"Thanks to the approved application, we could work on and improve one part of the many effects caused by the Syrian migrant crisis.The project aimed to support the educational needs of adult deaf Syrian migrants by adding the Syrian Sign Language, and three other other sign languages in the region of Syria and Turkey (the Bulgarian sign language, the Greek sign language and the Cypriot sign language) , to an already existing on-line educational tool “Spread the Sign” (www.spreadthesign.com). “Spread the Sign” is a free visual sign language dictionary on the web that started as a Leonardo pilot project in 2006 and today it has more than 38 countries and 540.000 sign language videos. Adding the Syrian Sign Language and the Arabic words to the online dictionary is done and will truly benefit Syrian deaf migrants, sign language teachers for adults and others interested to help this disadvantaged group such as migrant organisations working with/for migrants. It will facilitate their integration process to the host country as well as their educational opportunities by helping them to learn the local sign language. Some of the objectives were: 1) To support the social inclusion and integration of the deaf/hearing impaired Syrian migrants and raise awareness. 2) To provide equal educational opportunities to deaf/hearing impaired Syrian migrants and people with hearing disabilities from partners countries. 3) To support adult educators in their work with hearing impaired people.The specific objectives were: 1) To enrich the on-line visual dictionary ""Spread the Sign"" with video recording of the Syrian, Greek, Cypriot and Bulgarian Sign Languages 2) To offer an open platform on the web, and App, for sign language learning to people all over Europe. www.spreadthesign.com 4) To organise National Conferences to spread the project's products and results. The five 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 - United Societies of Balkans (U.S.B.) In Greece - SYNTHESIS Center for Research and Education Ltd, Cyprus - KU TU EOOD, Bulgaria"

"The changes that have taken place in recent years in the education of the deaf (emanating from the recommendations of the European Parliament through the document A2-302/87, the United Nations Resolution 1994, the Salamanca Declaration 1994, and the UN General Assembly in 2006) require public schools’ new projects, a new profile of teachers capable of acting in different areas and with sustained training in the development of studies in the area of education of the Deaf.There is in Physical Education discipline taught in schools a space for learning language concepts and for the development of Sign Language for deaf students. Positive experiences and effective communication in Physical Education teaching can form the basis for regular practice of physical activities that promote health and well-being. But when sign language is not the domain of teachers and deaf students do not master spoken and/or written language, teaching can become complex and segregating. In addition, the lack of adequate resources, in this specific case, the lack of a bilingual glossary of comprehensive bilingual sports, which allows students to learn sports terminology and display the demonstration of their motor skill, can obstruct the ""full"" exercise of the teaching and learning process. When the teacher does not master the Sign Language, it must be supported by an interpreter, but the lack of resources, which make it possible to learn and update new terminology in Sign Language, can also condition the translation work of the interpreters, taking them many linguistic niches of Sign Language, since they also use this type of tools in the preparation of the translation process. Taking in consideration these identified needs, SportSign's main target groups are: Physical Education teachers, Interpreters and Deaf students.In practical terms, SportSign aims at developing joint initiatives meant at creating a Bilingual Sports Glossary as a self-learning pedagogical tool for free access at world level through an innovative approach to increase the effectiveness of the pedagogical strategy directed at deaf students in Physical Education and Sports, based on a 2-phase model:1 – Development of a tool kit - Sport Sign to be tested in class context by each partner country (Physical Education teachers, Sign Language teachers and Sign Language interpreters will be trained through an E-learning course);2 - Creation of an online community platform to promote cooperation and exchange of good practice between Physical Education and Sign Language professionals.The methodology proposed for the progress of the project aims at the effectiveness of its implementation, development, dissemination and sustainability. The project is grounded on 3 milestones: Milestone 1: completion of the comparative study; Milestone 2: SportSign toolkit and Sport Sign e-Community platform; Milestone 3: Analysis of pilot action results and sharing of good practices.The first output of the project will be a Comparative Study. For this study, each country will involve participants from the target groups in data collection, which will then be analysed, compiled and published. Along with this activity, two other outputs will be underway - the SportSign Toolkit and the e-Community platform. It follows a period of testing and validation of these ICT tools. A pre-testing with local participants will enable validation, product improvement and training of the target public in the user version. Students will be involved in sport, recreation and cultural activities to develop contacts with peers from partner countries and will create a network to promote the SportSign e-Community platform. Then the piloting stage will take place in each country and will be object of a monitoring and assessment process. The collection of the results will lead to the fourth and last output – the Good Practices guide. This Guide will be published and widely disseminated to schools with deaf students, sports clubs, associations of deaf people, physical education teachers and interpreters’ organizations and other stakeholders.SportSign will contribute to standardize the use of Sign Language in Physical Education discipline and Sports using schools as dissemination vehicle. From a sustainability point of view, the SportSign Toolkit can be easily extended by integrating more advanced sports’ terminology or by including other sport modalities, as well as through its translation to other EU languages.SportSign piloting activities expects to reach a significant number of participants. Approximately 25 physical education teachers, 25 interpreters and 100 deaf students will be directly involved in the project activities. It is expected that besides the piloting and after its end the project will impact on a much wider community."

Tourist guide is the person who will introduce the country to domestic and foreign tourists in the best way, help them during their travels, provide accurate information, and have a professional authority certificate (TUREB 2006: 246).Especially in tourism, which is based on cultural heritage, sufficient knowledge and high quality tour guidance service should be provided (Dahles, 2002: 783).İZRO is one of the most important occupational chambers serving the tourist guides of our country.It organizes continuous face-to-face training activities for the personal and professional development of its members.The uncertainty in the working hours of the tourist guiding profession, intense and tiring working conditions, and the ignoring of the personal life, personal, professional and educational works of the guides during the organization of the tour programs are expressed as an important professional problem for tourist guides (Doswell, 1997: 3).Due to the working conditions of the members, it is generally not possible to participate in the training activities.The research carried out by İZRO in 2019 in the form of tourist guides throughout the country confirms this situation.72% of the tour guides participating in the survey study and focus group meetings stated that vocational and personal training activities should be on digital and online platforms (İZRO, Determination of Personal and Professional Development Activities, 2019).The tourism industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world.It has become an important advantage to develop new tourism types in an increasingly competitive environment and attract more tourists with new destinations.One of the most important types of tourism sector is the disabled tourism market.The European Hearing Impaired Federation (EFHOH) stated in its report titled “Hearing Loss: The Statistics” published in 2015, although it is difficult to know the exact number of hearing impaired in the world and in Europe, an estimated 9% of the population of the European Union with 507.4 million.He states that approximately 50 million people are deaf.This is a huge number and represents an important tourist potential.The tour guides who participated in the Determination of Personal and Vocational Training Activities; It is accessible for 60% of tour guides to know sign language, 60% of them encounter hearing-impaired individuals on their tours, 93% of them have communication problems with these people, 100% believe that they can communicate with these people even if they have the opportunity to learn sign language.He stated that he contributed to the idea that he would contribute to tourism completely or partially, and that 96% of the tour guides participated in the idea that tour guides would contribute to the tourism and increase the number of tourists.Our reason for preparing our project is our belief that we will produce a practical and quick solution to these needs.Our project will meet a very important need of the hearing impaired, support the participation in social and cultural life, and ensure that our country and project partner countries become competitive in the tourism market for the disabled.Our target groups are families of hearing-impaired individuals as well as hearing-impaired individuals, sign language users, hearing-guided tour guides and tourism industry.The idea of ​​our project was through output works;• An Education Management System that tour guides and other interested parties can use free of charge,• Sign language curriculum for tourism and tour guides at A1 and A2 levels,• Training materials at A1 and A2 levels,• A Tourism Sign Language Dictionary will be created in the A1 and A2 programs and in the field of tourism with frequently used signs. The titles of our management activities are as follows: A1.Project Management, A2.Dissemination, A3.Monitoring and Evaluation, A4.Activities That Will Create a Multiplier Effect. Within the scope of our project, many multiplier activities and three Multiplier Events are planned. Multiplier events activities are as follows. E1-A1 Level, E2-A2 Level Promotion and Evaluation Conference E3-''Vocational Sign Language on Tourism '' Project Promotion Conference Our project has three transnational meetings and an educational activity. M1-Opening, M2-Evaluation, M3-Final Meeting. Our training activity will be held in Portugal and the two focal points of training are as follows: a.LMS Admin Panel Management, User Panel and Technical Training b.Management TrainingOur project priorities are the disabled - special needs, open and distance education, foreign language teaching and learning. In addition, our project contributes to the overall objectives of the Erasmus + Program, especially education, the goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the strategic framework goals for European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020), the goals of raising European values, and multilingualism.

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.