<< Background >>The DIGITECH project is about the Development of dIGItal and information TECHnological competences by teachers and takes place in the context of the COVID-19 crisis with the climate crisis and the energy transition in the background. This Erasmus+ project focuses on the digital skills that school teachers from both primary and secondary schools need for digital teaching during and after the COVID-crisis. Based on experience, work needs to be done especially on the way of teachers in coping with digital learning environments. Hence, our main goal with the DIGITECH project is to decrease and ultimately take away the backlog of current teachers in using digital skills in teaching.The time of having a separate IT department has passed. If you want to work with digital skills, you have to do this in every terrain. No matter if you teach mathematics, chemistry, languages, or any other subject, we have to work on the digital skills of both teachers and students in all areas. In this project, we are going to work on the improvement of digital skills in the area of sustainability and energy transition. We firstly focus on teachers and then think of how we can train and equip them to teach their students the digital skills that they need.<< Objectives >>This project aims to train teachers to work with digital tools after the pandemic, building further on skills and needs developed during the pandemic. We are going to test and improve the developed toolkits in several existing educational programmes on sustainability, with a focus on the Energy Challenges programme.We will firstly focus on facilitating discussions and evaluations of teacher’s experiences with using digital tools in the classroom. We will use our lessons learned to improve and strengthen digital educational tools, make them more sustainable, future-proof, and pandemic-proof. We will look at how the tools are embedded in the participating schools and which capacity and skills are needed to further integrate them. Secondly, we are investigating how we can improve the content of our developed toolbox and develop a training programme. To do this, we are testing it in multiple schools executing different existing educational programmes from our international project partners. Tknika, the center promoted by the Deputy Ministry of Vocational Education and Training of the Education Department of the Basque Government, will be a central supporting partner in this. Tknika is modeled after some of the world’s most advanced vocational training centers.<< Implementation >>The duration of the project will be two years. Through digital platforms and regular partner meetings, we will facilitate the exchange of knowledge and co-creation of digital teaching methods. Through action-based research methods, we will explore together with teachers, students and actors from outside the classroom how digital tools can improve education and also how these tools serve to connect students to the energy transition in the real world. It will be suitable for Industry and Digitalization 4.0. The tools will be collected within one toolbox that builds digital skills capacity and will be supplemented by the local context. It serves in such a way that students together with teachers can come up with creative solutions to solve the climate crisis with the use of digital tools and skills and subsequently initiate action and mobilize actors around them through digital platforms. The international programme of Energy Challenges '2IMPRESZ' will be introduced, as a pilot for digitalization in primary and secondary education. During the project, there will be three physical two-day gatherings (if possible) in a central place that can be reached by train. Traveling by train contributes to the image of a Green Recovery after COVID-19, and stimulates the idea that flying is not necessary anymore in a digital era. In these two-day gatherings, teachers’ experiences with using digital tools during the COVID-19 pandemic will be evaluated and discussed. We will use a design-thinking-inspired method of diverging and converging problems to come up with solutions. We will co-create digital tools and methods that help to teach in an efficient and more sustainable way.<< Results >>In the project, teachers will have learned how to adapt their teaching to the needs of Industry and Digitalization 4.0, with lessons learned of the COVID-19 crisis on the background. There will be optimal use of the digital tools available. The teachers of the sustainability education programmes from our international partners will have been trained to use digital tools to keep their students involved and enthusiastic, and to stimulate creativity in new, innovative ways. Also, the content of the developed toolbox will have been improved to optimally stimulate the digital skills of both teachers and students. The lessons learned on how to foster digital skills through sustainability education and a training programme for capacity building will be disseminated in the four participating EU member states. By integrating our findings into 2IMPRESZ and other existing educational programmes operating in both primary and secondary schools, the results of this project will remain and evolve in the future.

"BackgroundThis ERASMUS+ Project arises, after unofficial visits during other ERASMUS+ projects to educational institutions in several countries, where informally, themes related to the success of schools in combating exclusion and dropping out of different types of students have been addressed . In these conversations it became clear that we will all have a lot to learn from the way each school and nation sees the inclusion of its students. The project appears as a bet that integrates the various knowledge of the institutions, with its strong areas of inclusive competence. ObjectiveThe “IN as in INclusion"" takes the challenges of the global world to training children and young people, bringing it as an object of improvement for the concepts at European level of what is school for all and for each and every one and what we can improve in institutions to have a truly Inclusive Education. In this sequence, we will present good practices of school inclusion, different types of students that serve as an example to most schools in the European Union and we will create an Inclusive Training Plan (ITP) and an Inclusive Booklet (IB) that will integrate the knowledge acquired by the partners in a document that can be used in a functional way within the scope training activities for educators, teachers and school leaders.Partners ProfileSix(6)schools-three(3) were VET schools- and an institution created a partnership in order to carry out the project objectives by developing and certifying the ITP and IB. The institutions were chosen among various candidates by their ability to present significant inclusive activities and methodologies.The three(3) VET schools differ from each other in the training they present and offer and all have guaranteed their acceptance to join the partnership, all for the awards they received in previous years in their certification areas, and for the diversity of methodology that each one proposes to present. Regular schools will also maintain the diversity of inclusion themes to be analyzed and compared.Ensuring a training plan that integrates all the knowledge analyzed will be developed, SIPE Training Center is part of the partnership. They ensure the creation of an applicable and disseminable ITP that takes into account the needs and concerns of school institutions, teachers and school leaders.Activities DescriptionAgrupamento de Escolas de Aljustrel(PT), will bring inclusion with students with special needs, SIPE(PT) has the main objective of coordinating the creation of the ITP and to assess the booklet elaboration;Balıkesir Adnan Menderes High School(TK), training about inclusion of girls and prevention of early school leaving; School of Economics Novo Mesto(SL), will address the inclusion of refugees and minorities in school activities; United Special Vocational Gymnasium and Lyceum of Patras(GR), school activity through inclusion of disabled students in technical courses; Istituto Professionale Statale “Frederico II”(IT), inclusion through the participation in international projects and the way to success of culinary courses in school, local community and worldwide; Tolosaldea Integrated VET School(SP), the success of methodology applied in the integration in school and in the acquisition of knowledge, how to select the right offer for each student. MethodologyThe methodology to use, briefly consists of distinct elements and characteristics as they are[1] a methodology for solving problems;[2] we will start from real questions and/or problems, felt as real problems for those who will treat them (that is, as situations for which there is not, at the outset, a total and unique answer to their resolution and/or clarification);[3] we will focus the research of pertinent and relevant problems for those who will be involved in the work (if only in terms of understanding and knowledge about these issues);[4] we will start looking for answers and/or solutions;[5] the planning and distribution of tasks for the collection of data and information, as a group/or collective task;[6] the information and data collected individually or in a small group will have to be processed and organized to return to the large group; all work should result in a sociable “final product” (ITP and IB) - a result that represents the enrichment of the broader group, in terms of knowledge/understanding/solution of the problems and questions initially posed.The best impact possible to aim for is that the inclusion barrier stops being an obstacle to integration and participation of each and every one of our students.The project impact will be incisive in three important aspects that we call the “PIE”: PLANNING-involving deciding beforehand which course of action to take in a given time to integrate or include a student in meaningful activities; INCLUSION-influence positively the quality of participation of each student, EVALUATION-guarantee that all the previos work done before, is going on track."

Nowadays the schools' main objective is to prepare the youth to pass difficult final and vocational exams. The schools also struggle for high ranking positions. Meanwhile, they have problems to meet the pedagogical needs and develop prosocial attitudes among students. Analyzing the current situation in schools - Poland, Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal came to conclusion that also their students who are in the age of 15-19, have different social problems.They do not cope with bullying, aggression, e-addictions which often result in bad eating habits and lack of physical movement. In relations with their peers they cannot be assertive, defend their rights and react to any discrimination. The youth often escape into the virtual world, which makes them insensitive to the problems around them or help for others. All the negative aspects disturb proper functioning of young people, which is reflected in their school performance, self-esteem, and being active at school. The intensity, range and attitudes to the problems in partner schools are different. Therefore we started the cooperation during which we want to exchange the expert knowledge about preventing and solving the problems. Following the words said by Stephen Hawking ‘The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge” the partners decided to verify their knowledge about social problems in schools and broaden it by different solutions existing in other parts of Europe. In the project ‘The Guardians of Europe’ five schools became five ‘Guardians’ of the European values and they will share their expert knowledge about equality, healthy eating habits, cyber safety, tolerance and physical activity. The social campaigns which will be conducted together will become a bridge for their activities and will encourage prosocial attitudes among the project participants. Thanks to them the participants will also develop creativity, team work, entrepreneurship.They will learn how to cooperate with the media and will develop new IT and language competences. The climax of the international cooperation will be the international social campaign divided into two parts and the event ‘You don’t know it – get to know it, if you know it – preserve it’. The mission of ‘the guardians’ will be to encourage young people to explore and preserve the European cultural heritage for the next generations. The challange and task for the teachers will be to learn how to teach about heritage and how to use the knowledge during the different lessons. The School Corners will be created in the schools. They will be the centres for students’ dialogue and social activity where young people will work on social campaigns and report their acitivities on eTwinning platform. To achieve the objectives we will use different methods like brainstorm, SWOT and SMART analyses, the Ghant’s Graph’, workshops. Teachers as mentors and tutors of the School Corner will develop lesson plans about social issues which will be included in the prevention programs in partner schools. To reach the local community we will organize The International Festival of Social Campaigns, School Days of European Heritage and the International Social Campaign about Heritage. We will create the five figures of guardians as patrons of our campaigns: ‘The guardian of healthy eating habits, the guardian of physical activity’, the guardian of equality’, the guardian of cyber safety’ and the guardian of tolerance’. We will create „Proclamation of Guardians” a public announcement about fighting with social problems. In order to achieve the objectives of the project we will organise five student project meetings to discover the European heritage on their own and one staff training meeting which will allow the teachers to receive training and mentoring from experts to implement the technical part of the campaigns properly.The project will refresh the quality of educational activities in schools by multicultural cooperation. It will introduce a new method of social campaigns which will activate students. It will positively influence prosocial attitudes and the European quality of life. It will encourage Europeans to care about healthy eating habits, physical activity, cyber safety, equality and tolerance. The project activities will raise awareness that we need to preserve European heritage for future generations.