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Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Our institute is an Art Secondary School, organized on three sites, formed by the two former Genoa Art Institutes, joined together in the downsizing of the Italian school system. The school provides five-year courses in Visual Arts, Graphics, Design, Architecture and Environment, Multimedia Arts and Scenery Design for 14-18- year-old students coming from different social and cultural backgrounds, as it is the only center for artistic education in the Province. The school is fast increasing and has proved successful in coping with students wishing to receive secondary education in both Sciences and Humanities and to test their creativity and skills in lab training. The school is pursuing a steady inclusion policy: the students suffering from dyslexia are actually the 25% of the total and a counselling service is provided to families; a highly cohesive group of teachers in Special Needs is working on the three sites on an increasing number of students with cognitive and behavioral problems. Before Riforma Gelmini, Art School was organized on 4 years. English and ICT were not comprised in the syllabus, but only in an experimental course. As a result, English was not given due importance and ICT competences were not required. Besides, in accomplice with Riforma Gelmini, since 2015 in the 5^ form one subject is being taught partly in a foreign language. When we applied for the project, no teacher had the technical and linguistic competences required. The introduction of the electronic class book had resulted in a deep uneasiness on the part of the teachers, whereas the interactive boards provided by MIUR in the digital implementation planning of the Italian school system were not always properly used and in general computer labs were not exploited to their full potential because of lack of competences. The main idea was to give our institute a European dimension by internationalizing the teachers' relationships with the improvement of their competences in foreign languages, mainly in English and in CLIL approach, and with the enhancement of the quality of teaching by comparing our practices with other educational systems in the EU on key issues such as Special Needs and ICT in school management and teaching. We started to work on the teachers' training and on some aspects of the administrative organization. 14 teachers and two members of the Administrative staff were sent abroad to follow In-service Training.Our plans for European mobility developed over two years and covered a range of different European nations. We selected a group of teachers who work on our three sites and teach different subjects representative of our institute, three Special Needs teachers, one of the teachers in charge of the ICT equipment and development, the deputy head teacher and a member of the administrative staff. Seven teachers had been selected to cover the different vocational disciplines taught in our school and chose courses about CLIL methodology held in UK: History of Art, Architecture, Technical Drawing, Visual Art – Painting, Visual Art – Sculpture, Math and Physics. Two teachers of English attended two courses about the use of technology in foreign language teaching. Three Special Needs teachers went on J. S. in France, Spain and Czech R. and the teacher competent in ICT enrolled in a specific course in Prague. The deputy head master went on J. S. at an important Art School in France and the administrative staff member attended a course in English language. The project coordinator had a T. A. in Poland at a Lyceum focused on foreign language teaching and ICT. Not only the teachers who went on Erasmus mobility improved their English, but a lot of teachers profited from the courses of foreign language organized by the school to support the activities abroad; the courses continue to be organized. CLIL activities improved a lot: new specific learning materials were produced; CLIL was introduced in some 3^ and 4^ forms; a referent teacher for CLIL has been appointed among the Erasmus teachers and we won a MIUR competition about CLIL in network with other schools. Three of the teachers who went on mobility are now part of the “Technological Innovation Team” of the institute; a course in basic ICT skills was organized for all the teaching staff and Moodle platform is in experimental progress. Through the erasmusintern.org platform we welcomed a young architect from Lithuania who acted as class assistant for 6 months on an Erasmus trainee. We've been involved in the planning of other KA1 and KA2 Erasmus+ projects and are on the eTwinning platform with different kinds of activities. We organized an exchange with the art school of Nantes and welcomed the students from the art school of Krakow.. We closed our project with an official dissemination event open to the schools of Genoa and Province with the participation of the Italian Erasmus Agency, the regional eTwinning unit and the Ministry of Education regional dept.
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