Italy

Jun

2021

Virtual Mobility to Pachino

Lego robots

Each and every interaction between humans and computers is governed by code. Whether you create a web app, follow GPS directions when driving or wish to revolutionise social interactions. Coding is the literacy of today and it helps practice 21st century skills such as problem solving, team work and analytical thinking. In this virtual mobility Italian students prepared a couple of workshops about Lego EV3 robot and how to use its different sensors.

When this virtual mobility finished, students who participated in this activity presented to the rest of the students of the project what they learned. Each of the participants explained to the rest of the members of their group, in a practical way, the contents of each one of the workshops held during the mobility.

How to make a memorable pitch

Involved participants were provided with the necessary skills to improve their techniques and fluency to make an impressive presentation in English of their business ideas and their projects. That’s a crucial skill not only in their academic day to day at school, but also for their future. Nowadays, job interviews are increasingly more important than curriculum vitae. Candidates for a job have 3 or 4 minutes to convince the interviewer that they are the best option for that position. In other words, they must make a pitch selling themselves. Students who participate in this project will learn various techniques to make a memorable pitch and to communicate better. This way they will enhance their employability and may get better jobs

Dec

2019

Mobility in Kolbuszowa

Business Plan

The main topics for this mobility were learning how to make a good Business Plan and how to prepare the Financial Statements for a company. Creating a business plan is one of the most important steps for an entrepreneur in his business adventure, so you have to do it with special attention to detail. This is going to be the bait to attract investors, and will help us evaluate the viability of the business we have in hand and analyse whether it is profitable or not.

Polish students guided their partners in the four workshops that were organized to prepare the Business Plan of each international team. In addition to designing the logo and defining the mission of their mini-company, students had to perform a SWOT analysis, as well as the Financial Plan. In the end, each team had to present their work to the other teams.

Diffusion activity

On Friday -it was the last day of this mobility-, we had a dissemination activity in the Polish school. Regional and local authorities participated, as well as students and teachers from other schools in the area.
In this event, students from each country gave a presentation about their school and explained the contribution they made to the Erasmus + project. The audience could visualize how each project partner contributed to the project their experience in those fields in which their school was an expert.
They were also able to present their project in a Radio-Rzeszów program. We leave the link so you can listen to it: click here.

Financial Statements

The second topic of this mobility was to learn how to make and analyse the financial statements of a company. The Balance Sheet and the income statement provide useful information to assess the current status of a company and at the same time facilitate the decision-making process.

Polish students led the practical workshops and helped their colleagues prepare the Financial Plan for each project. In addition, students learned to prepare invoices, as well as the VAT registration.

May

2019

Mobility in Lisbon

Coding with Arduino

The main topic for this mobility was learning to code with Arduino. Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control both physically and digitally.

The Portuguese students presented the Arduino UNO board, as well as different sensors and explained how the programming platform works. The students made a small project with LEDs of different colours. After that, we held a second workshop on Arduino: students had to make a more complex project to build a traffic light in which the lights were turned on and off at varying intervals.

Awesome projects

On Wednesday, Portuguese students presented some robotic projects that they had developed the previous year. One of them was an Unusual Glove for People with Disabilities; a robotic glove that allowed to transform the body language made by hand into sounds to be able to communicate with the blind We found it a fascinating project and all the students could prove how this glove worked.

Another awesome project presented by the students was INETESAT III, a satellite where all the hardware is in a capsule similar to a can of soda. The Inetesat III captured images taken 1 km high on the Island of Santa Maria, Azores.

Autonomous car race

On Wednesday afternoon we had a race competition with the autonomous cars that each international students team had prepared in the morning. The competition consisted of a robot race (each robot had two engines and three wheels) in two circuits in which the robots had to avoid obstacles along the way to the finish line.

the first of them we learned to use the ultrasonic sensor to measure the length of the elbow and verify that the Vitruvian proportion was fulfilled ie 4 times the length of the elbow is equal to the height of a person. The results of the measurements coincided to a large extent with the proportions of Vitruvius, which caused a great surprise among the students

Nov

2018

Mobility in Girona

Unleash your creativity

One of the main topics of our first mobility in Girona was creativity and how to improve it. The first day, participants were welcomed and registered. After that, we had a workshop about how to use the Six thinking hats Edward de Bono's technique. We learned that this method helps you to a balanced assessment of your ideas, problems and challenges.

Therefore you may be wondreing how does it work? By asking you to wear six different thinking hats that represent the six different aspects of how you can possibly think. Once you've answered all the questions using the six hats, you'll know you've looked at your concept from every possibly viewpoint. With this method we investigate together the facts, the feelings, the pro's and cons, and the creative solutions we can come up with. De Bono calls this lateral thinking

Prototype to test your ideas

Before start creating a project, you must start from the beginning of the process and test your ideas to ensure they're the most effective way of accomplishing what you're working towards. Above all, prototyping helps you to test your ideas and receive a quick feedback from potential users. Moreover, it saves a lot of time a costs to implement improvements or changes. In this mobility we organized workshops about prototyping with different tools. Firstly, we started using POPApp software, by Marvel, to prototype an app that could solve a real need. Students had to thing about a business idea and create a prototype of an app.

The second workshop was about prototyping with a 3D printer. We learned how to use TinkerCad to design a prototype and how to use Cura software to have it printed in 3D. Students had some time to experiment with the 3D printers

All you need is code

Coding is a skill in high demand right now. It's very important for students' future to get involved in computer science. We want our students not just buy a new video-game, but to design it, not just download the latest app, but to design it.

The third workshop organized by Spanish students was about the MIT App Inventor. This tool lets you develop applications for Android phones using a web browser and either a connected phone or an on-screen phone emulator. In that platform you build apps by working with the App Inventor Designer, where you select the components for your app; and the App Inventor Blocks Editor, where you assemble program blocks that specify how the components should behave. You assemble programs visually, fitting pieces together like pieces of a puzzle.