Scientific studies in Deaf population show the evidence that hearing impairment and severely limited access to the linguistic information from the environment negatively affects the cognitive and social emotional development of hearing impaired children, as well as lower level of the acquisition of key competencies and skills, development of creativity, problem solving skills, etc in this group (Stanzione et all, 2013). In January (2018) the brief study was made in Kaunas, Riga and Hradec Kralove schools for the Deaf. This study showed that the topics of low level of Deaf pupils motivation, lack of their creativity (linguistic and not linguistic) and leadership skills, involvement into school activities were those in common for all 3 schools (involved into project preparation). The international team prepared the activity plan to meet the obstacles that Deaf pupils face in acquisition of key competences. The main goal of our project is The main goal of our project is to develop Deaf pupils' (of the 5th-10th grades) creativity skills, creative thinking and creative partnership leading to improvement of their attainments at school, social emotional competencies, social inclusion and life quality. The objectives are following: - to develop pupils' general skills of creativity; - to develop creativity through various forms of artistic self-expression (drawing, photography, dancing, acting, singing in sign language, creating poems, plays, short films, and other forms of artistic self-expression); - to develop creative thinking through facing and coping with various everyday life situations (anger, stress management, dealing with conflicts, bullying, involvement into school and after school activities); - to develop creative thinking through project method (making analysis of situation, identifying of problems, looking for alternative ways of solving the problem, decision making, creating the activity plan and implement it, developing time management and responsibility overtaking skills); - empower Deaf pupils to be creative through experience and role modeling of the nationally and internationally famous representatives of Deaf Community (Youth and adults), getting acquainted with Deaf Culture and its heritage . - to develop and promote leadership attitudes and skills in deaf pupils; - to empower parents of Deaf pupils to be involved into education of their children; - to study and share different creativity education methods suitable for Deaf and having multiple disability (including Deafness) among teachers of the Deaf. 3 international LTT as short term exchange of pupils will be organized in 2 school years. These international project meetings will be on 3 different topics of creativity: (1) Creativity in Deaf Culture, (2) Creativity and project method, (3) Creativity in dealing with various challenging everyday life situations. These topics mentioned consist of 3 subtopics each. So teams of pupils, who wil partcipate in the international project meeting before it will work as a team locally and prepare the presentations they will present during the project meetings. During the LTT the training, presentation cover all 3 topics, so pupils after the meeting will present all information and their experience to their school community. such events as Parents Day, Community Day will be organized each school with activities leading to rich experience of creative thinking and creative partnership. Pupils' skills of creativity (using Torrance creativity test) will be assessed at the beginning and the end of the project. Communication among partners, dissemination of project results will be organized using eTwinning platform. It is planned to prepare and apply with new Erasmus+ Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices project on the base of knowledge and experience schools will get during the project.

"""Deaf learning"" project was implemented from September 2015 to August 2018 in partnership with 5 organization from 5 European countries: Polish Deaf Association Lodz Department (Poland), Doncaster Deaf Trust (UK), Ca'Foscari University in Venice (Italy), Kaunas Educational Centre for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (Lithuania), Alpen-Adria University in Klagenfurt (Austria). The aim of the project was to develop teaching materials, which will help to improve the literacy skills of deaf adults in 5 national languages: English, Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, German. Those materials include the course programme, handbooks, and e-learning courses. The programme contains questionnaire data, research choices, hints for teaching methodologies, trial experiences, suggestions on how to handle the materials. Handbooks contain:120 lesson plans CEFR levels A1, A2, B1, B2, 30 lessons level A1, 16 texts for reading comprehension as a teachers’ guide to developing their own level-based programs. E-course contains 6 lessons level A1 on the Moodle platform for independent learning.All materials were prepared for 5 languages. Over 500 teachers of a deaf, deaf adult, parents and scholars took part in different multiplier events in 5 countries. All teaching materials are open access and available on the project website: www.pzg.lodz.pl/deaflearning. Polish language courses for the deaf based on ""Deaf learning"" project teaching materials are now conducted in Poland."

The main aim of the project was to provide the deaf vocational students from all over Europe with a fully accessible visual tool to acquire better language and communication skills in both, spoken and sign language, within their profession of education – and through this also to potentiate the students’ cognitive skills and facilitates coping in the work and study environments in general. A total of 420 360-degree images were photographed in each 14 partner country in a wide diversity of vocational and work environments, form very practical to highly academic ones. In each 360 photo numerous profession specific objects were captured , that got a clickable hotspot and connection to the corresponding videos in the partner countries’ sign languages. All the photos were added to an already existing online educational tool - an international sign languages` dictionary Spreadthesign (www.spreadthesign.com). Spreadthesign is a free visual sign language dictionary on the web that started out as a Leonardo pilot project in 2006 and today it inholds more than 580.000 sign language videos from 40 countries all over Europe and beyond. Sign languages are different all around the world and there do not exist any other dictionaries of the kind, where so many different sign languages with such a huge number of entries are presented. That is why there is a need for creating, maintaining and developing further the sign language dictionary Spreadthesign. The second project aim was to support the educational needs of deaf Slovakian students by adding 15.000 sign language videos in Slovakianto the Spreadthesign dictionary and make the Slovakian Sign Language accessible to the native users of it as well as everyone else who needs to learn it as a foreign language. Adding the 360-degree photo feature to the online dictionary is truly vocational, visual and innovative, created for the deaf vocational students and their trainers, but also to all the other specialists, co-students and colleagues who need to communicate with the deaf people in any kind of professional or educational setting – this also applies for student exchange situations, where the deaf need to cope in a foreign language environment. Due to the hearing loss, the unfavourable growing-up environment (as 95-98% of the deaf children are born to the hearing parents, who don`t know any sign language themselves to be able to support the development of their child enough) and limited access to information and communication, the deaf are a disadvantaged group in need of better language skills. The 360 will facilitate their integration process to the vocabulary of their future work life, as well as their educational opportunities by helping them to learn the vocational sign language and the professional spoken language which they struggle to acquire due to the hearing loss and tend to have a huge backlog in compared to their hearing peers.Some of the general objectives were:1) To support the social inclusion and integration of the deaf and raise awareness.2) To provide equal educational opportunities to deaf and people with hearing disabilities from partner countries.3) To support vocational trainers in their work with deaf students with a freely accessible and easy to use tool.The specific objectives were:1) To enrich the on-line visual dictionary Spreadthesign with video recordings of the Slovakian Sign Language.2) To offer an open, modern and advanced platform on the web (www.spreadthesign.com), and App, for sign language learning, to people all over Europe. 4) To organise National Conferences to spread the project's products and results.These fourteen transnational partners with the relevant, but also complimentary experience, carried out the project successfully:- European Sign Language Center in Sweden- Mert Öztüre Special Education Vocational High School in Turkey- UNIVERSITAET KLAGENFURT in Ausria- Savez gluhih i nagluhih grada Zagreba in Croatia- Vyssi odborna skola, Stredni skola, Zakladni skola a Materska skola, Hradec Kralove In Czeck Republic - Kuulmispuudega Laste Õpetajate Selts in Estonia- Rheinisch-Westfälisches Berufskolleg Essen in Germany- UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA In Italy- Kauno kurciuju ir neprigirdinciuju ugdymo centras in Lithuania- Polski Zwiazek Gluchych Oddzial Lodzki in Poland- UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO in Portugal- DeafStudio in Slovakia- UNIVERSIDAD REY JUAN CARLOS in SpainWe also got an added value to the project with three partner countries from the Eastern partnership - Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, who joined this Erasmus project too via Swedish Institute funding’s and their Baltic seed projects.

Spread Share project (nowadays called Spread Lesson instead cause of the domain spreadlesson.com) emerges on the continuation of Spread the Sign projects that have been developed since 2006. Spread the Sign (www.spreadthesign.com) is an online free multilingual dictionary of sign languages. The partnership is composed by experienced teams that worked in previous projects, as well as new partners that will give their contribution to this new stage and to the spreading of sign language all over Europe. The Spread Lesson project aims to develop a platform in which teachers and trainers of deaf pupils can upload and download self-made materials that can be used in pedagogical practices with deaf pupils. These materials can be sign language videos or other documents that can be helpful for other teachers of deaf. This share platform will be integrated in the Spread the Sign dictionary. Users will have registered access, so no jeopardizing will be allowed to other users or contents. At the same time, a Google Map function with sign language videos with names of cities, locals, buildings and other objects, will be incorporated in the platform. Through these tools, teachers of deaf will be able to teach geography better, share documents, inspiring other teachers across the countries and Europe.There were 14 partners (13 + Ukraine) institutions, among which deaf schools, deaf organisations and universities. All of them have experience with sign languages and deaf education, and all have the most interest in promote and improve these two areas. Accumulated knowledge in previous projects is an assurance of quality and responsibility to develop this project.Partners have contacted target groups (teachers and trainers of deaf pupils) to participate in the development of this share platform, testing is usability and filling it with pedagogical contents. In addition, each partner have been responsible for the national production of sign language videos for the dictionary and the Google Map function, as well as for the quality assurance of the uploaded materials. All teams have participated in dissemination events in order to present the share platform to new users. The feedback of users will be mobilized to improve this project’s products and results, and it has been assembled through standardized instruments such as questionnaires and interviews. Other indicators, such as using statistics have been used to monitor the use of the platform.This is a breakthrough in what concerns sign language and deaf education promotion all over Europe, so a big number of users is expected since the beginning. The expected impact in deaf pupils education is not easily measurable once there are hundreds of thousands teachers and pupils all over Europe. Being this a transnational tool, we expect to reach a lot of them, contributing to change and ameliorate pedagogical practices and educational achievements.Our ultimate goals are the improvement of deaf pupil’s education and the modification of policy maker’s posture, making the give more attention to this population. In a European globalized context, education is central to make more informed citizens and contributors. This project can be seen as another important piece of the puzzle towards the change of mentalities and practices.

<< Background >>The desire to continue a long-time project – Spreadthesign –, and the drive to provide a more innovative approach on making sign language contents available and accessible in different European countries, was what led us to the idea for this project. So, on the one hand, we aim to keep addressing the target group needs – deaf pupils, their teacher and families –, namely by the production of new contents in sign language for beginners, which is an area to be explored since many of those teacher and families are hearing and lack knowledge and vocabulary in sign language. That way, through the products we will produce, we intend to contribute to expand their skills and competences in sign language and, therefore, to establish better communication processes with their deaf pupils and children. This is an undeniable right of the deaf, to have access to education, culture, information and other aspects of social life, in their own language, the sign language. In this way, a new sign language – Serbian sign language – will also be added to the Spreadthesign dictionary, increasing the number of partners and sign languages represented on it, and also provide more opportunities for the Serbian deaf and hearing to develop more competences in their languages or learn new languages. On the other hand, with the introduction of the contents related to the partner countries’ traditions, characteristics and facts, and also the mobile app and the quiz to incorporate all these contents, we aimed to operate an innovation, in the way that there are no similar tools available both at national and international levels. So, the deaf pupils will be able to learn aspects from different European countries, to know other cultures, other languages, and doing so by means of digital and interactive means and platforms.This will not only provide the opportunity to expand the knowledge of their own country but also to nourish a feeling of European belonging, seeing that there are other realities and contexts to explore and new people to meet. And it will also increment the digital transition for educational settings announced and planned in Europe during the last decade. Education and learning are now more flexible concerning the “where” and the “when”, and our mobile application and the content it will carry – in different sign and written languages – will be another step further to allow deaf pupils and other people to learn sign language in mobility contexts, be it in everyday situations locally, or abroad while visiting or studying in another country. The requests made by the target groups, asking for sign language materials and contents, has been in our minds since the beginning of this process, and it is because of such requests that this partnership put together the above mentioned ideas, to address those requests and, with the outcomes to be available, to have an impact on those people’s lives. The need for simple and easy ways to learn sign language, as beginners, has always been there, but we have been focusing on other projects and features until now. In this new call we feel we are ready to take on this big and important task. This is also related to the fact that in many of our partner countries, national online dictionaries have never been developed by those who should do it for their deaf citizens, namely the governments or other national institutions. Our dictionary www.spreadthesign.com has been doing that through EU fundings since 2006, and has already had nominations by the European Commission as Best Practice project in the areas of inclusion. Deaf people belong to a minority group in each national society, often secluded from the important centres of decision and often kept away from educational and cultural contexts. We hope that through the development of the project products, and the dissemination of our work in the community, more people get to know sign language and get to know and relate with deaf people.<< Objectives >>The practical aim of this project is to develop contents and materials in sign languages of the 15 partner countries, so that they become accessible to deaf pupils and other beginners in sign language, through an easy to use platform (mobile app) and a website in which they can learn and explore those contents. Through this we configure the ultimate goals of this project:- We want to fight for literacy for the deaf and increase the communication between the hearing and the deaf, to promote an inclusive society.- We want the small “islands” of deaf pupils spread around in Europe to learn about each others’ national traditions, what is typical, geography, and so on, in their first language, in the national sign language of their own.- We want them to be able to get a wider range of vocabulary with the help of an e-learning quiz, so that they develop themselves cognitively, achieve academic success and become active and participative citizens in their countries and at European levels. All that in one mobile app and on the website, too. On top of that, we want to add a brand-new country to the dictionary, one that did not have its sign language accessible on the web before. This will be Serbian sign language and the partner will try to reach 15.000 words/signs. This will enable more deaf and hearing people from Serbia to learn their sign language and also to learn written and sign languages of other countries. Their flag should be seen here:https://www.spreadthesign.com/sv.se/select_language/?back=%2Fsv.se%2Fsearch%2F%3F The partnership of this project will incorporate 15 partners. Together we will cover a big part of the European map and get a large impact on the production and dissemination of contents in different sign languages and written languages. The massive translation work of all scripts into all 15 written and sign languages will make this educational material very accessible for different target groups in need. We want to contribute to raise the knowledge and skills in sign language in the population of the partner countries, and simultaneously we seek to increase the awareness of the European context we are in, all of this through means that promote the digital transition in terms of education and learning.<< Implementation >>Concerning the production activities of the project we will have:- A sign language learning tool for beginners, with everyday sentences and important expressions- Video contents in sign language with the presentation in sign language videos of each partner country- A quiz, as an educational game for deaf pupils to learn the contents in a more attractive way- A new partner (Serbia) and its sign language so that the Spreadthesign dictionary keeps enlarging the amount of contents available for European deaf people Concerning the project’s dynamics, we will have project meetings where team elements from each country participate, to build the pedagogical script for the educational material to be produced in the project. A lot of the staff from each country are deaf, so we will have sign language interpreters in the meetings. These meetings will be both physical and virtual, especially if the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are still in place. In this case we will be flexible and implement hybrid meetings too, to achieve the goals of the project. We will also implement testing and proofreading of the products (translations, videos, quiz and mobile app). Testing will be done with teachers and deaf pupils of each country. Feedback from the users is essential to get a final product that will be used and works well, and that meets their needs and expectations. Each partner has their own network, within their own country, through which our final products and results will be disseminated to the target groups. If the production phase is of utmost importance, the discussion and debate in the meetings or through other means (sharing platforms, online meetings, e-mails), and also the dissemination of the products, will be the core of our work. The things we want to implement are to be seen and divulged into the community, so our efforts will be another link in a chain that started our first project in 2006.<< Results >>With our project, we aim to put sign language in the hands of even more people in our partner countries, both when they speak sign language, and when they learn it through our website and app, wherever they are, whenever they want or need it. Only through this flexibility, provided by digital means, we will be able to reach more people, to let them know about deaf people and sign languages, and to raise the awareness that we are diverse within our neighbourhoods, our schools, our countries, our continents, our world. In the “Sign language for beginners in Europe - Spread the sign” project there is a big economic advantage and a running start, as the sign language dictionary www.spreadthesign.com is already developed and widely implemented in our partner countries, through previous EU-funded projects. Therefore, we will now implement a new innovative feature based on the past work. It consists of a mobile app with sign language for beginners, with new contents in sign language, with country presentations in sign video and a quiz. It will be designed to have an attractive and intuitive interface to promote fast and easy to learn processes. Also, given the amount of daily users that the dictionary already has around Europe, this new-featured app will gain a very large impact instantly within the deaf schools of Europe. Our dissemination activities will enable this impact and will increase the use of the dictionary and app as a pedagogical and learning tool. With our work, we seek to contribute to the expansion of educational and lifetime horizons for deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils, as well as to provide important tools for teachers of the deaf and, ultimately, to contribute to social inclusion, by increasing the levels of literacy and social participation of deaf people in democratic life. The Spreadthesign dictionary aims to do this expansion on an increasingly global scale, throughout Europe and the World, as a provider of a accessible sign language, as an enabler of human and cultural rights, as an enhancer of better educational pathways and a promoter of social and cultural inclusion for the deaf.“Imagine if all deaf children could be united under one language - worldwide, a kind of Esperanto. But of course, due to different cultures, it remains just a dream.” From HM Queen Silvia´s speach at the launch of Spreadthesign in 2009. Sign language is not the same everywhere. It is as different as the spoken languages. Otherwise, there would not be a great need for our website spreadthesign.com.