The project “MAKE IN CLASS – Developing Maker-based learning paths in class to prevent early school leaving” is a project co-funded by the ERASMUS + Programme of the European Union (KA2 development of innovation project). 

Seven partners coming from 4 different countries (Italy, Germany, Spain and Malta) are involved in this project aimed at supporting teachers and educators in understanding the potential of implementing maker-based activities to prevent early school leaving phenomenon in secondary schools.

The phenomenon of early school leaving in Europe is a complex problem that involves several dimensions of social life, in particular the social contest marked by poverty and exclusion, but there are also other reasons such as personal factors, family matters, learning difficulties and more generally, how the school education system is organised and the role that the individual plays in it.

The answers to this phenomenon should be in order to counteract and reduce the seriousness of the problem and the initiatives must be several and addressed to educational, social, labour and health policies.

A lot of potential dropout students seem to be very frustrated about school as they experienced a lot of bad feedback on their learning abilities possibly over many years. In the end they loose confidence in their skills and give up.

A “Making” approach can help a lot. The students get new perspectives on what kind of job they could do later on. As soon as the project they are working on is cool and they want to make it work out, all students give their best to reach the goal and they work hard on it.

Especially those students with difficulties in motivating themselves for subjects like maths, languages or in going to school in general, are very keen on doing making projects, as the required skills and the output of their work seem to be more obvious to them.

The MAKE IN CLASS project partners found out the maker based activities are effective in order to motivate students to learn important skills especially in scientific subjects of the school, such as maths, elettronics, informatics and mechanics.

We are a network of teachers and private and public representatives that aims to share best practices with respect to educational contents, such as project results, lab activities, subject assignments, video-tutorial, etc. as one of the pillar methods in order to improve the teaching quality and to be more efficacy to contrast students drop out problem.

The MAKE IN CLASS project carried out 4 main results (Intellectual Outputs) and other different activities/tools:

IO 1 - Make In Class Competence Map: A competence map identifying the competences acquirable by students with maker-based activities categorised by activity and subject.

Please see: http://www.makeinclass.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/IO1-Competence-Map…

IO 2 - Make in Class OER: An online repository of Open Educational Resources for teachers. It consist of a collection of tools, technologies, resources and information to design and support the setting up of a maker lab.

Please see: https://sites.google.com/bylinedu.es/makeinclass/oer

IO 3 - Make in Class Training Programme: A modularised training programme to promote secondary school teachers’ and educators’ proficiency in implementing inclusive processes for disengaged students through maker-based activities.

Please see:

http://www.makeinclass.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IO3-Training-Progr…

IO 4 - Make in Class Handbook: A pedagogic handbook with practical information and activities to implement with students.

Please see: http://www.makeinclass.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IO4-Make-In-Class-…

In addition Transnational Training Course for secondary school teachers has been organised in Munich (Germany) during the project implementation phase.

Moreover along all the project duration the project partners have been involved in different communication and dissemination activities held at local level in order to guarantee to the project outputs and results high potential for replicability at European level