​The beneficial effects of Probiotic foods on human health and nutrition are increasingly recognized by health professions and some studies show that probiotics can help reduce the number of days of school missed due to illness by boosting immune system and link the consumption of foods rich in probiotics with fewer exams' anxiety to students. In view of this growing necessity of probiotic foods
we decided to make a project about it and want to make the benefits of probiotics and prebiotic foods known by students, colleagues and as many people as possible around us. While doing this we're going to do STEM education activities such as laboratory experiments and fermentation workshops which we believe will improve our students' competences.
With this project we aim to;
* promote healthy lifestyle
* promote creativity and innovation,
* raise awareness among students about technology, health and nutrition topics, nutrition rules for a healthy life,
* improve teachers' STEM pedagogy by innovating, sharing, discussing and comparing the methodologies
* raise awareness of European citizenship and also European values
* improve students' communication skills and other competences such as language and digital skills, problem solving skills, social and intercultural competences
* embrace diversity, explore traditions in relation to food conservation and fermentation
* introduce Project Based Learning and Life Skills Program
To achieve these goals we're planning to do such activities;
*surveys will be conducted about the consumption of probiotics
* STEM related experiments
* presentations and interviews with nutritionists
* fermentation workshops
*brochures, e-books, cookbook with recipes of probiotic rich foods
*a project corner on e-twinning
*a variety of lesson plans by using STEM and PBL.
The project will be executed with Language, Biology, Chemistry, IT teachers and students. All the partners agreed to choose their project team according to a selection criteria.The students will be 15- 19 years old and the ones who have computer skills, communication skills in English language and who are enthusiastic about projects will be selected. Participants at each mobility meeting will be six
students and two teachers. We'll also involve students with fewer opportunities such as facing economic, social and geographical obstacles and the students who have health problems like diabetes to motivate them for having a healthy diet which will help to control their blood sugar. Each school's project team will be responsible for the activities and the schools' administration will be  in cooperation with the project team about logistic matters. During the project there'll also be cooperation with health institutes, local institutes and parents association. The platforms such as etwinning
and schooleducationgateway will be used for dissemination and a project corner on
eTwinning with public project twinspace will be created. The students will exchange
ideas and share the project's outputs through e-Twinning.
The partners will raise awareness for consuming probiotic rich foods by activities such as creating Youtube videos, making posters, creating blogs and facebook pages. There'll be surveys after each mobility meeting.The surveys will be an evaluation for us to see if the activities will have an impact on consuming probiotic rich foods. The Erasmus Project Corners will be kept up-to-date with articles,
photos and posters by the students in the project team. The families and local authorities will be involved in some activities to enable the whole community to contributeto the well-being of our young people aiming a fundamental impact on the quality of their future lives. The dissemination of the project will be through social media, booklets, a cookbook with recipes, a DVD and presentations. The main target groups are the teenagers as their eating habits tend to be unhealthy to make their peers aware of negative impacts this kind of diet has on their health.
During the execution of the project we're going to share articles from European Commission and Eurostat websites to strenghten our subject with scientific studies and also statistics. We believe that the long term benefits of this project are;
- it'll improve the level of STEM education activities in the classroom
- it'll improve students' quality of nutrition habits and abilities
- it'll help to preserve and respect identity in an interconnected world by working together with partners from different cultures and students'll gain self-confidence for future projects
- it'll improve the students' English language level and the specific vocabulary related to science and technology and also digital skills so that they'll gain skills for future STEM projects
- it'll foster the development of social and intercultural competences of both our students and teachers.