The basic approach of the project AROUND CULTURES SHARING NATIONAL HERITAGE is to develop cultural awareness, sensitivity and tolerance for other cultures and promote national heritage as well as improving the quality of education by developing the students' 21st century skills such as cultural awareness/expression, communication and collaboration/teamwork, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making, meta cognition and learning to learn, citizenship, life and career skills, personal and social responsibility, interpersonal skills and intercultural learning, which are useful both in the school environment and in the world of work.Out project also focuses on strengthening the European dimension of education, providing teachers with modern teaching methods, developing digital skills and promote language teaching.Our students will benefit from innovative learning methods within a friendlier educational environment, able to respond to their individual needs and to cope with cultural diversity. Tolerance and respect for the self and for the others are two key concepts of this approach having as purpose the social inclusion for our students. As for the theoretical training, the project addresses the need to offer students competences and skills for accessing the next level in their professional formation, for active citizenship, voluntarism and future employment in changing international and local communities. All these desiderata require nurturing of qualities such as: team work ability, leadership, decision making, mistake assuming, sincerity, openness, being emphatic, pursuing a common goal, supporting the members in need and others that we promote through the methodology we intend to apply to our activities.The participant countries are Poland, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. Out of these six organisations two have not participated in a European Union granted project in the 3 years preceding this application, Romania and Turkey. The target group of students is aged between ten and nineteen; it includes students who are intellectually or socially disadvantaged, who manifest behavioral disorder, students with special needs and migrants who need to be integrated in their new groups of friends and classes. To review the most important items of our project, it is worth reminding the following points:• The results of our partnership will be both theoretical and practical and include: a significant students' raise in knowledge about other countries national heritage, which will be measured by heritage knowledge quiz(we predict the results will be better at least 20 percent). • Frequent use of the latest ICT tools by teachers and students: The proof of this will be numerous digital results of the project, developing fluency in English languages, communication skills, collaboration and teamwork, raising self-confidence and job satisfaction and learning at first hand, thus gaining invaluable knowledge effortlessly. • Promoting European projects and European dimension of education on regional and national scale. • There are six learning teaching training activities that contain a variety of activities in accordance with our priorities and objectives. There is one teacher training held during the first LTT, where teachers will be trained on ICT tools: • flip grid• presentation tools (prezi, powtoon, slideshare, powerpoint, videoscribe, moovly or flixpress ) • brainstorming tools(tricider)• blogging(wordpress)• cloud storage services• curation • google forms• online collaboration tools(padlet)• creating timelines(sutori)• collage maker(picasa)There is also one coordinators' meeting along with the third LTT when evaluation of all the project activities will be made as well as necessary amendments, schedules and deadlines established.• The impact will be assured at all requested levels through making the project visible and applying in classes all that the project brings in the education process.• The dissemination plan will be respected thoroughly, setting examples of good practices for other stakeholders.• The sustainability will be assured by each partner through using the ensuing material and techniques in regular and optional courses, establishing new partnerships to go on this work and through maintaining the project ethos after its end. Thus, the longer term benefits become clear. We are intent on sharing our experience with our colleagues that show interest in this respect. The school climate change within our organisations will recommend us as sources of inspiration and materials for the school community.To sum up, we intend that our cultural heritage must be appreciated and preserved not only to keep our world more beautiful but also keep it as a compass to guide us in the future.

Astronomers searching for life on other planets generally look for water. Water in the liquid state represents the basic for all life on our earth. Although 2/3 of the earth’ surface is covered with water, only 2.5 % are available potentially as freshwater and only 1/3 of that part as potential drinking water. Upon the World Water Week 2017 it was underlined that 770 – 880 million people of the world do not have any secure access to drinking water. In December 2017, the catholic organisation started their annual call for donations also under the topic “No life without water”. Moreover, the international solution of this drinking water problem will become fundamental for the future universal peace [Symposia of World Water Week, 2017]. Of course, the rising sea levels may not be visible nowadays, however, climate change also goes hand in hand with increased extends of flooding all over the world, destroying houses and infrastructures. “So much water and nothing to drink” a speaker of the World Water Week Symposium citing an affected person. The affected regions have to be supplied with bottled water by helping organisations. The consequence: A rising amount of plastic bottles, to support another current global problem, i.e. the plastic pollution of the oceans. To look at this problem from different perspectives, six schools that are located at different seas and in different areas of Europe have come together to take a deeper look into such an important and multifaceted topic. The project will consist of different modules with each school specializing in a different topic, thus becoming an expert in this topic. During the mobilities activities will focus on that topic and after the mobilities, each school performs a follow-up course and compares the results to the situation in their country. The expert groups will be as follows: Germany - climate change and virtual water, Italy - water in art and literature, the importance of water for peace on earth, Turkey - energy gained from water, water purification, Portugal - water and tourism, UK - water and economy, Norway - microplastic in the sea and on the coast.Additionally, each school analysis water samples of their own area according to agreed methods each year and puts the results into a database. Thus, we diskuss at the end of the project whether there has been a change - to the better or the worth - and whether programmes introduced by the governments work. Furthermore surveys are going to be designed and conducted at several stages of the project in which the inhabitants of the towns interviewed. Evaluating these surveys we want to find out whether the awarness of a need of sustainable water use has changed within the three years of the project and whether campaigns show success or not. We also want the students to start their own campaigns to increase awarness among their fellow students and the wider community (web-site, blog, social media challenge, petition, designing and producing coffee-to-go cups, designing lables for local companies that produce bottled water, ... - depending on the students' own ideas).The overall outcome of the project is going to be a jointly written scientific report that coveres all the different facets as well as art exhibitions and digital products (blog, web-site, ...)

"Modern school has changed the understanding and approach not only to the teaching/learning methodology but it also does not fit in the traditional classroom. Keeping in mind that 21st century school has to develop young people's intercultural competences such as critical thinking, problem-solving, cooperation and collaboration, entrepreneurship and initiative, flexibility and adaptability ; the educational process has to go further, deeper and wider to satisfy the needs of the young generation who are European citizens. The globalization process requires to equip our students not only with the essential knowledge but also to develop their ability to be , to live and to act in the changing surrounding, to live together with others. The main aims of our project are based on developing above listed competences of the project participants. The cooperation and collaboration with the project partners from Turkey, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania while accomplishing the planned project activities and creating the project products will lead to higher understanding of the importance of innovation and changes in education and personal development.The main objectives of the project are: - to motivate students and teachers for common work creating new or transforming old places into more attractive academic educational spaces both inside and outside the schools, creating learning/teaching materials;- to increase the participants' motivation to learn foreign languages and develop ICT, new technologies and digital competences; - to get to know other cultures and increase respect and tolerance towards others;_ to promote participants' creativity and boost their imagination;- to enhance international cooperation and intercultural understanding.The participants of the project are four schools providing secondary education for 16-19 year old students in Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and Turkey. 28 teachers and 94 pupils will participate in learning/teaching/training activities during 20 days. The participants of exchanges will be the most active and highly motivated students . Each LTT activity has its title and focuses on a certain topic and methodology: 1) ""Virtual spaces"" (November 2019, Turkey) will concentrate on the use of modern technologies, online programs and platforms(e- Twinning) as virtual educational spaces;2) ""A story behind the history"" (June 2020, Slovakia) will be devoted to using historic sites and structures, traditional crafts for educational purposes and spaces;3)"" Youth and Innovation in Nowadays Culture Space"" ( October 2020, Latvia) will focus on use of cultural spaces and cultural awareness of partner countries;4) ""Thinking out of the box, learning out of the classroom"" (May 2021, Lithuania) will concentrate on finding out the most unexpected places and forms of educational spaces . Each Learning/Teaching/ Training activity will combine a wide variety of tasks for participants: presentations of their schools/towns and countries, creating online lessons, learning and practicing new things, designing new learning/teaching spaces and materials as well as evaluation of the LTT activity itself. All the planned activities will be carried out through a learning by doing approach, by the end of the exchange we expect for our students an enormous increase of knowledge, competences and 21st century skills such as communication and collaboration/teamwork, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making, meta-cognition and learning to learn, citizenship, life and career skills, personal and social responsibility, interpersonal skills and intercultural learning. The project activities will serve to achieve our aims and good practices will enrich our personal and professional capacity. The main results of the project: - The created or modified inside and outside spaces in partner schools for individual learning or just concentration or relaxation, for different events or students'/ teachers' interests. - The interactive maps of project partner towns/cities will be created with the hidden sightseeing routes of the towns/cities with special educational tasks and evaluation criteria for the teachers and students to use. The leaflets of those routes.-The digital photo album of educational spaces in partner schools at the beginning and at the end of the project.- Visual teaching/learning materials will be created: online lessons (prepared using the tool ""learning designer"" (http://learningdesigner.org/).), videos, posters, apps,etc. The benefits of the project will be witnessed not only in project partners' schools but other schools which we will share our ideas and materials with through dissemination activities. More attention will be devoted to make learning/ teaching environments more involving, thought-provoking, visually attractive and emotionally satisfying the diverse needs and emotional states of students, teachers and other school staff members."

"""EuroProjects: integrating transnational student research projects into the upper-secondary curriculum.""EuroProjects revolves around an educational practice common in many European secondary schools: upper secondary (baccalaureate) students are encouraged to elaborate a personal research project as an optional and complementary activity to their regular two-year upper secondary curriculum. Interested students choose a research topic at the beginning of the school year, develop their research during the course mentored by a teacher and submit their finished project at the end of the year. Projects are evaluated by a jury and the best works are awarded prizes, honorable mentions or academic advantages.All schools participating in EuroProjects are familiar with this practice albeit to a varying degree. The coordinating school (IES Pedro Salinas) has a long and successful experience of seven years. In addition, Trabzon Sosyal Bilimler Lisesi also has a very similar experience with student research projects and Bisschoppelijk College Broekhin has joined Global Perspectives, an international program aimed at teaching research skills to young researchers. Finally, Privatna varazdinska gimnazija is interested in widening its educational practice and it is willing to implement student research projects during EuroProjects lifespan.There is a firm consensus among all participants that an Erasmus+ collaborative project will greatly help improve their schools as well as provide for their needs. The project will strengthen their current educational practice, increase the participation among students and also among mentoring teachers. Furthermore, it will increase the awareness and appreciation of research projects among students and families and open schools to cooperation among themselves and with any other European school involved in similar educational practices. Finally, the project will reinforce the knowledge of the European Union and the common European cultural heritage, both among students and teachers. Those ambitious goals will be reached by means of a coordinated and collaborative effort among all participants. Five transnational mobilities have been scheduled in a two-year timeframe following the development cycle of student research projects. The first and the third mobilities will serve to launch new projects at the beginning of each academic year, the second and the fourth mobilities will be mainly devoted to teach and practice research skills and so they will take place in the middle of the school year. Finally, the third and the fifth mobilities are designed to cover presentation and oral skills and to present the projects at the end of each academic year. It should be noted that workshops, seminars and practical demonstrations will be the core of the teaching activities in every mobility.The participants in all mobilities are upper-secondary students interested in doing a research project and teachers interested in performing mentoring tasks. A significant number of students will take part in the mobilities. Around half of the total number of interested students will be actively involved in each mobilities, hence guaranteeing the immediate impact over the participant schools.Working methodologies include detailed work-plans with clearly defined goals, intermediate and final results, division of labor and roles among partners and agreed deadlines. Detailed agendas will be defined for student and teacher transnational mobilities, for the elaboration of documents (guidelines, best practices, teaching materials) and for the celebration of common events. A project coordinating team formed by the contact persons from every participant school and chaired by the project coordinator will apply quality project management practices.The main results of EuroProjects include increased participation and quality in the student research projects. Well-defined procedures, clear and concise guidelines, detailed best practices and templates and dissemination and diffusion materials are other tangible results. Less tangible results include the creation of strong bonds between schools, teachers and students. The development of research, collaboration and communication skills on students and mentors, general knowledge and appreciation of the European Union and European cultures are other intangible results. These outcomes will be employed by the participant schools well beyond the temporal scope of the project. The materials developed (adapted to the specificities of each school educational context and language) may be put into use by other schools interested in implementing or improving similar educational practices."

Youths nowadays are exposed to a wide range of media and sources, some of them reliable, some not. Unfortunately, the majority tend not to trust the media anymore, maybe because they lack analysis skills. Fake news is everywhere, and students struggle to identify them. Surveys among partner countries indicate that youths are less and less interested in taking part of public debate. This may lead to a democratically challenge. The partnership in this project intent to develop innovative ways of dealing with these challenges. We will use journalism as tool for learning. The main objective of this partnership is to create innovative ways for teachers and schools to use journalism as tool and methodology to train student’s on media literacy, critical thinking, cultural learning and raise awareness among youth to take more part in public debate. As a result, the project will improve our students’ ICT skills and media skills as a means of communication, to publish results of our activities, compare with our partners’ results and to gain public attention for our project. Project will develop critical thinking skills among students, to enable them to better assess the ever-increasing flow of information they are exposed to. Since the project is transnational, the ability to understand cultural contexts will also be an important result of the project.A hybrid digital news publishing platform, a mix between social media and newspaper, will let students focus on skills required for journalists, motivate for learning and give impact to schools, institutions and decisionmakers outside partnership. The project will develop a publishing platform tailored for this kind of learning activities, furthermore improved best practise from three LTT, followed by 3 pilots at schools will be collected and described in best practise handbook. Each partner will also describe an innovative project for how to work with project topic. The result will not only be found in handbook, but also in digital version on project website. All together the publishing platform and develop learning materiel will equip schools and learning institutions, regardless of age, with a powerful and tested learning tool, ready to use. In order to achieve longer term benefits, the project’s methodology is centered around a close cooperation with all stakeholders, such as governmental education institutions and media businesses. The professional network of the project partners aims to create a network where one reaches as many potential participants as possible in a given region, and show how it is possible to work and learn smart within project topics.