Abstract:

The main objective of the Erasmus+ project "Lexicon of STEM Educational Films for Primary and Secondary School Students" (Films4Edu project) is to develop and improve the quality of distance education in STEAM and to increase the potential and capacity of distance education in primary and secondary schools. The project was implemented in 4 countries and 6 institutions: European universities and associations - University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland), University of Innsbruck (Austria), University of Malaga (Spain), Children's University of Malopolski Foundation (Poland), AGH University of Science and Technology (Poland) and University of Žilina (Slovakia).

The aim of the project is to develop and disseminate high-quality distance learning in STEM, as well as to strengthen the basic and transversal skills defined in the European Framework of Key Competencies in Education. Key competencies in the core and cross-cutting dimensions include scientific and technical competencies, learning to learn, and algorithmic thinking. Real-life scenario learning and scientific experimentation methods used in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) can support the development of a number of competencies, as outlined in the European Commission's study „Promoting the development of key competencies: Learning approaches and learning environments in school education“. For this reason, increasing pupils' motivation to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and improving performance in these areas are important challenges facing European education systems.

The specific objectives of the Films4Edu project are to increase the knowledge of primary and secondary school teachers in the use of film-teaching experiments in STEM education, to increase the interest of primary and secondary school pupils in physics and chemistry experiments, to increase the knowledge of the beneficiaries of the dissemination activities about the opportunities offered by the use of film-teaching experiments in STEM education, to improve the innovation and internationalization of the 6 institutions involved through the exchange of best practices, the joint development of universal educational and training materials and the promotion of open education.

The project resulted in intellectual outputs in the form of Methodology for Teaching STEM Subjects through Film4edu Experiments, Online Catalogue of Physics Experiments for Primary and Secondary Schools, and Online Catalogue of Chemistry Experiments for Primary and Secondary Schools.
As a result of the project, European primary and secondary school teachers have a collection of didactic videos of physics and chemistry experiments that they can use to support their lessons or online teaching.
In total, more than 100 didactic videos in physics and chemistry were created within this project, which are available on the Films4Edu YouTube channel: ttps://www.youtube.com/@films4edu607/videos.

The scenarios emphasize two main functions of the experiments – methodological - experiments as a source of knowledge and experiments as a means of verification and didactic - introductory experiments to create a problem situation, cognitive experiences as a source of knowledge, verification experiments to test hypotheses, experiments to illustrate phenomena, to verify a law.

Keywords:

STEM education, interactive teaching, educational films.