MOBILITY IN AMSTERDAM – Erasmus+ “Step by Step”

On sunday 11th dicember 2022 we left Bari to Amsterdam. We were 5: the principal and 4 teachers coming from all the 3 different school dipartiments: tourist and Catering, optical and audiovisual communication.

From monday till friday we attended the 21 century skills course from 9 till 2 o clock. The course of the europass teacher academy  was run  in  Molinos de viento, a nice school close to princengrat chanal.

The teacher was Jarek , an openmind Well trained teacher who taught us about different educational approcheses and a lot of activities in order to renew our  methods of teaching learning process.

The class was formed by 11 people coming from 6 different schools from primary till high school. An international course attended by french, spanish, italian and greck teachers. First day we do some exercises to form the group like saying our name with a gesture and a feeling, embody map of europe, collaborative face drawing.

Then we present all our schools using also audiovisual tools focusing on our peculiarities. Majorana teachers pointed some aspects of our school as a vocational training school and that we are focused on learning by doing and cooperative learning. Briefly during this course we were deepening different contents.

First of all, the school has the task of forming versatile minds which means minds able to learn new things and a plurality of competences.

Among these competences, today more than ever, the technological one is considered a key competence together with media literacy. More over  student should be carrying, responsable and critical both when surfing to the content and also when he invents his own.

Our school should instill 2 things: the desire of learning and the pleasure of learning together with the capacity to learn how to learn. In a technologically advanced society one need to possess multiple skills and ability, flexibility and creativity in approaching the critical  point.

The task of the school is stimulate learning while projecting experiences in which student’s partecipation and collaboration are fondamental.

In the last years technology has revoluzionized the way culture is proposed changing students cognitive styles. So now they persive linear learning as monotonous and uninteresting. So there is the need of giving responses to these new cognitive styles, also because education should aim not only to knowledge but above all to a functional competence that allows to transfert knowledges skills into daily life.

That’s what we were working on during the course. Jarek taught us different new theories: non violent communication, inquiry based learning, task-based learning, flipped classroom, multiple intelligences theory, growth mindset, critical thinking, coaching elements. In the end we all wanted to come back home and try to apply these new methods in our teaching learning process.

By Prof.ssa Marilisa Calò