Erasmus+ is the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. Its budget of €14.7 billion will provide opportunities for over 4 million Europeans to study, train, and gain experience abroad.

The aim of Erasmus+ is to contribute to the Europe 2020 strategy for growth, jobs, social equity and inclusion, as well as the aims of ET2020, the EU’s strategic framework for education and training. Erasmus+ also aims to promote the sustainable development of its partners in the field of higher education, and contribute to achieving the objectives of the EU Youth Strategy.

Specific issues tackled by the programme include:

• Reducing unemployment, especially among young people
• Promoting adult learning, especially for new skills and skills required by the labour market.
• Encouraging young people to take part in European democracy
• Supporting innovation, cooperation and reform
• Reducing early school leaving
• Promoting cooperation and mobility with the EU’s partner countries.

The programme focuses on three Key Actions. Key Action 2 – Cooperation for Innovation and Exchange of Good Practices: Key Action 2 –which is the action we are participating in as a school- aims to modernise educational and training systems and respond to the challenges faced within these fields. KA2 Strategic Partnerships in the field of School Education are projects aiming to support the development, transfer and/or implementation of innovative practices as well as the implementation of joint initiatives promoting cooperation, peer learning and exchanges of experience at European level. Participating organisations in such partnerships are schools, public or private, from EU countries.

ERASMUS+ PROGRAMME (2019-2021) – THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL LIMASSOL

Our school (the Junior School and the High School) will be participating together with another four European schools in this European funded Erasmus+ Programme concerning the impact of technology. Our planned project is entitled “Impact of Technology on Students –A teacher’s perspective (ITS)”. This project has 5 partner schools: Cyprus (the coordinator), Austria, Italy, Portugal and Spain. It starts in September 2019 and ends in August 2021.

Our project focuses on how the use of technology negatively impacts learning. As teachers, we realised that students lack certain basic skills due to the overuse of technology. As parents, we are also worried about the negative effects of technology, especially concerning our children’s future life. Thus our project’s main purpose is to raise awareness and to forge a common strategy towards combating this new social plague.

We have set out our objectives in such a way so as to target parents, teachers and students first at an individual level and then join forces to achieve a common desired outcome.

Our objectives for students are the following:

• To raise awareness that although technology can be a useful educational tool, its overuse may have a negative effect on their education and learning.
• To offer helpful tips to encourage responsible technological use.

Our objectives for parents are:

• To inform them of the potential long-term consequences of the overuse of technology by students.
• To raise awareness of how technology affects students socially in their interaction with others.

Our objectives for teachers are:

• To promote the use of technology/devices that are less about gaming/social networking and more academic/work-oriented (i.e. laptops rather than phones/tablets) as students should be better prepared for the high-level application required for university and the workplace by using full versions of recognized word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software.
• To promote the use of high quality websites for research and the provision of access to technology for them rather than for the students inside the classroom so to combat plagiarism and cheating.
• To emphasize that students should receive a blend of inquiry-based and more traditional teacher directed instruction which leads to higher academic performance for students.

Overall, for all groups, we aim to provide guidelines as to the different ways to minimize the negative impact of technology and to organize activities which promote reading, exercising and improving social interaction, to direct their attention away from technology.