Phenomena such as non-discrimination and equality are issues that the European Union and its member states emphasize with sensitivity. Numerous publications, projects, artistic activities and policy recommendations based on combating ethnicity and gender inequality have been produced on these issues. However, ageism, which is at least as important as ethnic discrimination and gender-based discrimination, has always been kept in the background in combating discrimination. But the aging trends of the European Union countries reveal how important it is to think about issues related to combating ageism. In this context, “WISELIFE: Raising Awareness about Ageism” was implemented primarily with the idea of raising awareness and combating this type of discrimination against the elderly. Because aging is a phenomenon that every individual will one day probably experience, unlike being of a certain ethnicity or gender. Therefore, activities focusing on ageism and aging experience and measures to be taken for age discrimination will be beneficial not only for a certain group of people but for the well-being of humanity.Apart from that, as COVID-19 cases continue to soar around the world, the physical and psycho-social health of our senior citizens warrants urgent attention, now more than ever before. Because these days, our elderly not only are at risk of losing their lives, but also suffer due to the prevalent stigma of ageism. In general, the elderly are marginalised even though traditionally humans are taught to respect and take care of the older generation, the innate fear of ‘ageing’, ‘losing vitality’ and death have made ‘ageism’ a prevalent ‘social evil’. Accordingly, the project consortium consists of countries that have various concerns about ageism. In Turkey, The Continuous Education Center within Izmir University of Economics is the coordinator institution of this project. From Italy, an institute for elderly hospitalization (ISRAA) is included in the project. Similarly, BAGSO which is an umbrella organisation of institutions that work for older people has been determined as another partner institution from Germany. Other partner institutions are University of the Aegean in Greece, University of Szeged in Hungary, and University of Lodz in Poland which are all represented with their continuous education centers. It is thought that the countries in this consortium are the ones that experience the ageism problem and the aging population reality at different levels, which will provide an advantage in addressing these issues at a transnational level.Five outputs are planned to be put forward within the project. The first output is planned to be a publication that contains descriptive and comparative analysis, country contexts and literature review on ageism. The second output is a training package for elderly which promotes active aging. Within this output, a mutually agreed training plan will be implemented and its results will be evaluated conducting a pre-test and post-test. The third output of the project is to shoot a documentary in which planning and implementation of the project will be reflected step by step. The fourth output of the project is to put forward a digital memory. The digital memory will be a platform that contains oral history studies, narratives on old photographs of objects and materials which connects the elderly to the past. The last output of the project is to provide a toolkit for elderly education for CECs in order to combat with exclusion of elderly from the social-sphere and to increase their happiness. This last output of the project will create a free toolkit for elderly education to be used by all CECs in European Countries.To obtain these outputs, the methodological approaches which will be adopted are quantitative approach which contain surveys for descriptive and comparative analyses and qualitative approach which contains depth-interviews, oral history studies and photographic story technic to create a digital memory platform. With all these outputs WISELIFE aims to raise awareness on ageism with the publication and the results of all the outputs, to decrease the exclusion of elderly from the social-sphere with the training package and digital memory outputs, to provide a road map for the institutions which are willing to work with older adults with the toolkit and the documentary and to promote active aging via enabling the elderly to benefit from educational opportunities. With the implementation of this project, it is expected that both international awareness will be raised against ageism and the activities which will support active aging will be shared, reproduced and became widespread. Also, in the long-term the project is expected to contribute to the development of national policies and dialogue between EU countries on adult education and combating against ageism.

<< Objectives >>The project of Digital Restoration Lab aims to train and increase the competence of teachers, supervisors, associate professors, students, pupils, employees of photographic studios, photographic archivists, employees of museums and galleries and other institutions interested in the processes of digitalization in the field of restoration, digitization and photo exhibition. The project will provide online resources for low-budget digitization.<< Implementation >>Promoting the methods and principles of image digitization.The project has an educational nature and will support the training of personnel in the field of image digitization.For the first time, systematization and demonstration of digitization practices will be made, which can be integrated into training programs in various institutions.<< Results >>1. Creating a film for the process of digital photo restoration and conservation.2. Developing a manual for the digitizing process.3. Setting up an Open Flexible Learning system.4. There will be six training seminars.5. Holding an international conference with 50 participants.6. Creation of an interactive exhibition (3d mapping, photogrammetry, LIDAR (Light Identification Detection and Ranging, VR, etc.), as a demonstration of methods for exposing digital images.

The objective of the MenTalk project is to develop and offer a language learning curriculum, training material, didactic guidelines and platform directed to men in rural areas who are active in - or want to offer - alternative tourism services. The rationale behind the project is on one hand the need for promoting language learning within the EU, as a means for professional development and enhancement of employability skills, while on the other creating the conditions for job creation, growth and economic sustainability in rural areas. The project is based upon a previously successfully implemented project, Love Language, which aimed at involving men in language learning, considering their low participation and high drop-out rates. The approach to achieve this was based on men's interest as trigger for the used language learning material. The partners of the MenTalk project will apply the same learning approach but take the Love Language one step further by transferring the successful experience into vocational education and training with special focus on the application in alternative tourism in Turkey, Italy, Portugal, Norway and Austria. It is therefore believed that the needs this project will address go well beyond a series of project outputs which target a specific group of people or enhance a specific set of skills. It is the first step towards the development of outputs that tackle important EU issues on a multi-level way. The expected outcomes from the project implementation include, among others:- Enhancement of soft skills of the male population in rural areas;- The promotion of the importance of language learning to increase competitiveness;- The improvement of the quality of alternative tourism services;- The potential for more extrovert micro, small and medium enterprises active in alternative tourism;- The potential for development and economic sustainability in particularly the rural areas of the participating countries. The MenTalk set of outputs includes:- A situation analysis, which will identify the areas of interest of the final beneficiaries (men in rural areas active in alternative tourism) 'What motivates young male learners?';- A curriculum for language learning targeted to the profile of the final beneficiaries with Training material based on the curriculum;- Didactic guidelines for language teachers and- The MenTalk platform offering OERs. In parallel, the partners will carry out a set of dissemination activities, which will aim at informing the target group, final beneficiaries and project stakeholders about the outputs developed. They will also put much emphasis on the project sustainability after the funding period, but more importantly on the transferability potential to other countries and sectors. The already established networks of the partners will be addressed since the beginning of the project, to make sure that awareness is raised and sustainability is achieved.The partners are convinced that the MenTalk project will make a difference in the way language learning is provided, especially since they aim at involving both target group and final beneficiary members as early as the first output of the project. They are well aware of the necessity of feedback collected, being one of the advantages of the MenTalk Methodology.

In EU’s Commission Staff Working Document on Language Competences for Employability, Mobility and Growth, it is indicated that English is becoming de facto the first foreign language and is the most taught foreign language, both in Europe and globally, and plays a key role in daily life. However, according to the EACEA/Eurydice’s Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe the outcome of foreign language learning in Europe is poor and only four in ten pupils reach the ‘independent user’ level in the first foreign language, indicating an ability to have a simple conversation. Only one quarter attains this level in the second foreign language. Too many pupils do not reach the ‘basic user’ level which means that they are not able to use very simple language, even with support. At the same time, almost half of Europeans report that they are unable to hold a conversation in any language other than their mother tongue. Of all four language skills, which are reading, writing, listening and speaking, speaking is the most difficult to develop. On the other hand, there are megatrends, external factors, transforming the world around us. Among these trends are the aging population, labour market shifts, skills mismatch and economic shifts all around the world, particularly in developed countries. These megatrends have implications on education as well. It necessitates development of the skills of existing employees as the skills demanded from them changes very fast. Therefore, relevant, affordable and flexible programs become popular for those group of people. Countries around the world have been making considerable efforts to accommodate the rising numbers of non-traditional and lifelong learners. However, expansion based on traditional models of educational provision has peaked in many countries and has sparked an interest in finding more versatile and cost-effective ways of meeting education needs. Distance education has, thus, emerged as an extremely important option. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a form of distance learning. They are massive in the sense they are open and free for anyone to participate in.In fact, such innovative sources used in education aim at involving as many learners as in the learning process and contents, which is a shift happening in the recent years in the field of education: the teacher-learner power shift. This is also provided by the use of OERs to expand the learners’ access to the contents (Siemens, 2013). MOOCs support the idea of distributed intelligence and LLL, open learning, open educational resources and represent a new generation of online education that encourages the development and delivery of courses that are massive, open, participatory (Perifanou, 2014). Within this perspective, they have been identified as “the most important trend in education” by the Horizon Report in 2013. (Horizon Shortlist Report, 2013). According to Shah (2017), around 20 million new learners signed up for their first MOOC in 2017, taking the total number of learners to 78 million. This growing interest opens big opportunities for Language Education. Language competences and intercultural skills are more than ever before key qualifications for every citizen nowadays in every part of the world. Foreign language skills are in much demand and the need for related online courses is widespread. At this point, Language MOOCs constitute an interactive language learning environment offering unlimited entry and addressing to vast numbers of participants.On the other hand, several research state that there are still many issues related to second language acquisition through MOOCs. Despite the enormous number of courses provided, the number of Language MOOC initiatives is relatively small compared to the number of learners. In the light of aforementioned lack of language skills and the increasing importance of MOOCs in education, within the scope of Speak English- MOOC Project, our aim is to develop a 6-week language MOOC to improve adult learners’ practical speaking skills based on an in-depth analysis of their needs and to offer a platform to host the content prepared. The content of the speaking lessons will be built upon tasks that reflect everyday situations and interactive contexts. Such a communicative stance echoes the basic premises of Transfer Appropriate Processing (TAP) in which information is best retrieved in situations that is similar to how it is processed. Since the aim of MOOCs is to guide learners communicate in the target language, situations similar to real life contexts would help them to transfer information and expressions they use in these situations into the actual speaking contexts in the outside world.