Visibility of eTwinning Projects Groups July 2019 Newsletter Newsletter 9 | Page 118

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2019 Newsletter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ approach and Gamification (Game-Based Learning), with activities reaching 7 dimensions. These are: Technological dimension (coding and programming activities); Games dimension (creating board/brain games, creating/playing Tangram); Ecological dimension (recycling activities, ecological garden/greenhouse); Cultural dimension (STEM songs, STEM plays); Designing and innovation dimension (STEM class designing); Social dimension (embossed books, Braille alphabet, activities for SEN students); The STEM festival (a big organized event for all the project products). Later on the game dimension started. Tangram, which was selected to improve attention, concentration and focus of the students, was first to be introduced. The schools bought the Tangram pieces or the students were asked to create their own pieces either using recycled materials or the new ones (3D printing). Simple shapes were introduced and it got more difficult as the students learnt more and more. Brain games were thought at this stage to make it more attractive and the partnering organizations discussed and decided the shared board game to be created as a tangible product at the end of this dimension. It was a game board similar to “Snake and ladders”. It was also presented in the workshop I co-moderated in 3rd Scientix Conference, May 2018. The project was developed during two school years, 2017-2019, by partner schools from Czech Republic, Greece, Romania, Spain and Turkey (coordinator). The associated eTwinning project was founded and coordinated by our school, together with the Turkish coordinator. The technological dimension, which is certainly one of the most important sectors in the overall word “STEM” and which has a vital importance in reaching our project goals and completing our activities, was covered in September - December 2017. This dimension, which nearly took 4 months, was filled with lots of activities. Students were introduced to the coding through Arduino uno, Scratch, Lego We Do, working on code.org during Code week and Hour of code. More of that, the next year, Code week 2018 meant a challenge for our partners, and we completed it successfully. The board of the game was created by the kindergarten partners and each partner school was responsible for producing 10 easy and 10 difficult questions related to STEM subjects. The questions were written on a shared Google document in order to make it easier to collaborate by all the partners, and then uploaded on GoConqr - two repositories of 100 questions each. 118