"This project has the title ""Fundamental Rights in European Education („FREE“)"" , a suitable subtitle might be ""How to deal with freedom of expression in a social media context.""In this day and age, our students, but also we teachers, find ourselves almost on a daily basis confronted with fundamental rights issues. Tragic events like the terror attacks in France, Denmark, Turkey, Belgium and other parts of the world and the consequent ever growing flood of information and opinions about the topics of refugees, religious conflicts, racism and the like on the internet present a challenge that we have to face. How then do schools in different countries, different societies, empower their students to be able to exercise this fundamental right? What do the curricula offer as an up-to-date approach to tackle this issue? How can, in a social-media context, a respectful way of interaction be acquired and implemented?In this project we aimed at providing our students with an essential understanding of the topic and developed concrete teaching examples, thus, exchanging and sharing examples of good or best practices. Our students collected experiences in this field. They, during this project and afterwards as well, were enabled to respectfully but decisively express themselves in a written, oral and artistic way. In order to tackle all those objectives, students had to engage in open discussion with students from other countries, sharing other cultural and religious values and beliefs. That is also why country-specific aspects had been chosen to provide an insight into the transnational facets of the project. More precisely, transnational teaching and/or learning activities took place in each partner country with preparatory tasks and assigments in between those meetings. The activities ranged from producing video clips to exchanging best practices for using social media as a means of teaching and learning to artistic ways of expressing one's ideas and beliefs in graffiti. Additional to partners from Germany, Finland, Sweden and Austria, there was also a Turkish participant, providing the unique possibility to engage in an inter-religious dialogue. Not only did this project aim at increasing students' (social-)media skills and competences by using Facebook, Twitter and Co. and reflecting the usage, but also at providing students with the necessary tools to express their ideas and beliefs in a respectful and confident way. Using social media goes hand in hand with the publication of the project's results and outcomes. The project’s Blog provided the main platform for the dissemination of the project's results. Main activities: Finland: - presentation and discussion of the videos and the survey on social media- creating posters and a marketing plan (Kajaani University)- discussion Simon Sinek “Millenials” (teaching material/ lesson)- visits to an Visual Artist living and working close to Paltamo using modern technology to work and stay connected regardless of the rather remote location.- visit to Kainuun Opisto Community College, a school teaching refugees, engaging with those students and learning first-hand about challenges and chances for refugees in Finland.- visit to Kajaani University of Applied sciences, where students were presented different studies in the field of digital technologies.Austria:- Two days of workshops on “Theater of the Oppressed”- Creating Graffiti, printing T-ShirtsGermany I:- workshop history and development of social media at University Regensburg- visit to Flossenbürg concentration campSweden:- mindfulness of the other: drawing your partner- presentation and discussion of the survey on refugees- “The Journey” and “More than one story” games to get to know understand refugees’ experiences- presentation by Patrick Gruczkun: “Intercultural Competence. Behaviours and attitudes to cross-cultural encounters”.Turkey: - making music together, workshop and concert- presentation and discussion of the videos on “More than one story” told by refugees- presentation on the common ethics of religion- a guided tour to three different places of worship: A synagogue in Taksim, the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate in Fener and thehe Süleymaniye Mosque in Süleymaniye All the products and outcomes of the project can be found on the project blog. The most prominent being the brochure on social media and the teaching material.All of the participating schools face the same challenges and together we developed approaches and sharing best practice. Regardless of minor setbacks, Europe is growing together ever closer while still being able to welcome and integrate the huge number of refugees that is recently fleeing war an violence in the world. A good understanding of one's own culture and the feeling of identity are the foundation for showing respect and finding common ground."

“Sustainability: Think Globally - Act Locally” was planned as a two year long project originating in the idea of developing a sustainable change in the way of thinking, a more respectful behaviour and an improvement of STEM and CLIL skills. The issue of sustainability is very present and our everyday choices have an impact on the future. A sustainable change must happen among the whole population because it is a common concern. One of our most significant tasks as teachers is to educate young people in critical thinking about current and upcoming problems. The participating schools and nations are facing similar challenges and only together we are able to protect nature for future generations. Our aim is to find solutions and give an insight into ongoing projects which could protect our environment through active learning activities and by comparing regional challenges. To support the local community as well as the European one, it is important to implement and widen critical thinking and negotiating solutions.In this project schools from six countries (Germany, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Belgium and Netherlands) with an active working group of 35 teachers and 250 students came together. We worked on global and local aspects of sustainability with content related focus as well as e-skills and CLIL skills. The Partners are members in programs like “Eco-Schools” “Europaschule” “NUFFIC” and “MINT EC”.As our project topic is a wide one, we decided to divide it into blocks. The content related blocks were geothermal energy, forestry, biomass energy, solar energy, wind energy, water energy, utilisation and purification of water, utilisation of plastic and electronic waste. Each country had a specification so we were able to create targeted questions and tasks on which the students worked. We led them to work in international groups to ensure their improvement of English skills and international understanding (CLIL). Only during the preparations for each trip they worked in their national school groups. Our activities consisted of visiting local partners who gave insight into ongoing projects and possible solutions for sustainable ways and active working parts during the activities. We worked with a lot of local partners and had exciting and interesting study trips. We produced our own solar cars, saw a few hundred meter deep digging holes, walked through a coal mine, worked in the forest and planted new trees, felt the power of water, had an olfactory experience in a water purification station, felt the hight of a wind wheel, created a mobile solar charging station. These are a few highlights we experienced during our project. We created an interactive book including working results which is linked to our project homepage where all our activities can be seen, local partners can be found and working results are listed. Students created lessons which can be used by teachers and students who want to work on the topic. We built a mobile solar station for usage by all students, the building instructions are online to provide the possibility to rebuild it. It was a beneficial experience for all of us to be part of a multicultural team. Not only the students but also the teachers learned a lot during this project. It was a very fruitful partnership and we are already planning to continue our partnership in new projects. If you would like to read more please visit our website: https://trello.com/b/KfnFykIi/think-globally-act-locally-erasmus-projecthomepage

<< Objectives >>The major aim of the project is to raise awareness towards sustainability. We wish to achieve our aim by doing various activities and creating products that can inspire school and local communities to lead a greener lifestyle. We visit endangered places to increase motivation to a more sustainable life. While working on the project, we wish to share good practices with each other, improve various skills of the participants and make friends that can serve as a basis of other future cooperations.<< Implementation >>Although we put special emphasis on practical activities during the project, we study the most important theoretical principles of our topic so that participants can understand what and why they should do changes in their lives to make it greener. We visit relevant places (farms, museums), organise various workshops to deepen the knowledge students gain. We organise trips to endangered places to raise attention to our topic. We plan activities for the public and work with local organisations.<< Results >>With our project we would like to transform our school communities more sustainable. With the knowledge and experience we gain with the project, we wish to give a new momentum to the already existing green initiatives of our schools and apply new ones as well. We address not just the school communities but the public organisations in our area and the local people as well. Our aim is to encourage our communities to pay significantly more attention to all the fields we focus on in the meetings.