The problem Industry 4.0 was a hot topic already in 2018 when this project was at the application phase, and it is even more the case today in 2021. The need for robotics and computerization is growing. While this will reduce the number of jobs in assembly and production, a significant number of jobs particularly in IT and data science will be created. However, children have less and less interest in such engineering or technical careers as they believe these subjects are too difficult for them to succeed and not suitable for women. The target groups Main target: STEM teachers Sub target: their students (secondary level) Others: relevant stakeholders, among which career counsellors, educators, trainers, policy makers, representatives of business sector. The solution The DIRECTION 4.0 (D4.0) project has developed a set of didactic materials that will help STEM teachers to introduce and promote the concept of Industry 4.0 among students through a Compendium. A 4.0 Career Roadmap serves as a professional career roadmap, encouraging students to choose more technical fields of study. The project also facilitates the building of a network of teachers through Space 4.0 - toolbox for teachers which contains all deliverables built during the project and helps teachers to meet and share experiences. Main objectives D4.0 aims at promoting the concept of Industry 4.0 and related technologies among secondary school students and encouraging them to choose technical careers. This is achieved by providing teachers with updated didactic materials, researching the 4.0 skills profile and giving the target groups a better understanding of the concept. The partners The partnership comprises 7 partners from 7 countries: a higher education institution focused on training operational engineers, a secondary school, a higher education institution providing courses on robotics, an expert in new technologies related to Industry 4.0, a consulting bureau dedicated to promotion of cutting-edge technological solutions, a consultancy offering services ranging from business development and public funding acquisition to custom implementation, an IT training provider and e-learning solutions developer. Methodology Thorough research has been done by all partners on selected topics of Industry 4.0 in order to prepare the Compendium which gives a good idea of the state of implementation especially in Europe, the economic and social factors, expected trends and challenges. The topics were: Smart Factories, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Cloud Computing, 3D printing, Robotics, Cyber security. For each topic the subjects required for a career in the area have been added (general science, ICT, mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry). An annex was also developed with the methodology to create a workshop. A job market analysis has been conducted next with a field research to determine the Model Skills Set that would be developed. After a skills verification done with students, the 4.0 Career Roadmap report has been prepared. Meanwhile, all deliverables were uploaded in Space 4.0 - toolbox for teachers with the Compendium transformed as e-courses, the Skills verification tool set and pilot testing done to validate all developed content in the project for it to be finalised. Results The outcomes of D4.0 comprise the: - Compendium 4.0 - 4.0 Career Roadmap Report - Skills Verification Tool - Space 4.0 - toolbox for teachers Long-term benefits With the support of the Space 4.0 - toolbox for teachers, a virtual space developed for sustainability of the e-course and deliverables, teachers will be in position to present their students updated content and tools about Industry 4.0 to ensure young people are better aware of what Industry 4.0 is, what kind of skills are needed to work in the fields described, and encourage them to choose technical and engineering careers to be part of Europe’s workforce to build the future. (Even though the course of the project has been affected by the Covid-19 sanitary crisis, partners ensured the high quality of the project, as planned in the application.)

"The CodeIT project concentrates on programming competence of teachers of non-IT subjects. The huge technological progress has forced the situation in which IT, and in particular, programming become the key competence of the 21st century. Today, digitization and technology development make programming language a language of communication. It is worth pointing out that programming is a method of developing useful competences such as causal thinking, analytics, and teamwork. We must be aware that children who are currently enrolled in school will in future perform professions that do not yet exist, and the only thing we can say about these jobs is that they will be technology based. Ability to programming is recognised by the European authorities. Development of this skill is one of requirements in terms of development of key competencies. EU recommendations in “Developing Key Competences at School in Europe” – Eurydice report [2012], points that it is needed to include ICT competencies in ISCED 1-3. Also authorities of national levels (Ministries) have recognised programming as crucial in the development of children and lots of funding is addressed to teachers of teaching those children that are in classes 1-3. While large amount of money is being directed to train the teachers of initial education, the other teachers – those that teach in higher grades of elementary schools and gymnasiums seem to be omitted as far as programming training is concerned. This causes situation that on one hand children that had good start in the area of programming education in classes 1-3 will not receive the same level of education when they enter grade 4 and on the other, the teachers of higher grades don’t perceive as their professions are as strong as their colleagues and their self-esteem is lower when they compare themselves to those that teach younger children. According to Eurydice report, in project’s partner countries, ICT competencies are intended to be included in core curricula in primary and secondary schools. Countries (except RO & BG) agreed, that this competence has interdisciplinary status, what means that there is a need to implement it cross the curricula. Since that time, the efforts to make it happen have been made, but only IT applied cross curricular approach and implemented computer programming/coding in other subjects, but still, it is not a compulsory requirement at any level of education [European Schoolnet data, Computing our future, 2014, update 2015]. In other partners’ countries programming is not located in other subjects. In order to fill this gap the project aim is to rise programming competences of teachers of non-IT subjects teaching in grades 4 and higher through development of innovative resources: - Virtual Learning Environment for Teachers containing training materials in algorithmic and programming ant its didactic in other than IT subjects, - Model lesson plans incorporating programming for Chemistry, Geography, Maths and Physics, - Handbook entitled ""Advance your teaching skills with the use of algorithmic and programming"", and their wide dissemination and exploitation. Primary target group: non-IT teachers from elementary schools (grades 4 and higher) and gymnasiums with special attention to teachers of Chemistry, Geography, Math and Physics Secondary target group: students of primary schools in grades 4 and higher and gymnasiums (where it applies). The project will directly involve 1007 participants. Teachers will be involved in various project activities: development of materials, providing feedback, evaluation, piloting. Students will be also involved during piloting phase during which models of lessons with incorporated programming will be tested. Stakeholders and decision makers will participate in multiplier events and in specially created stakeholders committees. The methodology that the partnership intends to apply is going to be based on proper, competent management and effective monitoring of the activities, on-going assessment and evaluation of project outcomes, rigorous quality management, appropriate dissemination activities to generate awareness of the aims and objectives of the project. Assurance that the outputs are accomplished with high quality, on time and within the budget will be priority for all partners separately and for the consortium as a whole. It is expected that the impact of the project will be significant at all levels but especially or regional levels in which partners have access to the Centres of teachers training and through them, to practically every school in given region. The project’s desired impact is to influence the decisions about school education referring to incorporating programming into non-IT subjects. It is expected that 250 teachers will enhance their competences at the end of the project and about 1000 after 3 years from the project end."

Youth unemployment is an European problem, where 5.2 millions of teenagers make their first decisions wtih an impact on their future life. Most of them regard education as not useful at all as leading them to quit studying and abandon school. Those two issues will be the leitmotifs to be understood and respected. In this context, school should have an important role in developing non formal and informal learning giving expression to multiculturalist attitudes and the construction of personal fulfillment. To help teens make wise and fruitful decisions concerning their lives, we would like to involve students from our schools into the pan-European project called “Empower students with entrepreneurial skills ”. This project emphasises the build of ‘skills for the 21st century’, develop transversal skills such as entrepreneurship and highlights ‘the ability to think critically, take initiative, problem solving and work collaboratively’. These ‘entrepreneurial skills’ should be given particular attention, since they not only help to achieve concrete entrepreneurial activity, but also enhance the employability of young people in each partner´s country and in any European country. The priorities addressed by our project are: (i) Promoting the take-up of practical entrepreneurial experiences in education, training and youth work and (ii) Improving the attainment of young people, particularly those at risk of early school leaving which will be developed by seven schools in seven diverse countries – Portugal, France, England, Italy, Romania, Poland and Finland – whose learning and teaching profiles are different. So we defined four main key-Competences: (i) Raising awareness of cultural and geographical heritage of our regions; (ii) Getting to know the products´ features related to each region’s natural environment; (iii) Becoming acquainted with the local range of industrial, commercial and handicraft associations; (iv) Developing ‘the ability to think critically, take initiative, problem solving and work collaboratively’ through creative entrepreneurship workshops. We believe that the most relevant topics our project deal with are the following: 1) Entrepreneurial learning - entrepreneurship education, 2) Creativity and culture and 3) ICT - new technologies - digital competences. To achieve them we established a mix methodology to develop this project Action-Research. This framework allows us to carry out the project into three action-cycles. Each cycle is strictly related to the going up of the project in the beginning of each new year. Thus we decided to have three transnational project meetings, attended only by school coordinators. To measure the quality of the project we will use different tools to collect data such as questionnaires, surveys and focus group targeted to students, parents, teachers and local community. The main results expected are: (i) Exhibitions of students works concerning to the past and present of their regions for different economic sectors and creativity and entrepreneurship; (ii) Reports on the attitude of students to entrepreneurial activities, the importance of formal education and their needs; (iii) Films, publicity spots, presentations, models, photo albums and posters on the perspectives and news ideas of students in relation to regional development of products or particular economic sectors in their region; (iv) Website for other schools from our areas giving them information on how they can implement similar activities in their schools; (v) Form a group of students and teachers to present/share their knowledge in regional and national schools. As far as dissemination of the project the target groups will be students from different European schools, parents and community since being an entrepreneur in education also involves knowledge and share of good practices at national and international level. School websites, school papers, bulletin boards, exhibitions in school halls, libraries and others areas; Facebook, Etwinning and blogs, will be the internal and external privileged channels used to disseminate the project outcomes, whose the responsible for this phase of the project are the coordinators of each school partner. At the end of the project we look forward to fostering the impact on key-Competences gained by:1. students – independence, discipline, creativity, tolerance and team work skills, creativity and entrepreneurship; Language development and ICT literacy; 2. teachers – language and ICT improvements, team work and problem solving techniques; 3. community – improving cooperation with students’ parents, local authorities and other institutions and enhancing school prestige and popularity;4. school partners – cooperation, experience, motivation and opportunity to exchange professional experience and good practices.

Because mathematics is usually communicated in universally understood symbols it may appear that it does not require a lot of language to understand it but, in fact, its reasoning processes are very dependent on vocabulary and syntax. You may be able to write mathematics in symbols, but you need words and grammar to speak sums and equations, read about them and understand them when you hear them. When students do mathematics in a foreign language, the language itself adds a layer of difficulty to something that is already abstract and opaque. The result, as research shows, is that many secondary and tertiary level students, though they may be good at maths in their own languages, perform at below their level of ability when doing it in a foreign language. Conference attendees, academics and policy makers have asserted that the language of mathematics requires special attention and that there are very few resources available for teaching it.This was the background to the Mathspeak project. We set as our primary aim, the production of a language learning resource for secondary school students living in foreign European countries where they were not native speakers. Mathspeak would supplement foreign language learning by focussing exclusively on the language of mathematics. It would develop users’ receptive skills to the point that language problems ceased to obstruct their understanding of mathematics and enable them to verbally express mathematical concepts, appropriate to their age groups, put number problems into words and handle mathematical terminology with confidence. We put together a team which mixed educational practitioners with the creators of educational materials. The idea was that schools in various European countries would supply teachers and students to pilot the material whose feedback would influence the content and style of the course material.There is a well-known, though by no means universal, resistance to mathematics, especially amongst young people. So, in order to address this resistance, catch and maintain students’ interest in the language of mathematics, the writers took advantage of the current popularity of graphic novels and used comic strips to put over the teaching points. They took the form of light-hearted sketches peppered with fantasy and humour. The material was written one mathematical-themed unit at a time. Each unit was made available to the Mathspeak project partners through the AdminProject portal. The units were in three forms: 1. The finished English version comic strips, 2 A set of comic strips with no text (the blanks), 3. A document with text only for translation. When the translation was complete it would be transferred to the blanks by the IT experts at Danmar Computers. Partners were supplied with tests for the purpose of getting objective data about whether or not students were learning from the course. Most of the partners also used the original English version for the purposes of teaching English as a foreign language. They fed back assessments of the materials which informed further writing.Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic intervened. In the middle of the project, schools closed. Though the Mathspeak project was temporarily suspended, our plans for piloting were seriously disrupted. Even when work restarted, our partner schools remained closed. Some partners were able to continue piloting in a limited way by incorporating Mathspeak into their online teaching. Other partners did not have this facility available. However, the writing and translating continued and the material was completed. 32 students participated in the piloting process, which was not an unsatisfactory number in the circumstancesAs schools have slowly returned to comparative normality, teachers have begun to use Mathspeak and, as we had hoped, news of it is spreading to other institutions. We are continuing to promote it and thereby bring it and the educational issues surrounding it to the notice of policy makers and syllabus designers.

Isendoorn College in Warnsveld, Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore Mattei in Fiorenzuola, and Scuola per l'Europa di Parma have been working together successfully for four years. Over these years we have organised many activities and excursions related to the topics of food, climate and sustainability. We now seek to integrate this into a structured and coherent project that have perfected the content as well as the organisation of the project. During the previous exchanges between our schools we have found food to be a recurring factor in the experience of our pupils. Food is not only one of those things that makes one feel at home, it is also one of the accessible ways of getting to know another culture. Food is what distinguishes one culture from another, but it is also a meeting point and a way of showing hospitality. The project offers a genuine multi-cultural experience that promotes mutual understanding. We want to give pupils confidence in their own cultural identity – the bedrock for their development as European citizens - but we also encourage a European and global perspective. In addition to the cultural aspect, food is a crucial part of to provide Education for Sustainable Development. Lately there has been a widespread movement among young people in Europe to claim more action to preserve our planet. We want to let them develop tools to do so themselves. The global issues of rising population and climate change are intimately connected to the issue of food. One of the main questions for the next generation will be how to feed the world in a sustainable way. During this project pupils will learn to respect and appreciate different cultures and they will think about issues such as equality, sustainability and appreciation of cultural heritage. The pupils will find out for themselves what actions they can take to contribute to a better, more sustainable, future. The main objective of the project is to enable pupils to develop their own projects that they will carry out in their communities in Warnsveld, Parma and Fiorenzuola. These promote the sustainable production and consumption of food and the cultural heritage of food. In addition the project will promote tolerance, co-operation, communication and concern for others and it allows pupils to develop their 21st century skills, such as critical thinking, IT & media skills, debating and public speaking. At the end of the project, pupils are challenged to extent their scope of action to other communities or countries. What can they do to further increase the impact of their interventions? The resulting plans will be the basis for a next generation of pupils that will look across the border of the Netherlands and Italy.