Kick Off Meeting (Turkey)
07.12.2021 - 08.12.2021
With the Digital Storytelling Technique, adults will improve both their language skills and their digital skills!
The opening meeting of the international strategic partnerships project named "New e-Artistic English Learning Approach for Adults", numbered 2020-1-TR01-KA227-ADU-098764, prepared by the Van Provincial Directorate of National Education, accepted and granted by the Turkish National Agency, was held in Van Province with the participation participation of Project partners which are Edremit Public Education Directorate, RS Planning and Project Center, Zavod Boter Institute (Slovenia), UCLL (Belgium) and Sportsko učilište PESG University (Croatia).
Prof. Dr. Şefik Tüfenkçi of Van Yüzüncü Yıl University honored us with his speeches in the ceremony in which our Van Provincial Director of National Education Hasan Tevke made the opening speech. Prof. Dr. Şefik Tüfenkçi underlined how important digital tools are especially in language teaching today, while our provincial director of national education, Hasan Tevke, stated that non-formal education and lifelong learning should become a life principle. Our district national education directors also took their places at the meeting. Our partners from abroad, Sebastiaan Jans, Filip Turković and Alma Elizabeta Spelko, also took the floor and expressed their satisfaction for participating in this project and being in international cooperation. The opening ceremony, which ended with the project information presentation by the project coordinator Abdulkerim Yiğit, was carried out in two languages with simultaneous translation by G. Ezgican Kızılok. After the lunch, the content meeting, which was held only with the participation of the project partners, started. In the first session, the general purpose of the project, which was expressed as 'increasing the digital competencies of adults in order to increase their foreign language proficiency and revealing their existence with the qualifications required by the new world order', was based on and specific targets were detailed. These specific objectives were:
• To increase the foreign language proficiency of adults and to eliminate the negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety and stress, which have increased due to the epidemic, with artistic production.
• To increase the basic skills of the target audiences in an interdisciplinary way by contributing interdisciplinary with artistic activities, to provide them with qualified employment opportunities.
• To increase intercultural dialogue among adults and to ensure sustainable development within the scope of the principle of social inclusion.
Subsequently, the expectations of the project partners regarding the project were received, and the harmony and balance between the project objectives and expectations satisfied everyone at the meeting. In the second session after the coffee break, the preliminary preparations for the Digital Storytelling Toolkit, which will be the first of the project outputs, started. Brainstorming was conducted for this five-parted intellectual output, which is expected to create an environment for foreign language use, digital competence, digital storytelling and creative drama for adult learners, and tasks were shared within the scope of each partner's area of expertise and competencies.
Chapter 1: Providing basic digital skills for adults to use digital tools to create DST => Zavod Boter Institute (Slovenia) and Sportsko učilište PESG (Croatia).
Chapter 2: Digital story creation stages from ideation to sharing => Van Edremit Public Education Center and UCLL (Belgium).
Chapter 3: Digital storytelling method approaches, literature research => Van Edremit Public Education Center
Chapter 4: More technical details such as images, audio and video images and their combinations for digital storytelling => UCLL
Chapter 5: Teamwork in digital storytelling => Van Provincial Directorate of National Education
After the coffee break after the digital storytelling session, the issues related to the project budget were discussed and clarified between the partners. This is how the first day ended.
In the morning session on the second day, the second output of the project named “Storyland”, which will be an online e-learning platform based on learning English and a website providing self-learning-sharing activities for adults, was discussed. Adults who do not have sufficient economic means and motivation to learn a foreign language will be able to access this platform free of charge. First, it was explained in detail why such a platform was needed, and then the project partners were asked what kind of platform they would like to see, both in terms of software and content. At this point, Sebastiaan from UC Limburg stated that this platform, which will be designed for adults, should be designed in an extremely clear, uncomplicated and user-friendly manner. Filip from Sportsko učilište PESG said that a map in the form of an infographic would be useful, where people can see the locations of digital stories added from all over Europe with this map. The contents to be added to this platform, which will consist of five parts, and how and until when these contents should be sent to the leading institution Van Provincial Directorate of National Education were determined. Later, the project's promotional website was introduced to the project partners: https://storylandproject.com.
In the session held after the lunch, the reporting stages of the project were discussed. The duties and responsibilities of the partner institutions were expressed during the writing stages of the interim report and the final report to be sent to the Turkish National Agency. In the last session held after the coffee break, the activities and responsibilities of the project were determined. In this way, the first step was taken to increase the impact of the project and to reach as many adults and adult educators as possible.
Our project’s opening meeting, which ended with this session, was the beginning of collaborative work and outputs to be brought to the education world. The second international meeting of the project will be held in Belgium in June 2022. In this meeting, the preparations for the Digital Storytelling Toolkit, which is the first output, will be completed and will be put into the service of the education world.