March 2020 will remain as an important turning point in human history, a moment that marked us all and created a new trend in our lives. Education around the world has been affected. Education in Romania was not prepared in passing from traditional education, the one usually organized in the classroom, to an online environment.
Few schools in Romania had at their disposal a functional platform at that time. But, as a Romanian proverb says: “Need teaches you”. That is why, slowly, teachers, students, parents have learned to adapt themselves to the online school new environment. Due to the pandemic context, online schooling is nowadays still present in our daily lives and we all keep learning.
One of the purpose of a teacher is also to act as a model for her/his students, to stimulate their daily desire to learn, to be always updated with all the latest news and tools, both in the scientific field of the discipline she/he teaches, and on pedagogy and teaching methodologies. Therefore, continuous teacher training is an “ethical obligation” for them. The MYSS project contributes to the continuous adaptation and training of teachers in these controversial times we live in.
Until now, the Ciugud Secondary School’s teachers (part of the project team), contributed to the realization of the modules for teachers within the project activities. They also took part in the pilot test for the courses created. All teachers were actively involved and they appreciated the fact that they had to learn new issues related to the online school experience: they really learned about new ICT tools, about the usefulness of many apps useful for online teaching, about the steps to create a video presentation, etc. In these days, we had the occasion to collect some feedbacks from teachers which participated to the IO1 pilot test phase. Let’s resume some of their impressions.
Mihaela Lungu, foreign languages teacher, declared that: ”MYSS project until now gave me the possibility to discover different approaches to online teaching. With Moodle platform, I had the opportunity to access a variety of courses and to find out about different new e-tools. A tool that I like in particular and that I find very helpful is Edpuzzle. I have been searching for this kind of tool because I like building my lessons and some final quizzes around a video. Most of the videos are too long, and I only need 2 or 3 minutes to use for a test. Edpuzzle comes with an excellent solution for cutting the clip and using only the part I need. The pandemic situation forces the teachers to take most of their courses online. This thing has positive aspects because gives them the possibility to train themselves freely. The negative part is that the online training hours are added to online teaching classes, and this aspect forces a teacher to stay in front of a computer for more than 10 hours a day. Overall, I can say that the Erasmus project MYSS has enriched my teaching experience”.
Alina Boboia, Romanian language teacher, told us that: „Erasmus MYSS project was very useful and interesting to me. I learnt a lot of new skills in a short time. The explanations were clear, the examples were concrete and their steps easy to follow. It helped me to improve my activity and my lessons became more attractive to my students”.
Mirona Crișan, Romanian language teacher, told us that: ”When I joined the course, I thought the information would be tedious and repetitive. But I discovered that there are so many tips I acquired fastly and my opinion changed. What I really enjoyed and learnt is a learning by doing. When I took part to the course and worked on different modules, I acquired the perspective of a learner. The tasks were not so difficult and I solved them quite fastly. Finally, I truly believe that the course has given me some great ideas and increased confidence to apply some of them in the classroom”.
Marcela Cristina Stan, English teacher: ”The course is amazingly organized, it clearly allowed us to learn important tools to develop a project with our students. I believe it is tailored to participants’ individual needs. It is very interactive, accessible, user friendly and focused on using very simply the Moodle platform. I think it is perfect for remote users and for people who need to access their learning in flexible ways. The materials were accesibile and the tasks were easy to solve. I hope that every participant felt the positive vibe of the course”.
As one of the Romanian partners, Ciugud Secondary School is really glad to be involved in the project “MY Smart School – distance learning educational methodologies and tools for teachers, students and school environments” (MYSS) implementation. Teachers look forward to new projects actions, to be extended also to other teachers active in the Transylvania region.
