting in El Pla school (Salt, Spain). 

In the meeting UdiGitalEdu, the research group in Education, Technology and Development Cooperation of the UdG, shared their impact in the educational context of the village through projects’ implementations, technology workshops, teachers’ training and schools’ collaborations among others.

The Talent Maker project was head lighted for being a successful example of the establishment of the Cathedra and the result of developing the idea of a project already carried out by one of the municipal schools.

«I was very impressed by the quality of TEKHNÉ Cathedra projects and their transference of technological knowledge in the context of the schools of Salt. Educative sparks that can change the future of children and have deserved European funds.»

Xavier Aldeguer
General Director of Knowledge Transfer of Catalan Government