"The ""Eco-Hiking Europe"" project was aimed to enhance, develop and improve participants' professional and transferable skills and competencies. Five secondary schools from the Czech Republic, Finland, Romania, Greece and Portugal cooperated and exchanged groups of students in order to spread the idea of European citizenship, discover and explore each countries' natural treasures and to create new materials and other outputs that has not been attempted yet. Most activities took place outdoors in the environment of first-hand experience and learning by discovering. Since the schools prepare students for their professional careers, the activities were focused on aspects of their employability in present and future labour market. The main objectives concerning the students and teachers were:- developing knowledge of English for communication as well as for their professional lives- deepening and enhancing their theoretical, social, interpersonal, communicative and also physical skills- increasing their chances in the labour market - working and cooperation in international teams - improving orientation in the real - out of class world- expanding their horizons and knowledge of variety of natural phenomena- helping them realize differences as well as similarities between partner countries related to their cultural, social and historical aspects that will enhance mutual understanding and respect for individual cultures. The main targets concerning the institutions- internationalization of the schools- enrichment of general and specific parts of the schools' curricula- implementation teaching of ecology in English and transferable skills in curricula. -facing each institution with the counterpart/competition from other countries - catching up with current development European-wide. Approximately four hundred of participants were involved in the project, most consisting of students and their teachers who planned, implemented, realized, assessed and disseminated activities and outcomes gained and organised in the project.We believe that the overall project team with the cooperation of the schools' implementation teams and participants was able to achieve the goals and fruitfully accomplished most of the activities and products planned in the proposal. The activities in the project covered wide variety of work. On one hand, the participants used IT tools (social network, website, video sharing...) for communication, work and presentation results of their explorations using English as Lingua Franca, on the other hand though, mainly, they discovered, explored, hiked and analysed under expert supervision different types and kinds of natural habitats and unique natural geoparks. They learnt how to cooperate, communicate, suggest solutions and share own ideas and attitudes towards wide range of natural aspects in order to produce outcomes usable for their professional lives (photobook, nature trail proposal, videos with worksheets or presentations) as well as for ideas for exhibitions and public relations. Five international outdoors workshops focused on five different kinds of natural phenomena were organized in the project. The receiving school which was responsible for preparation, organization and assessment of the workshop created a detailed schedule which combined hikes in the actual natural area with acitivities undertaken while hiking and consequential fifth day at school where results of outdoors activities were analysed, discussed and put into theory. During the major part of each workshop - hiking part - participants worked as one international team under the lead of receiving organisation. Depending on country, students discovered rare and unique natural phenomena such as various national parks across Europe, unique palm trees, birds, snakes, herbs and spices, marshes and swamps, lakes, geothermal areas and many more. The whole international team hiked and worked on various tasks outdoors, prepared by implementation teams of receiving organisation. Students explored nature which they don't have in their own country and learnt many new skills. Major results were detailed photobooks from each workshop, new worksheets for schools, new, complete nature trail proposal ready to be constructed. Methodology was covered by coordinators' assistant who is an expert on Ecology+Geography. We believe that the project helped students to improve and enhance not only their professional skills but also transferable competencies so important for their employability or entrepreneurship. Moreover, it made students aware of belonging to a community at local, regional, national and European level."

"""Mission: Europe"" project arises from IES Pérez Galdós experience during over six years in carrying our long-term mobilities for students within the frame of different European Projects. Its main aim is to foster the Spanish language as a means of communication in Europe while offering students from other European countries, who are studying Spanish as an L2 or L3, the chance to improve their Spanish language knowledge and to learn about Spanish culture. We also focus on the cultural asset of having this type of mobility in countries where CLIL or EMILE are being implemented, like in our school, and where our students may use Spanish as a lingua franca for communication while improving their level of other foreign languages such as French, Italian or English (or even learn an L3 such as Portuguese or Finnish). Furthermore, we consider that the long-term mobility concept provides per se a huge opportunity for personal growth and learning for both students and teachers who participate in it while having a tremendous impact on the hosting institutions.Within our project our travelling teachers and students will become natives of the target language of the project 8Spanish in this case, for IES Pérez Galdós participants) and they'll be able to share their knowledge of Spanish language and culture.Students and teachers who will visit us for two months will be French and Italian language natives, and in the case of Portugal and Finland, if not native at least they'll have an excellent level of English, either because they've been trained in CLIL or because they've had a good EFL training. Furthermore, we expect students participating in the mobilities to assume the roles of becoming peer trainers, by giving lectures and workshops to students of other educational levels in their mother tongue or in English (Portugal and Finland) about the situation of specific values in their countries. We have chosen the topics of gender equality, environmental awareness, human rights, coexistence and mediation, health education and responsible consumerism. Finally, the long-term teaching mobilities will be carried out simultaneously to the long-term learning mobilities of students."

"As established in the ""Coordinated Plan on the development and use of Artificial Intelligence Made in Europe - 2018"", the creation of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) plan for the EU states is a key field for the European Union in the years to come. This plan must place the EU in a privileged position in this eminent technological revolution. To achieve such a challenging objective, a long-term education plan is mandatory, so AI topics are addressed in general education level, that is, previous to tertiary formation. Consequently, the first approach to such general AI formation should be targeted to high school degrees, that is, students that will enter to the universities in a two/three years temporal horizon. These students will be the first generation that will encounter AI systems in their day-to-day life, and they will have to be prepared for that, understanding their operating principles and increasing their opportunities to enter the future job market.The EU plan for AI emphasizes the social inclusion opportunities that will open in this new era, and encourages the member states to face them with specific actions. In this sense, a global training in intelligent systems for European high school students will help to provide equal opportunities between different regions regardless of their technological advance level. Moreover, it will help to reduce gender differences, because AI fields of application are very diverse, which can engage a wider range of personal interests, so girls will know them before they choose their university studies and specialization. This will lead to have more women employed in technical jobs in the near future, reducing the opportunity gap when accessing to better positions.Considering this context, the present project has as its main objective:The development of an Artificial Intelligence curriculum adapted to high school education in EuropeThe curriculum will be targeted to students from 15 to 17 years old (upper secondary school and high school) with some previous basic formation in robotics and programming. It will cover a two-year period previous to their incorporation to tertiary education. The AI teaching approach that will be followed in this proposal is aligned with EU recommendations, so it will be focused on embedded intelligence, that is, programming real-world devices that interact with the real environment. This requires to rely in some specific hardware elements in order to implement the teaching material. To this end, in order to follow the most general approach as possible, we establish a key premise in the project:Using the student’s mobile phone (smartphone) as a central technological element to all educational material to be developedCurrent smartphones have the technological level required for AI teaching in terms of sensors, actuators, computing power and communications; and they will have it in the future because they are in continuous update. They can be considered as general public devices, with a very similar presence in all the European states. This is very important for this proposal, because a large majority of high school students have their own Smartphone, so they can use it for learning. This significantly reduces the cost of introducing this discipline, and equalizes regions with different economic capacity. The main results of the project correspond to four intellectual outputs:1. A book (digital and printed) with teaching units for the teacher 2. A book (digital and printed) with activities for the student, as well as 3. AI Libraries and programming environments that allow high school students to develop the teaching units4. A Best Practice Guide encompassing all the intangible results and conclusions extracted from the activities carried out during the project, both from a technical and from a social perspective.The consortium is composed by five countries representing regions with different degrees of technological progress in the classroom, and covering the European region from east to west and from south to north. The coordinating team comes from the University of Coruña, in Spain, and it has a wide experience researching and teaching in AI and robotics. This team will develop all the intellectual outputs with the collaboration of the partner schools. Teachers will provide their pedagogical skills and experience to the project, while students will be used as testing groups in five training activities to generalize the teaching material to all the EU.The global expected impact of this proposal is very ambitious: using the teaching material developed here as a reference for a future official curriculum in European secondary education. Regarding the participant organizations, the project will impact will on their technological capacity, will open the students’ possibilities to access to AI tertiary education, and will increase the international recognition of these educational centers as technological references"

<< Background >>The BIG GAME project addresses the three common needs identified at the European level, which are 1) to promote the STEM approach in learning, 2)to support digital transformation, and 3) to support the fight against climate change. Moreover, the project continues the previous STEM learning related developing work of part of the project consortium, by noticing its weak points and tackling the critical issues with a new pedagogical approach in cooperation with the strengthened partner team.The context of these European-wide needs can be described in detail as follows: Firstable, as interest in studying science subjects has declined across Europe and, according to research findings, learning outcomes have deteriorated, there is perceived Europe-wide recognition of the need to promote and increase the STEM approach in teaching. Although, awakened by this need, quite many individual STEM or STEAM subjects have been created into the secondary school level curriculum e.g. in the Nordic countries, this does not meet the need for extensive and multidisciplinary learning and combining of different subjects for examining various phenomena in the context of sciences. Secondly, as part of digital transformation and the recognition of digital skills being crucial for citizens of current and future society, everyone should gain sufficient basic skills in basic education to master various ICT tools and working methods (e.g. Teknologiateollisuus.fi). Schools and teachers have a tremendous role in this task, as it is impossible to influence the equipment and practices of homes in large populations. However, according to OECD (https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/), gaps in the digital skills of European teachers have been identified, as they often do not have the time or the opportunities offered by the work environment to adopt new technology-based ways and methods of learning. There is often too much confidence also in young students' digital skills because they use a lot of technology, especially mobile applications. However, the use of new technology alone does not guarantee the versatile accumulation of digital skills. Those who spend a lot of time on games may still need instruction e.g. in critical information retrieval. (E.g. Valtioneuvosto.fi: Digiajan peruskoulu II loppuraportti 2020).Thirdly, the BIG GAME project deals with the issue of climate change and fighting against it. The values considering the climate are common and shared deeply between the Europeans of any age. Recent international surveys of values for young people (e.g. 2017 Eurobarometer/Flash Eurobarometer 455; the 2017 World Economic Forum Global Shapers Survey) show that climate change, environmental protection and ecological issues are the youth’s key concerns and the most serious questions about the future. Also, the fight against climate change, alongside education, was seen in the eyes of the EU youth as a key task for the EU. As part of the EU climate action and the European Green Deal, the EU itself is fighting against climate change through cooperation with international partners, in the level of its programmes' priorities and actions.<< Objectives >>Referring to the background, the needs, and the context mentioned, the project's objectives are:1) Promoting interest and excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) approach to education through multidisciplinary learning and problem-solving related to environmental context, in a form of a serious learning game;2)Supporting digital transformation in schools by providing an online and hybrid learning model as well as digital storytelling approach based methodology and tools to be used in learning and cooperation in digital environments;3) Supporting the versatile accumulation of digital skills of both teachers and 11-16 year old students;4) Raising awareness of environmental and climate change issues and engaging in the fight against climate change through impressive and attitude-shaping immersive learning experiences.<< Implementation >>In detail, during the progress of the project, the following activities will be implemented:During IO (Intellectual Output) 1:1. Defining the BIG GAME game concept and the game world;2. Analysing of the environmental problems/issues addressed; 3. Development of the imaginary game world of the BIG GAME;4. Development of the STEM learning model, game rules and the competition of the BIG GAME;5. Mastering of the game during piloting in the digital game environment.During IO (Intellectual Output) 2:1. Defining the BIG GAME digital storytelling approach;2. Analysing the existing experiences and good practices on how to construct digital storytelling scenarios in STEM education;3. Analysing the existing experiences and good practices on how to assess digital storytelling scenarios in STEM education;4. Development of a set of story-driven STEM learning scenarios on environmental issues;5. Development of the handbook and the toolkit on Digital Storytelling Approach in STEM Education.During IO (Intellectual Output) 3: 1. Setting of the digital bank for the environmental STEM learning objects designed and developed in the project;2. Defining the planning and piloting organisation and the criteria for assessment of the BIG GAME competition;3. Definition and implementation of the training campaigns for the european contest implementation;4. Organisation and management of training events to assist the participating teachers with the project activities;5. Continuous updating and increasing of story-driven learning objects in the digital bank.<< Results >>The main results will be as follows:- The BIG GAME Learning Concept and Model- Handbook and Toolkit on Digital Storytelling Approach in STEM Education - Digital Bank of Environmental STEM Learning ObjectsThe envisaged impacts on the target groups are as follows: Concerning 11-16 year old students: - the interest and excellence in (STEM) approach to education has increased through multidisciplinary and game-based online learning model and digital storytelling approach- the versatile accumulation of digital skills has increased via participating in the project’s activity- the awareness of environmental and climate change issues has increased- the immersive learning experiences have affected the attitudes towards climate change issues in the positive wayConcerning secondary school teachers:- the interest and excellence in (STEM) approach to education has increased by the teaching method provided by the new pedagogical multidisciplinary and game-based online learning model and digital storytelling approach- the ability to respond to the digital transformation in school has improved by the new pedagogical model of online and hybrid learning and easy-to-use, versatile digital tools for learning, teaching and co-development- the versatile accumulation of digital skills has increased via participating in the project’s activity

The project was launched for finding and piloting new ways for tackling social exclusion of young people especially with migration background. Both in Spain and Finland, the risk of social exclusion or poverty is high for foreign-born youth (53,9 % and 50 %, respectively). The project aimed at empowerment of the youth towards active and global citizenship. In order to bridge the gap between locals and newly arrived immigrants, the schools developed a participatory operating model for advancing social integration of young people. In Joensuu the objective culminated during a Cultures Together day, which was prepared together with students, immigrant youngsters and local cooperation organizations as a part of long-term network building launched in the project. The model was adapted and piloted also in Pamplona. Cooperation with local community and organizations as well as students' and immigrant youth’s active participation and responsibility over carrying out the activities were central approaches in the project. The logic of the project followed participatory action –research method, which was used in developing the integration model, preparation of pedagogical material and guiding the peer activities. The project was coordinated by Lyseo Upper Secondary School in Joensuu in partnership with IES eunate BHI in Pamplona. As the project had a strong emphasis on building cooperation with other local actors, a number of organizations and other actors participated. Cooperation model in Pamplona connected the school with UNRWA (Palestinian question), Unidad de Barrio Txantrea and Ansoain, Sinarzubi and Ellacuria Foundation, ALBOAN and a network “Solidarity Schools” run by the Government of Navarre. In Joensuu, the school built cooperation networks with city of Joensuu (collection of information about immigration processes and projects, drama activities), JoMoni (NGO, provided background information and co-organized possibilities for hearing migrants’ life stories), City library (‘Multicultural library’-project, Joensuu city theatre (attending a play, discussions with the production team), North Karelia municipal education and training consortium (Riveria, preparatory class for immigrants) and Lukkarila homes (migrant housing). The project involved a great number of activities both during and between the mobilities. Locally, a lot of effort was put into building cooperation networks for mutually beneficial cooperation and creating models that were operational for locals and newly arrived migrants alike. The aim of the activities was to create possibilities for meeting and interaction between young people as well as to provide information about migration both from institutional and personal points of view. During the project, young people were in a key position to find out needs and wishes related to different actions aiming to social integration of the immigrants. Regular peer activities took place in Joensuu (meetings in library, event planning, game meetings…) and Pamplona (visits to NGOs, dance classes, games…). The activities included both instructed workshops and more non-formal meetings where young people discussed given topics independently in groups consisting of students of partner organizations and immigrants. Local organizations working with migrants were visited, and background information about migration process collected. The information was then compared during learning, teaching and training activities. In the course of the project the teachers prepared pedagogical material based on the experiences of leading workshops, visits, other project activities as well as the knowledge gained during the project. Pedagogical insight was also shared with organziations working with migrants. To offer a possibility to as wide a participation as possible, the project involved a different group of students from the participating organizations each year. After the first year, the project activities were revised according to the feedback collected previously and developed accordingly. Most of the migrants and asylum seekers were willing to participate throughout the project, and the number of participants grew as the project proceeded. Educational content on the basis of NGO and other local cooperation was created countinuously during the project. The method for content creation was participatory research (preliminary survey, feedback, revision of plans, correction, action). The approach was based on a problem based and phenomena based learning and digital learning environments.As a result of this project, the multicultural awareness and motivation to act as an active and global citizen increased among the students, immigrants, students as well as the partner organizations. The local stakeholder organizations have expressed their willingness to continue common workshops and meetings with students which was started in the project as integrated part of their regular activities.