"The ""Fridays for Future"" movement has become a worldwide phenomenon in the past months showing the growing concern of young people about the Future of our planet. Scientists and politicians support this movement. But school strike is not the only possible reaction, young people need to be active and certainly are willing to do so.Our project ""Active for Climate"" is a first attempt to show students what can be done at a personal level and how change can be made possible: Together with students from three European countries (Croatia, Italy and Spain), they discover the manifold challenges to stop global warming.Some of the responses can find common answers in every country, such as reducing energy and water consumption by using smart home solutions. Some of them depend on the specific climate and the geographical situation in a country, such as wind energy, PV or geo-thermal ressources. Students learn through this project how a problem we all share in Europe can have different solutions, but a common target. And they also learn that consumer habits need to change in order to permit a more sustainable agriculture to exist. Slow food can be one of the answers.In a global world, cooperation with people from other countries, having their own mentality and their way of looking at things, is an absolute necessity which needs to be acquired and trained. Through common experiences like roll plays and flash mobs and working all together on a technical device, they will not only see a tangible result of their efforts, this project will enable students to better accept diversity in thinking and doing and contribute to a better mutual understanding.Another target of this project is to show young people new job opportunities in a fast changing labour market where a large number of traditional jobs will disappear, p.ex. in the automotive industry or the retail business, and will be replaced by E-commerce, robots and AI. Working for the climate together with our European partners can open new job perspectives for our students and help them finding their way in the labour market of the future."

<< Objectives >>The main objectives of the project are:1. boosting students motivation to learn Science by:- increasing the participants' awareness of the importance of learning Science,- making science attractive to young people by presenting science through mysteries,3. improving students’ skills of teamwork and cooperation,4. increasing the participation of pupils with the with the greatest educational needs, ( in unfavourable situation),5.promoting an active citizenship, especially as a commitment t<< Implementation >>In the project we plan to realise the following activities:- Ancient Undiscovered World - students will do some research of ancient science and technological achievements,- Undiscovered space – students will find out about UFO and space explorations,- Undiscovered human body - students will learn about mysteries in human body- Undiscovered phenomena- students will work on unexplained phenomena.<< Results >>There will be following results:- photo album - Ancient Undiscovered World, graffitti- library of films about space, UFO, list of things in space waiting for discovery- Clay models, Drawings, Computer images of unknown function of human body, quiz- storytelling activity Undiscovered phenomena- webpage of the project.

"Background. ""Unemployment and drop out"" is a topic real problem affecting our countries in EU. We must be aware of what can happen with our students in the future. We want the students to be aware of what they can expect from labor in the future. Knowledge of the subject is involved in developing their student’s skill to learn, and seek qualification to work. In this project, we have prepared our young learners for the future of the labor market and develop their knowledge of important and current position in the regional market. The strategic project is to make them aware of the economic and social reality in different ways and prepare them for working life they expect.Partners and participants.The participants represented both, the YOUTH and the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. The project contains cross-sectoral parts but focuses on VET. It is also a cooperation between YOUTH, VET and companies in the regions. In total, we had among 700 participants from different levels and sectors. About 700 pupils in secondary/primary school participated in the competitions, 52 VET-students used as role models, 28 VET-teachers participated as mentors for the role models and about 20 professionals from different companies used as counselors.Project goals.- Strengthen the cooperation between schools and regional economy and business- Preventing early school leaving, “dropout”.- Entrepreneurial way of learning - be creative and innovative.- Evaluate the quality of arrangements and propose modifications- Share the experience of the testing across sectors within countries, transnationally, and within sectors across Europe.During our project we did various activities to share best practice, increase visibility and attractiveness of technical and scientific education. Sharing good practice, visiting and taking part in the partner initiatives are the most valuable activities for each organisation, teachers or youth workers. This project enabled to take into action international level of: - ""Solar car"" competition (Germany, Chemnitz) - ""Talents for Companies"" competition (Czech Republic, České Budějovice) - ""Best Young Chemist"" competition (Czech Republic, Pardubice) - and other inspiring initiatives that were shared by partners during the projectOur partners have organised multiplier events - career days, fairs and meetings with regional decision makers.Outcomes:- Students recognized their interests, personal characteristics and strengths- Students are more prepared and confident in the decision to continue their education in scientific or technical professions- Management of the development of key competences Identified and linked occupations and competences needed to perform a certain task- Students were able to recognize the differences between high school and labor market and prepare for a transition to a new environment and a new role- They saw the importance of lifelong learning and the continuous development of professional competences for achieving success in work"

<< Background >>We introduce a few citations from the relevant documents of the European Union related to its digital strategy:The last years and the covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance for European society. Digital technologies bring with them new ways to learn, entertain, work, explore and fulfill ambitions. However, there are still many challenges associated with the move to a digital world that need to be addressed. Over the next decade - the digital decade - the EU’s vision is for a digital world that empowers people and businesses, and that is shaped around a human-centred, sustainable and more prosperous approach. The digital compass sets out objectives to achieve the EU’s vision for the digital future. It uses the four points of the compass to identify the main goals to reach over the next decade. One of these four points is a digitally skilled population and highly skilled digital professionals. (Shaping Europe’s digital future - https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-compass).Human capital in ICT is a driving force for digital and digital-enabled innovations and may be considered as crucial for the competitiveness of modern-day economies. Although this segment of the labour market is quite small in absolute terms, ICT employment was relatively resistant to the cyclical nature of economic events during the most recent decade for which data are available.In its New Skills Agenda for Europe, the Commission asked all Member States to develop national digital skills strategies by mid-2017 and to set up national coalitions to support their implementation. It aims to enhance the digital skills of (1) citizens – developing digital skills to enable all citizens to be active in our digital society (digitally fluent citizens); (2) the labour force – developing digital skills for the digital economy, e.g. upskilling and reskilling workers and job-seekers; actions on career advice and guidance; (3) ICT professionals – developing high-level digital skills for ICT professionals in all industry sectors, and (4) education providers – transforming the teaching and learning of digital skills in a lifelong learning perspective, including the training of teachers.The demand for high-tech skills is on a solid growth track. The number of IT practitioners was predicted to grow from 8 million in 2015 to almost 8.7 million in 2020 in the EU28. The estimate from January 2017 of the gap between demand and supply is 500,000 in 2020. This gap comes in part from a number of IT educated professionals coming out of Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Training (VET). Under the main scenario, 240,000 graduates from IT related HE programmes and VET schemes keep entering the labour market per year, plus also more than 100,000 new IT practitioners without such a formal degree (i.e., “lateral entries”). (http://eskills-scale.eu/news/single-view/the-high-tech-skills-gap-in-europe-will-reach-500000-in-2025-with-a-strong-polarisation-of-skills-needed.html)The facts introduced above clearly describe the need for ICT specialists in the EU. In our project, we would like to address this need.We would like to address this need by developing a new way of teaching programming. Namely, object oriented programming. “The role of programming in computer science is similar to that of practical work in other sciences – it provides motivation and a context within which ideas are brought to life.”Besides the motivation derived from the different sources of the EU, we can mention the other needs that shall be covered with our project proposal:We can see a decreasing number of students interested in STEM study programmes at high schools in the last years. We need to motivate the students. We need to show them that STEM and especially programming is not difficult to study.The only persons that can high school students convince about this fact are their own teachers of STEM and programming courses.<< Objectives >>Our project is focused on high school teachers - our primary target group. Based on interviews with the university teachers from project organisations, there is a gap in understanding basic programming principles, especially in the case of object oriented programming (OOP). It is very important that high school teacher understand what is OOP about. Unfortunately, we know cases when the teacher does not understand the programming principles correctly. This has an influence on students’ education and student perception of programming. We conducted a survey among students of project organisations (high schools). The survey results show that the students often think that STEM subjects and programming are too difficult and they are not interested in them. Unfortunately, it is the result of incorrect teaching by the high school teacher. We would like to avoid these cases with our project.We will prepare an overview of current methods, methodologies, concepts in programming for high school teachers. We will prepare the syllabus and guides (textbooks + online content). We will prepare educational materials for future teachers when necessary.Team of scientists and experts from the participating universities has a wide range of expertise, scientific and professional interests and achievements. Thus, the main and unique mission of this international team could be to empower the curriculum and results of the projects aimed for students and the teachers learning and teaching OOP by means of game development with knowledge and skills related to development process and collaboration in real and virtual environments. The project results with our expertise could be empowered by the following:* Agile methods and tools in development - The team of students developing a simple game and learning object-oriented programming could be organized in a scrum team, and could use the tools for collaboration in such an agile team. In this way, students would have fun working on the project as well as acquire an additional skill very valuable for future employment.* Communication (tools) for teams - In addition to development (i.e. hard) skills in object-oriented programming and game development, the real-life teams struggle with the lack of soft skills related to communication. With the help of state-of-the art theory and adequate tools, the teams of students and teachers would be empowered with soft skills and knowledge on use of tools necessary for successful collaboration and communication in real and virtual environments.* Innovation in teaching methods - The expected resulting framework of learning object-oriented programming through game development, enriched with introduction of agile and collaborative practices in the development process would be based and built upon several different very popular teaching methods and approaches such as project-based learning, agile learning, collaborative/peer learning, active learning, learning by doing, problem-based learning and game-based learning.<< Implementation >>Expected project activities:* four transnational project meetings (Zilina, Ivanec, Pardubice, Ivanjica)* one educational activity for teachers from high schools - learning, teaching and training activity (Dresden)* five multiplier events (Zilina, Zagreb, Pardubice, Belgrade, Dresden)* five project results<< Results >>Our project consortium defined five project results and related outcomes:PR1 - Analysis of current state & identification of gaps in (teaching) programmingPR2 - Learning design with new core idea of (teaching) programmingPR3- Developing of new curriculum for (teaching) programmingPR4 - Materials for teachers - transfer of experience for current and future teachersPR5 - Proposal of new curriculum for accreditation bodies in the secondary levelThese project results will enable deeply understant current situation of curricula for programming courses of high schools in five European countries - Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Serbia and Slovakia. University teachers from the same countries will prepare an analysis of gaps in teaching programming in their countries. Based on this, new and innovative learning design for teaching programming will be defined in cooperation with high school teachers. Parallelly, the university teachers from three participating organisations (the University of Zilina, the University of Zagreb, the University of Belgrade) will create a new core idea of teaching programming based on their own national educational concepts. The new core idea of teaching programming will be the important starting point for developing of new curriculum for teaching programming. The selected learning design will be implemented as well. Based on the common agreement of the partner organisations and associated partners, the development of a new generation of educational materials for high school teachers should be started. These materials will include modern textbooks and supporting material (worksheets, examples, methodology). All educational materials will be published on the e-learning portal with free access that will be enabled after registration. The last very important activity will be cooperation on proposals of new curricula for teaching programming to be able to accredite and recognise them in countries of the project partners.

"""FutEUre Food"" is an innovative project for pupils from five secondary schools in five different European countries. The age of these pupils is 15-18 years old and they have an affinity with science. Pupils will visit the local university during the exchange, where they will be taught by students and lecturers. At the end of the Science Week they will present what they have learned to primary school pupils, ages 10-12 years, and their teachers. 750 pupils and teachers will be directly involved in this project. FutEUre food addresses a global problem. Humanity can't survive without food. But if we want to sustain ourselves in the near future, we have to deal with food in a different way. This is one of the greatest challenges of our time. To ensure sufficient food for the ever-growing world population, considerable adjustments will be needed. Not only the amount of food is important, but there will definitely be a change in the type of food. This will also bring about cultural changes, because national traditions and customs often have a relationship with food.In addition to the problem of a rapidly growing world population, humanity is also facing the problem of climate change. Global warming alone will have a considerable impact on the cultivation of crops. Which crops can withstand drought or extremely humid conditions? Is it safe to eat genetically modified food? These are just a few examples of issues the current generation and the next will have to deal with when it comes to famine and food security issues. The question is: are today's young people prepared for this? For all those involved in the project there will be an increase in knowledge and skills. For the secondary school pupils the approach of the project promotes the development of general entrepreneurial capacities, including personal qualities and attitudes that are useful in many settings such as willingness to take initiative, self-confidence, the ability to work together and social skills. In addition they will become acquainted with the academic world at the university, learn how to transfer knowledge to younger pupils and they will improve their scientific and linguistic skills. The schools from NL and ES have worked together on an earlier project. The schools from HR, SE and CZ also have experience with strategic partnership, but are new to the relationships with the schools from NL and ES. However, all participating schools are familiar with international exchanges. Each exchange will have its own theme. NL: Protein transitionES: Food, Science & CultureCZ: Water, an essential food nutrientSE: Protecting plants, protecting life HR: Soil preservation and food productionSo each exchange will address a topic of the bigger problem.This project came about through the cooperation between Insula College from the Netherlands and Wageningen University (WUR). WUR has set up an educational programme (Youth Institute). Because we find the link between the secondary schools and the universities so important and valuable in this project, this has become the basis on which the project has been further developed. The Wageningen Youth Institute is part of Wageningen University & Research and the World Food Prize Foundation in the United States. The Youth Institute challenges high school students to look for solutions to one of the biggest challenges we face in the world: “How do we feed the world in 2050 in a fair, sustainable and healthy way when the world population rises to 10 billion? This program fits perfectly with our project futEUre food. Prior to the project, pupils will do preliminary research about the country they will be travelling to. Through eTwinning, information will be exchanged between the different countries about the habits and problems that a country has to deal with in terms of food. This will give pupils a better idea of both the country they will be travelling to and the theme they will be working on. During the exchange week, pupils will research a topic within the week's theme. The results of the research will not only be based on theory, but will also be supported by field research. For example, local companies such as De Sprinkerhoeve in Dordrecht will be visited to investigate the extent to which all the necessary changes will affect them. Cultural and social influences on food in a country will also be addressed. To this end, pupils will test national recipes for future resistance. These recipes will be presented to the other pupils in the school through a food tasting event. All recipes will be bundled in on the website of the project. We want this project to learn the pupils that the future in the field of food will be something that they will personally have to deal with and that will influence everything and everyone. And we want to raise awareness of the importance of cooperation on a European level to ensure that healthy and sufficient food remains available for everyone in the future."