In Turkey the number of people with disabilities is approximately 8,5 million (ÖZİDA 2002). 3,5 million of them are consisted of children and they require special education (PEKUSLU&KAYACI,2007). If those children are considered as if they had a family which has got at least 2 members, the number of individuals who are affected by it primarily reach at least 10,5 milllion. This number goes up by higher amounts when the stuff taking care of these children such as educater, sanitarian etc has been taken into consideration. It can clearly be seen how much special education is important even looking from this perspective.Children with special needs have limited attention span and their attention can easily be distracted. They have difficulty in understanding words or concepts. The studies Show that computer assisted learning increases the motivation level of disabled students and it enables them to increase their attention span so that they enjoy studying. Also the studies comparing the contents of traditional education programs and computer assisted program shows that computer assisted programs are more effective in learning process of children with special needs. With the help of Computer Assisted Programs, disabled children can become active members of society who can sustain a social and occupational life independently. Blue Platform is a complete free of charge platform that is available for all children with special needs, their parents and their teachers. Target audience of this project are the individuals with special needs, the ones with medium-heavy mental deficiency and the ones with autism spectrum disorder. In 2018 National Ministry of Education renovated the curriculum of individuals with medium-heavy mental deficiency and autism spectrum disorder. Blue Platform has been designed according to this new curricula. Blue Platform includes the targets of levels and syllabus on the list down below.Level 1: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Social Skills, Social StudiesLevel 2: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Social Skills, Daily Life SkillsLevel 3: Maths, Reading and Writing Skills, Communication and Social Skills, Independent Living SkillsThe main goal of Blue Platform is to make a contribution to the equality of opportunity in special education. Blue Platform is totally free of charge and will always remain free of charge. IMPARK, one of the partner institutions which has built the engineering sytem of our project stated that they would carry on saving the system on their servers as long as the company exist. This statement added priceless value to the project in term of sustainability and upgradablity.Blue Platform is designed for being used as a supplementary material. The way how you use it is very simple. Pupils can use it with the help of their teachers or parents an deven by themselves in an easy way. Blue Platform is a web based Learning Management System (LMS). It does not require set-up. It is available on every smarts board or computer with internet connection. Training screens starts with learning section and after that part it carries on with the reinforcement part. After they cover the lessons, some reinforcement tools such as games, songs, animations, stories etc. that are to achieve the goals of the lessons appear on the screen. There are school module, teacher module and parent module sections.Intellectual Outputs:O1/Blue Special LMS: The first intellectual output of the project, LMS, is the core of Blue Platform.O2/Learning Contents: The learning contents of Blue Platform that engineering studies has been carried out in the previous output, have been prepared in O2 part.O3/Preparing Animations for Educational Objectives: Animation added to Blue Platform has been prepared on O3 intellectual output. It is not only limited with animations, plenty of videos were also prepared.O4/Preparing Games for Educational Objectives: Assistive technology in the field of education opens greater opportunities for disabled children to become fully active members in learning period. Didactic computer games are also one of them. Games being added to Blue Platform has been prepared on O4. O5/Vocalizations: Vocalizations of Blue Platform has been done on O5.Pilot scheme of Blue Platform has started on 28th May 2018 with the participation of more than 70 special education teachers from 20 different cities. With the help of feedbacks received from the teachers, optimizations and refinements have been done. All the results of survey on pilot scheme are available on official website of our project.Under the theme of Universal Design in Information Technologies, BİLTEVT2019, the International Barrier-Free Informatics Congress held on between 11-13th September 2019 with inter-institutional cooperation hosted by Maltepe University. Blue Platform was granted Barrier-Free Informatics Award. For being our first award really precious to us, it gave much more determination to work on our project.

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.

"<< Background >>Every one in six people living in the EU has a disability that makes it harder for them to fully participate in society and the economy. 80 million people are estimated to be in this group. Due to their limited access to employment, over 70% of them have to live/survive on the poverty line. (EU Labor Force Survey, 2010). In its report titled ""Hearing Loss: The Statistics"", published in 2015, The European Federation of the Deaf states that 50 million people in Europe are hearing impaired. In Europe, when the figures for the employment of the hearing impaired is examined, it is a fact that more than 50% of them are unemployed and the vast majority of those who could find a job have to work in low-skilled and under paid jobs.There are various matters regarding the vocational education of the hearing impaired whose native language is the sign language. The teaching programs that are not suitable for them and the low number of teachers who know sign language and the educational materials that have not been developed in sign language are the main reasons for this case. The vocational education of the hearing impaired, which is already full of problems, has almost completely stopped during the pandemic. No significant work has been done on the distance education of our target audience. This problem we have expressed is the same not only in our country, but also in our partners’ countries, Europe and the world in a broad sense. Our study is with no parallel, there is no other study that is similar to our project in the Erasmus + Project Results Platform.Solutions for the vocational training and distance learning of the hearing impaired have taken part in literature. In order that E-learning systems could best meet the needs of hearing-impaired students, they should include short learning modules, the educational content should contain as little text as possible and be presented in a visual mode (such as pictures, captioned videos, sign language videos) and provide an automatic evaluation system (Pappas et al., 2018 ). The specific needs of hearing-impaired students in an e-learning environment include: bilingual information (text and sign language), interactive and exploratory learning, high-level visualization, learning in peer groups through videoconferencing (Drigas & Kouremenos, Kouremenos & Vrettaros, 2005).Our project and its results will enable a free of charge and open access distance learning system in order to meet the needs of our target group and partnership.•Distance education system and educational materials which are completely free of charge and open access.•The curriculum will be prepared with short learning modules,•Training and education contents will be prepared with HD videos,•The training contents will be prepared in the sign language of the partner countries respectively by adding subtitles and audio descriptions as well.•The In-system Measurement and Evaluation (student achievement) will be performed automatically with interactive content,•Curriculum acquisitions and training contents will be prepared in a way to meet professional needs,•The vocational education curriculum, distance education system and the terminological dictionary study we will develop has the capacity to be a breakthrough in the vocational education of the hearing impaired, furthermore it can be transferred and made use of in different fields and it will set a good example for similar studies further on.•With the distance education system to be developed through our project, individuals who would like to receive culinary training will have the opportunity to take a vocational training course designed in accordance with their characteristics, needs and readiness levels,•Individuals who complete the course will be given a certificate with which we expect to contribute to their employment.<< Objectives >>Our project is designed with the partnership of organisations from Germany, Portugal, Turkey, Italy and Sweden. We aim to do our part to lift those barriers for the hearing impaired individuals who want to become a cook/chef or receive vocational training in the field of cooking or who work as professionals and also would like to improve their skills development or vocational skills.The main objective of our project is to develop a fully-accessible, totally free of charge Distance Learning Program for the hearing impaired individuals who face the risk of social exclusion. They will be able to use the program totally free of charge whenever they want and wherever they want. We firmly believe that it will serve as a good example for similar studies further on. Thus, when our project is completed, our target audience will have had a useful tool in their hands to lift the economic, social, geographical and cultural barriers that they encounter in their vocational education, namely, the obstacles related to education and training systems developed without fully considering the needs of the challenged in its real sense.While developing the curriculum, each of the project partners will initally examine and make a study of the culinary/cooking education curriculum which is currently in use in their own country. With the help of the collective information, interaction and experience gathered among the partners, we will finally develop a commonized curriculum that is derived and inspired from 4 different countries. Distance learning materials and assessment-evaluation tools to be employed in the program will be prepared and designed considering the sign languages and special education pedagogical principles of each country respectively. All the teaching materials and assessment-evaluation tools will have subtitles. We will also develop a culinary/cooking terminology sign language dictionary to contribute to the language skills and vocational skills of the hard of hearing cooks/chefs. The concrete objectives of our project are as follow:a)Developing a distance learning system that the hearing impaired can use and benefit from in their vocational education and training process. The system should meet the SCORM standarts (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) and also involve the assessment and evaluation steps too.b)Developing a curriculum that involves the vocational and educational skills required, and helps the hearing impaired become a cook/chef or improve themselves, and give them new opportunities to increase the chances of employment in their country or abroad.c)Developing a distance learning education model which is fully accessible, free of charge and effective in terms of inclusive education. Our model will have the qualities to create opportunities regarding lifelong learning, skills development and personal satisfaction.d)Producing a distance learning content, curriculum and modules made with using their native language of the hearing impaired, namely the sign language used in their own countries respectively.e)We are going to develop a culinary/cooking terminology dictionary in the sign languages of each partner country and contribute to the language and vocational skills of the hearing impaired. Such a study has not been performed previously and this project will be a first in its field.f)With this project, we aim; To contribute to the Digital Transformation in accessible and inclusive vocational education by creating ties of cooperation, consultation, interaction and experience among organisations that have expertise in their respective fields not only within the borders of the EU but also beyond them in the long run.g)To set a good example for similar studies further on by setting out the development stages of vocational distance education systems that can be used for the hearing impaired.<< Implementation >>The general objectives, goals, work packages, activities and task distributions of the project have been created with the contributions and suggestions of the project partner institutions collectively. The resources that we need in the work packages to produce the expected results have been determined in detail, thus the project budget has been clarified. Subsequently, we defined and determined the relations between the activities, the duration of the activities and the assignment of the responsibilities appropriately according to the features and expertise of the participants. Our work packages that will enable us to achieve project goals and produce results are as follow:WP1. Project managementSub-activities connected to the main activities, the dates, durations and processes of these activities are specified in the activity plan. Project management activities will ensure the goals and objectives of the project are achieved within the limits of the specified time and budget. In addition, the project budget, resources and time will be used in the most efficient way. Under this title;•Project Management Teams, M&E Teams, Sharing and Sustainability Teams will be formed,•Task distribution of team members and other project employees will be completed,•Project activities will be initiated, executed and terminated,•Cultural and linguistic preparations, security, transportation, passport, visa etc procedures and other preparations and procedures for the transnational and/or national meetings will be made.•The project budget will be managed and controlled,•Interm report, final report and project booklet will be prepared and mobility tools procedures will be carried out.WP2. Sharing and PromotionSharing activities are activities that will make the results we produce easier to reach our target audience and ensure the sustainability of the project. Under this title;•International and national sharing studies will be carried out,•Activities regarding the internal communication processes of the partners within the scope of the project will be implemented,•Website and social media pages will be produced and shared for the project,•Materials to be used in sharing activities will be prepared and produced.WP3. Monitoring and EvaluationOne of the management teams was assigned as the ""Monitoring and Evaluation Team"" so as to help the monitoring and evaluation processes within the project progress properly. Realizing the activities in line with the targets, observing the effects of the project in the process, and using the project budget are the significant points within the scope of monitoring studies of the project. Information about the progress of the project will be obtained through monitoring studies so that revisions can be made where and when necessary. Evaluation studies will be carried out in the light of the outputs of the monitoring studies. Evaluation studies will provide detailed information about the functioning and results of the project process. This will contribute to the development and dissemination of the project, as well as the process of creating final reports.WP4. Organizations (TPM, E, C)During the project, the result production studies will be carried out by means of 3 TPMs, 1 LTT and 5 Multiplier Events. Details of these activities are mentioned in the relevant sections. In addition to these main activities, various activities that will create a multiplier effect have been planned with the aim of reaching approximately 150 people.WP5. Results (R1, R2, R3, R4)R1-Digital Learning Platform for Culinary Education in Sign LanguageR2-Distance Learning Culinary Education Curriculum for the Hearing Impaired (Including Structured Learning Units and Lesson PlansR3-Distance Education Materials for the Vocational Training of the Hearing ImpairedR4-Sign Language Culinary Terminology Dictionary<< Results >>Distance Education (DE) is not merely putting some technological devices into service of education. It is also a discipline that includes the stages of planning, design, production, presentation, evaluation and supervision of education. The pandemic has shown the world how important and essential DE and online learning tools actually are. The Learning Management System (LMS), which forms the engineering infrastructure of our project, will be produced under the R1 result. The LMS will cover the management, communication, interaction, course presentation and assessment and evaluation processes. It will also have the criteria of complying with the principles of special education, accessibility and the educational principles of vocational education. The system will have the SCORM standards, and measurement-evaluation activities will interactively be prepared using ActivePresenter.The DE system we will create within the scope of our project has the capacity to set a reference point especially in the field of cooking and become a good example in the distance education of the hearing impaired across Europe and the world as well. The project results will have a positive impact not only on the vocational education of the hearing impaired in a broad sense but also on the distance vocational education, inclusiveness and access, multilingualism, and raising awareness. The results to be produced will have the quality and characteristics that allow to translate into other languages easily, to apply to different professions and add sign languages of different countries in future. Considering all those features regarding our project as a whole and also our experience, determination, synergy and motivation, we firmly believe that our project will be a pioneer in its field on many occasions and inspire further studies in future.Curriculum programs are the basic elements of both face-to-face education and distance learning processes. The curriculum of our project will be prepared in R2 phase. Upon the acceptance of our project, the curriculum that we will develop will set a good example and attract the institutions that give vocational training for hearing impaired individuals in different countries as well. The fact that it can be translated into sign languages of different countries when needed makes it possible to use in different countries too. Our curriculum can be used by anyone who wants to learn or improve the cooking profession, especially the hearing impaired. It will guide us in the online teaching materials and assessment-evaluation tools that we will prepare in future.Distance education materials and assessment tools of our curriculum will be prepared within the scope of R3. Teaching materials and assessment-evaluation tools will be produced in the sign languages of the project partner countries. We aim to provide a quality vocational education to the hearing impaired individuals who want to become a cook or who want to improve their professional skills while they work as a cook and / or who want to learn the cuisines of different countries with those materials and tools.We believe that hearing-impaired individuals who want to learn the cuisines of different countries should have a sufficient level of vocabulary. For this reason, the final output of our project will be an online dictionary containing culinary terminology. This dictionary is the last and supplementary part of our distance education system.Our project is based and developed upon the European Commission's 2021-2027 Digital Education Action Plan and has the qualities referring to the strategic priorities of it as follow:a.Fostering the development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem,b.Enhancing digital skills and competences for the digital transformation."

"The project addresses the problem of unsatisfactory school performance by VET School students in some of Countries involved. In Southern Europe Countries, PISA-OCSE 2015 results are below average in almost all the items evaluated. This survey entails the ""meaningful learning"", the ability of VET students to find solutions to the practical problems of everyday life. Southern Europe Countries shows on one hand students dissatisfaction, on the other hand teachers difficulties in design and managing WBL path. The general objective of the project is to promote in European VET School teachers the application of effective and innovative teaching methods and tools in work-based learning contexts in order to guarantee a better future for young Europeans. Specifically, the project aims to improve school performance and students satisfaction. Specific objectives are the following: - Learner and collaborative centered pedagogies (hereinafter CELC) applied; - Reduced resistence to change in VET School staff; - increased awareness of companies system by VET teachers. - Improved ability of VET School to support students in WBL paths. The project is addressed primarily to teachers of VET Schools; indirect beneficiaries are VET students and companies involved. The partnership also includes the participation of: - companies from Southern Europe Countries; - Universities and organizations active on research and innovation in learning processes in WBL context. Two of these come from Countries with a long WBL tradition. VET teachers directly involved will be 48 direct; 180 indirectly. In addition, 75 students, 6 VET School managers, 6 company tutors, 6 company managers and 9 experienced researchers of WBL learning processes will be directly involved. The project aims to realize two important intellectual outputs able to reach the project objectives: - IO1: a curricula promoting the development of skills of VET teachers in the application of CELC pedagogical methods in the Work Based Learning pathways; it will be a new curriculum that will take into account the obstacles that don’t allow the application of new pedagogies. The implementation of this curriculum will also entail a significant commitment of leadership of VET schools who have already shown their availability to change in terms of organization and approach; - IO2 training material and open educational resources useful for training VET teachers in the application of CELC pedagogical methods in the Work Based Learning pathways. Training material will be available on a learning web platform. Training materials will also include materials that teachers can immediately apply with their students. The activity plan includes the design of the curriculum and the design and development of training material and OERs. Teachers will be trained in different ways (online self-learning, face to face, jobshadowing in the company) and then they will test the application of the new pedagogical method directly with the students. An important propagation action of skills will be implemented at local level: teachers participating in the international learning activity then will train their colleagues. At the end of the test, a peer learning activity will be carried out among teachers who have tested the new method in order to promote further learning and trigger the evaluation of effectiveness. A structured follow-up among partners will make possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution adopted, to identify any corrective measures and to adopt the application of the CELC pedagogical methodology in ordinary activitis. It is expected that the project will produce positive impacts primarily towards: - students who, thanks to a learner centered pedagogy in line with their natural learning process, will increase their potential to improve school performance; - teachers of VET schools involved that will be able to improve their teaching performance and the quality of their work; - companies hosting students whose knowledge and skills developed at school will be directly linked -to the work-based learning path; - VET schools that will be able to get benefits and using materials."