GATE – Kick-off Meeting
On the 2nd and 3rd of March, GATE project partners met in Kaunas, Lithuania, at the Vytautas Magnus University center for gifted pupils.
Venue: Kaunas, Lithuania
Leading organization: Vytautas Magnus University
Period: 2-3.03.2022
The aim of this meeting is to get to know and better understand the needs and challenges of each participating institution, and to find out what trends are prevailing in the education of gifted children. During this meeting, the GATE project was presented in detail, its objectives, expected results and the plan of activities were discussed in detail, and the partners shared their knowledge, experience and expectations related to the project topic.
One of the days of the meeting was devoted to clarifying the terms relevant to the project and to jointly deciding on what we call a “gifted child” in the project. Gifted children and their teachers and non-formal education providers, mentors, implementers are the main target groups, so the meeting also focused on the analysis of the short and long term impact of the target groups, using the tool Impact+ (IMPACT+).
We plan to review the progress towards the qualitative and quantitative impact indicators at each meeting. During this meeting, the Dissemination Strategy was also discussed, the project website and social network were introduced and the expected process and outcome evaluation during the project was discussed. The meeting was very productive. A good start, half of the work was done, so we all came back motivated and started with the creation of the first deliverable.
2nd Transnational Partners Meeting:
On the 4-5th of January, 2023, the 2nd transnational GATE project’ partners meeting was organized.
Venue: Rishon LeZion, Israel
Leading organization: Ron Vardi Center
Period: 4-5.01.2023
The partners discussed the project status, finalization of the 1st deliverable – the Methodological Material – which is the theoretical background for teachers to recognize gifted pupils, as well to understand their education, to know more about skills needed to be gifted kids teacher, and agreed to carry out a review of the prepared parts, which will be used to refine the material, which will then be translated into the national languages of the partners – Lithuanian, Latvian and Hebrew. The main review will be made by prof. Yehuda Hamovitz, who is experienced teachers trainer when we talk about gifted pupils education.
The partners also discussed the development of the second deliverable – GATE training programe – which is made using the experience and steps developed during the 1st Training event and the 2nd Training event which will be organized in March, 2023. Partners shared ideas and agreed on a work plan for the programme development.
We also tackled topics such as dissemination, evaluation, impact on target groups.
The meeting was useful for the development of the project partnership and for the decision-making process, which is important for the further implementation of the project tasks.
During this meeting partnership had unique possibility to visit Israel Parliament and to have a discussion with parliament members about gifted kids education in Israel, strategical importance of it, also to present to the members GATE project and ideas we work on, as well results we will achieve all together, learning from Israel experience. Another unique experience was to visit Karari Realic gymnasium, where they have gifted kids classrooms and to have couple of hours discussion with gifted kids’ teachers and gifted 7-8 grade pupils.
Time in Israel went very productive: intelligent people met, who shared their insights, experience, improved knowledge in gifted kids teaching, discuss GATE project which was presented widely, starting from Parliament of Israel (The Knesset), Municipality of Rishon LeZion, Reali Gymnasium and extending ideas during the partners meeting in Ron Vardi gifted kids centre.
3rd Transnational Partners Meeting:
This transnational meeting will be focused on discussing the exploitation of Results, as well as to agree on the final evaluation, sustainability and further ideas for continuing cooperation and collaboration activities. Also, a strong focus will be put on the Final Report to be submitted after the project ends.
Venue: Riga, Latvia
Leading organization: ISMA University of Applied Sciences
Period: planned March, 2024