Óbudai Árpád Gimnázium Óbudai Árpád Gimnázium
Iskolánk sikeres KA229 (Iskolai, óvodai partnerségek) típusú Erasmus+ pályázatának köszönhetően a 11.b osztály egy közös projektet készít a cseh přibrami iskola (Gymnazium pod Svatou Horou) egyik osztályával együtt. A projekt témája a Mars bolygó, a vállalkozás 2019 szeptembertől 2020 decemberéig tart, a közös munka angol nyelven folyik. Az együttműködés eredményességét szavatolja egy-egy budapesti és csehországi utazás, amely személyes találkozásra is lehetőséget nyújt.
A Mars-projektben Zombori Anna, Paulik Rita, Svarczné Micheller Erzsébet és Simon Péter támogatja a 11.b osztályt.
A projekt összefoglalása angol nyelven:
The project will be mostly focused on increasing among our school communities the awareness of how important science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are in the 21st century, how they are connected to each other and other fields such as literature. Students, together with their teachers, will study what we already know about the planet Mars and follow ongoing research about the planet. There are many projects planning to send people on Mars in the next 10 to 20 years. It shows it is a very up-to-date topic and relevant to our students’ life. They will carry out research on the possibilities of sending people to Mars and discuss technical difficulties and ethical questions as well. We will read literature pieces and watch films to discover how artists imagined life on Mars and compare them with each other and watch them from a scientific point of view to understand difference between fiction and reality.
The background of this project is based on pedagogical experience which reveals that our students do not experience enough complex, real-life problems during their high school education and therefore find it difficult to connect different fields of science. The main topic of the project, human life on Mars, was chosen to meet the interest of the age group. Our students will be close to the end of their high school years during the project. Two schools will participate in the project, one from the Czech Republic and one from Hungary. From each school one class will take part in the mobility, but they will share their experiences with the school communities. Many of our students are interested in science and with this project we want to give them an opportunity to work on real life problems which is both interesting for them and relevant to the 21st century. Students will work in small groups on questions like how long does it take to get to Mars, what is the best time to travel, what are the effects of low/zero gravity and radiation to human, what can astronauts eat on Mars, how can we find water and so on. They are going to present their results in different forms, such as presentations,posters, computer programs or simulations, models or Lego robots. As the final product of the project, we plan to create a Mars theme escape room.
To achieve extraordinary results in science and technology diversity is a very important factor. People from different countries are more likely to have different background knowledge and be creative in different ways. As most successful companies and research centres work at an international level, it is also very important for our project to be an international one to show our students how much they can learn from their partners. For the same reason it is also an essential part of our project to include girls in it to show that they can make a great contribution to a complex project by their possibly different point of view and skills.
As we live in the European Union, it is very important to know each other’s culture, so during our bilateral partnership we will present to each other some basic facts concerning our national traditions, culture, customs, city and region, language and school by presentations, films or displays .
During students’ meetings, students and teachers will visit some lessons in the hosting school in order to compare different ways of teaching. By collaborating students will also work on their social abilities in an international environment and it will widen their across-the-border view and by that, students will become more European. We will connect the cultural part of the project to our main topic, travelling to Mars. We will compare the food, tradition, landscape… etc students from the two countries would miss the most in case of moving to Mars.
We also consider it to be important to improve foreign language and ICT competences of students and teachers. Since the project is based on the use of the English language, there is a great opportunity to improve English language skills not only for students but also for teachers and parents. By carrying out the project’s tasks, participants will use different ICT devices and methods improving and strengthening digital skills and competences. Thanks to new technologies, participants will communicate with each other between project meetings via internet and fulfil different tasks using several kinds of digital devices.
All in all, all the steps we plan to undertake will help us to develop in our students such skills and abilities which they might find very useful in their later professional and private life. The project will help our students to be more conscious about choosing their profession and find the university or college which suits them best. We wish to increase their interest in STEM fields in the long term and encourage girls to consider such professions. The project will also contribute to the long-term aim of the institutions to widen their European experiences.