STORY PREVIEW

1. Students don't participate in planning the subjects they are taught at school. 2. School doesn't give students enough possibilities to develop their interests. 3. Students have little influence on the process of their own education - they just follow orders.

"School doesn't give students enough possibilities to develop their interests" - students felt this is the best problem to start with: if they can show they have their own passions and develop them, they will prove they can make decisions, they know how to learn and they want to learn. This way they will show others that they are responsible enough to have an influence on their education process.

The people affected were teenaged students (11-15 years old). At this stage of the project we prepared a questionnaire for teenagers about their interests. 73 teenagers completed the questionnaire. The answers showed that teenagers are interested mainly in sport, animals, drawing, books, dance, drawing and fashion. Students taking part in the project had similar interests.

1. Charity actions, especially for animals 2. Online magazine for teenagers

We chose a magazine for teenagers, because as the questionnaire showed teenagers were interested in different subjects, not only animals. What is more, on the website (in the magazine) we could promote charity actions for animals as well. This could also enable students participating in the project to describe their own interests - to become experts in these subjects.

Whole project was realised during remote learning, in the worst phase of the pandemic. 1. We decided on the title of the magazine (brainstorm and voting). 2. Students set up Google accounts to be able to edit the website (Google site) 3. Together (during online meeting) we edited the site, decided on the colours, photos. 4. I described the project to the students' parents and asked for permission to sign the articles with students' names. 5. Students wrote the articles - in groups or individually. 6. Copyright issues came out - we had several meetings devoted to copyright. We took part in special workshop about it. 7. Students wrote more articles that were published on the website. 8. The website was promoted among teenagers from the school and in social media. 9. We summarised the project, talked about its effects. Then students decided to have a break and focus on other things (planning on how to encourage teachers to make lessons more effective).

Students learned how to write articles, they developed language skills. They learned a lot about copyright and developed their interests. They became more self-confident and talked openly about their expectations and about their intersts. The group created a strong bond - the relations in the group improved. We don't know how many teenagers read our magazine because we haven't got access to statistics on the website but we hope that we inspired at least some teenagers to develop their interests.

10

The students creating the online magazine were the main beneficiaries. The quotes (translated): "I feel I have influence on the world around me"; "It was a great adventure. Can we do more?"

The main challenge was copyright - the first articles on the website were copied from the internet. We talked about it and we took part in a special workshop about operating in cyberspace.

MORE THAN 30 DAYS

Quality Education

The project showed teenagers they have influence on their surrounding. They learned to talk openly about their expectations not only with the project mentor but also woth other teachers.

We promoted the website among other teenagers in the school and in social media. We know that some people read our articles and they commented it was a very good idea to prepare an online magazine.

More than 100

Next year we are going to continue the project but this time we want to focus on changing the education: show other students how to learn effectively and encourage them to talk with their teachers about the lessons.