"This project was initiated following publication in the UK of the results of a large-scale survey – the BBC Loneliness Experiment - that explored the role of belongingness in different cultures. In the publication, it was clear that a lack of belonging was a common, but often confusing, experience for adolescents. Here in our Turkish High School, we had been discussing that very issue, and our teaching and counselling staff were all very excited by the work done in the UK by the researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter, who had played a major role in the BBC Loneliness Experiment. The importance of the issue of social well being was also recently highlighted again by the special Joint Information Society Committee Horizon report ""The mental health and well being challenge in FE and HE"" which addressed a different age group but demonstrated also clearly the importance of well being for learning. Teachers and counselors at the Turkish High School were looking at ways to overcome issues of belongingness among their student cohort, noticing that feelings of disconnection were heightened among students during transition years: it seemed that in those years when students move from one level to another or from one group to another, they have problems that seem to be related to feelings of not yet belonging to a group, feelings that have an effect on their overall feelings of well-being and learning effectiveness. For that reason, the High School teachers and counselors contacted the UK researchers that were behind the BBC Loneliness Experiment to see if they could work together to better understand issues of belonging in their students and build a strategy to support adolescents during difficult transition periods. Informal discussions with other schools and youth organizations across Europe suggested that many felt they had to deal at some stage with this issue among young people. Joining forces, we decided to develop our ideas into a larger project that would allow the partners to look for common solutions to help young people manage their loneliness experiences to feel more connected in their communities and schools. The project consortium was deliberately put together to include research capacity and expertise specifically related to this issue of belongingness among adolescents, educational expertise, with teachers and youth organisations representing adolescents in the relevant age groups (transition years) in order to ensure that the project has the right scope. The partners were also selected in order to represent different socio-cultural and socio-economic strata across Europe, again to be sure that the project results in relevant and concrete outcomes that are acceptable across the whole target group.The intense involvement of adolescents in the project work from the beginning of the project is important. Using innovative co-design and hackathons guarantees that the project will stay focused and on track to come up with realistic and useful solutions that will have a real impact for adolescents and that can be applied beyond the communities of the partnership. To that effect the partnership will actively disseminate their progress throughout the project and the final outcomes at the end of the project. Those outcomes include (1) a researched and validated pedagogical framework that defines and describes the issue and offers methods and strategies to teachers, youth workers and counselors to overcome the issues; and (2) the teachers, youth workers, and counselors will build concrete teaching, learning, and guidance materials based on that framework and test those in real life situations in their schools and organisations, and in other associated schools and organisations. The third outcome tries to meet the need to address on a permanent basis this need for social well-being and belongingness, that means outside school hours and outside the context of the organisation, namely at the adolescent’s home or circle of friends, whenever or wherever the adolescent feels the need. Together with the adolescents the project team will develop an application that will be accessible online anywhere anytime and that will respond to their needs. Especially for this task a technical partner was recruited, with experience in educational technology.The formal and informal learning and teaching materials will support adolescents to create a sense of value and belonging within their environments and communities. They are aimed to have a long-term impact on social inclusion and are expected to have also a secondary impact on early school leaving or other issues such as bullying. The user-oriented project methodology will help all involved and especially the adolescents in the acquisition and development of basic 21st Century skills and key competences like creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration."

Plants were living far before us, they surround us, they resist us,they are part of our exchanges, of our human history. Would their domestication have brought us into civilization?Ethnobotany or the use of plants among people is a topic that can attract the attention of a variety of classes of people, because there are many themes in its content such as the use of plants for medicinal purposes, their use as ornaments,their place in mythology and beliefs, their use as fuel, their use in the production of beverages and clothing, their use within leisure and hobbies and their use to dye yarns and to make dyes. Therefore, any of these issues may attract people's attention. The use of herbal materials is common in botany, agriculture, pharmacology, industry, art and in many other fields. So, our short field excursions and investigations will attract the attention of both students and people we will share our findings with. We have observed that the energy of our students is increased when meeting nature, so have their academic success and their interest in nature . In addition, young people, who are under the bondage of today's technology addiction, will enjoy meeting with nature and meeting local people. As a result of botanical research, both their social skills and their academic skills will start to develop. The natural and cultural ressources of the different countries will contribute to the dissemination of the project and increase the outputs without limiting our project to local studies. Our E twinning project will provide resources for this project in every respect, and with this project, while disadvantaged students’ having the opportunity of mobility, we will have the opportunity to make an impact assessment. Field studies, botanical garden trips and ethnobotanical practices, conferences with professionals or adults will be the most important methods of this project, and their realization with on-site and other national children will increase the impact value and enable the project to reach its socio-cultural goals. But the exchanges and work between students from different countries will also enable the students to meet or recognize different cultures as well as their own culture, to improve their language proficiency and to feel part of a European community having the same way of life, the same way of thinking and the same way of imagining a future closer to Nature than the one created by elder generations.The popularity of our topic will also guide us on how we can enrich and expand these local works. Our project will enable us to evaluate our position on an international platform and to share it with other schools interested by this subject.

"The European Union is an alliance that enables Member States to live in peace and prosperity. This alliance sees itself increasingly in distress because of the Brexit and much more importantly the strengthening of nationalism. The European Union was founded as an economic alliance. Today it is much more. It is an alliance of cultures that share similarities and differences. It is our task as next generation educators to prove that cooperation and democratic decision-making make living together in the world easier than isolation and xenophobia. Because only through knowledge can strangers become friends, it is of great necessity to establish contact between cultures on the smallest possible level. All the more value is attached to this project if, in the course of project work, one thinks about one's own culture and then, in the mobilities, contact is made possible with other children of foreign cultures who have done exactly the same thing. What do we have in common? What are the differences between us? Why are we all Europeans? These questions will always be in the background in all activities of this project and will be given a focus at the end of each mobility.How do we get the students to think about their own culture? From our point of view, the best thing to do is to think about museums. A museum is a place where the collective memory of a society sits. This is where things are stored that create identity. It surrounds an aura of authenticity that we cannot simulate in schools. The title ""aMUSE(U)Ment.eu"" is intended to clarify the place of learning for our project. In well-chosen museums, the pupils are to deal creatively and pleasurably with Europe and the cultural heritage of their nation and their own time. Museums today are also places with a digital presence. At the end of the project, the museum spaces created by pupils will be translated into the virtual world, so that anyone interested can see how the pupils define their own cultural heritage.The main objective of the project is to sensitise pupils to their own culture. What is the nature of the society in which I live? A main focus is to recognize similarities and differences between one's own culture and other cultures. Trust in a democracy, the conviction that economic cooperation is worth more than war and that one can achieve more as a community of states than each state individually. Many values and moral concepts are common. There are as many small differences as there are larger differences than there are religious differences or simply the clothes they wear. The students will realize that despite the obvious differences, the morals that are not immediately visible are very similar. In preparation of creating the museum room of their own culture heritage the children will visit museums to learn how a museum is structured, what kind of things lie in museums and what information do they have to give visiting people.The self-made museum rooms form the basis for exciting discussions between the pupils, as they each deal with something different thematically (communication technologies, professions, migration, every day culture), but always reveal the convictions of the pupils as to what they consider to be their cultural heritage at that moment. Pupils learn to speak an create materials in English. They will acquire basal computer skills. The museum will combine working with hands and working on a computer. The exhibits and a guided tour of the museum room are created using modern technology. This also includes the creation of a catalogue of the exhibits and their significance as an ebook. Attending workshops of good practice in digitalizing and know-how of practical computer tools will be take place during the mobility in Austria.Every school has a profile. The German school, for example, attaches great importance to the vocational preparation of its pupils. The Austrian school clearly focuses on digital education. Due to the different profiles, the pupils involved in the project will make very good progress in various areas. In particular, basic language and computer skills will be promoted. But key competences are also acquired, such as the ability to participate in society, to communicate in groups and the willingness to face unknown problems and solve them creatively.Thus the project ""www.aMUSE(U)Ment.eu - Youth thinking about their recent cultural heritage"" combines the fun of working in and with museums with the great mental challenge of discovering the unifying element of all Europeans hidden in our culture: our common moral concepts and the art that unites us all through our common societal origins. People form society, Europe is about every singel individual. Because each individual is a facet of the one Europe, we begin to dig to write a history of Europe of the future from fragments."

"The project proposed a new approach to the development of transversal skills by implementing the concept of ""new education"" by acquiring knowledge and skills related to some of the new educations: Education for the environment, peace, health, democracy, communication and media, entrepreneurship, civic, leisure, personal development. The concept of New Educations has been launched by the Romanian teacher George Vaideanu in 1988 and they constitute proof of the involvement of the education systems in the popularization of problems of the contemporary world, hoping to find peaceful and viable solutions. The followed objectives were the ones established from the beginning:1. Improving the educational act by developing the transversal skills to 2,000 students 2. Increasing the quality of education by developing personal and professional skills to 300 teachers 3. Creating an international network of collaboration that will include schools and institutions working in the education and training of teaching staff for permanent exchange of best practices.The project gathered together nine organisations from seven countries: two NGOs - Edulife, the coordinator of the project, from RO and DEMA from ES, 6 schools from RO, IT, HR, TR and PL, and one enterprise, ATiT, from BE. The project had a modular structure, including nine modules, one per each education and each partner was in charge with one education. The distribution was according to the background and experience of each partner.Each partner proposed Methodological Guidelines - workshops scenarios - for all partners in order to develop those activities in schools; at least 5 activities per module were developed in each partner school, following the development of transversal skills to students and different personal and professional competences to teachers. Over 2000 students were involved in the activities of partner schools, growing their transversal skills. Workshops on the themes of New Educations with volunteers and trainers were organised in NGOs. Over 300 teachers and trainers from partner institutions developed their personal and professional skills. Workshops scenarios of all modules composed the Guide with methodological instructions for using New educations in order to develop transversal skills to students. The most significant results of activities (videos, pictures, posters etc.) were included in the large version of the Guide.The theoretical aspects of teaching each New Education were included in a course with nine chapters, one chapter for each New Education. The Guide and the Course were the Intellectual Outputs of the project, presented in six Multiplier events in six countries of the project partners.The website of the project www.new-educations.eu contains the main results of the project: newsletters, leaflets, brochures, posters, presentations and also the intellectual outputs in digital form. Project participants are pleased with the activities they have participated in, the knowledge they have gained and the skills they have developed: they better understand the concepts of each new education, they have understood that the manifestation of active and responsible social behavior is suited to a changing world, understood the importance of constructive interest in community issues. They have developed their team spirit and digital skills to better adapt to a changing society. Increasing the quality and attractiveness of the educational process by using the new teaching and learning methods and strategies as a result of the development of the professional and personal skills of the staff involved in the teaching process has had a great impact on the schools involved. The partner organizations have increased their visibility in Europe by popularizing the results achieved through their activities, and have strengthened their own organizational capacity and their own courage to develop themselves in the future by accessing European funds. The experience and intellectual results obtained within this project will be a strong starting point for future development actions, educational projects."

Technology is improving every day and becoming a vital part of our lives; It is everywhere, from grocery to an Institute of Technology. While most of us are afraid and unwilling to grasp new technological advancements there is no debating that as the ‘’digital natives’’ of a ‘’digital society’’ we have to promote our digital skills.As a matter of fact; according to the employment data released by EU, today’s jobs are mainly in the field of Technology and in a broader scale Science Engineering and Maths. Lack of those skills will most probably mean unemployment for youngsters in the future. Specifically, youngsters’ stem skills must be promoted to match with the competitive labor market’s needs and demands.Thus, it is the schools’ responsibility to help their pupils acquire those skills to be happy and motivated individuals whose future employabilities are more likely to happen. Accordingly our main objective is to enable high school pupils to acquire STEAM skills by enhancing and modernizing the existing STEM curricula with an e- resource pack including mini MOOCs, report and a handbook (digitally available) mainly to foster students’ creativity and motivation and the development of skills to respond to the Europe 2020 Flagship initiatives: the Digital Agenda, Youth on the Move, and An Agenda for New Skills and Jobs.The main target audience of the Project is pupils, more specifically 15-year-olds, pupils with learnings difficulties, who are the lowest Stem achievers according to the survey at made at partner schools. The senior pupils (as they will experience the transition to university /business World soon) and female pupils (lack of females in Stem fields) are the other focus groups. Although our project aims to study one of the very same topics of the school education projects , it will take different approaches to clarify the matter ;Era’s Muse will get its supplementary e-resource pack for Stem Curriculum Enhancement through scenarios and their material sets co-created by school teachers, researchers, It and material developers, methodology authors, youth workers, museum employees, and associated academicians. We need technology to survive in a modern social world, yet overreliance on technology is becoming socially devastating. It leads to the feelings of isolation and depression. While promoting the stem particularly the digital skills of all participants ( employees, teachers, pupils…etc) on one hand , we aim to develop especially pupils’ sense of belonging and their intergenerational and intercultural skills. One of the most fundamental component to provide pupils with sense of belonging will probably be cultural heritage ; That’s why museums, the caretakers of the cultural heritage, will give us the context. Museums will be the real-life teaching and learning STEAM environments. In our project, we will create scenarios and develop and adapt their material sets ( human voice, telephonic conversation, radio broadcast, magazine, newspaper, images, Maps,Diagrams, Photographs, Cartoons, Comic strips, (3D representation of) the real object , Mock-up, Diorama, Globe, Relief Map, Specimen, Puppet, Slide, Filmstrips, Motion Picture Film, Television, Video discuss, Multimedia…etc) which will use online/ museums as teaching environments . The created scenarios and their material sets will be delivered as in mini MOOCs on project e-learning platform to make it possible to reach the widest community.The scenarios will be created to implement at online/ museums designed around several themes of STEAM according to learners’ needs. Museums will also give us the resource we need to adapt and develop material sets of the scenarios. Era's muse will pilot and evaluate all the scenarios with the participation of pupils.In this co-design project, we collaborate with a Museum in Barcelona, four high schools from Sicily, Turkey , France and Sweden (the coordinator) , one NGO from Sweden and one from Italy and a distance and e-learning organisation from Lithuania to produce a supplementary resource pack for Stem Curriculum Enhancement including a report ( based on needs and demands surveys, focus group discussions and interviews, desk researches, data analysis, swot analysis regarding the existing stem curriculum) ; several Mini MOOCs, training programmes on stem methodology and the guidelines of the best practices ; on promoting basic digital skills ; and on how to enhance museums as teaching environments. It will also include assessment tools, assignments and final projects. We will strive to innovatively create ICT-based materials and didactic methods for STEAM teaching to be applied into formal (school) and non-formal (museum) lifelong learning settings under the guidance of Palermoscienza and LIEDm.As a long term benefit we expect to provide strong evidence and inspiration for informal learning environments to support formal learning more systemetically