EU is the world's top tourist destination, with the highest density and variety of tourist attractions, generating over 10% of EU GDP. To keep it that way, there is a constant need for enhancing and upgrading services and products, often linked to the new technologies of information and communication. Moreover, quality and supply of services in tourism varies through countries and regions all across Europe. Each region has its own uniqueness and its attractiveness differs as well from other regions. However, apart from historical sites, each of the EU country has a strong identity that can reveal itself in its national food and beverages. This is why teachers and education providers in the field of tourism, catering and ICT need to constantly improve their ability to provide students with all the necessary skills and knowledge in order for them to be able to meet the constantly evolving needs of the tourism market, and thereby strongly improve their employability opportunities. Historical places and cultural heritage differences such as gastronomy are more than often hidden from the knowledge of young students, and especially the ones presentencing special needs. This may be due to a wide range of factors, from language barrier to total lack of interest, non-appropriated educational methods, or an insufficient use of information/communication technologies. As a result, the ICT: a European Approach project targets two main objectives. The first one will be to improve the teaching methods in the field of Catering & Tourism by developping a new methodology streaming from the exchange of experience and practices of different european partners, benefiting from the expertise of each of these partners in their own field. The second one will be to provide every interested person with an open access to online multilingual educational resources. Indeed, in order to answer the needs of this ever-evolving market, partners strongly believe that the different results and outcomes of this project shall be shared with every potentially interested person or organisation. Over the next 3 years, partners will then be comitted to give the best of themselves in order to come up with the most suitable solution to the question this project addresses: "how to improve ourselves as catering and tourism teachers and give approriate tools to future generations?"
The main aim of this project was exchanging of experience, exchanging of examples of good practice on a field of catering and tourism and gaining of inspiration from this experience for creation of methodological materials and open educational resources with using ICT and English language. This is why teachers and education providers in the field of tourism, catering and ICT from different countries decided to cooperate to constantly improve their ability to provide students with all the necessary skills and knowledge in order for them to be able to meet the needs of the tourism market, and thereby strongly improve their employability opportunities. . As a result, the ICT: a European Approach project targeted two main outputs: Methodology and Open educational resources (OER). There were taken these steps leading to the creation of the 2 intellectual outputs: TPMs, exchanging of experience and creation of intellectual outputs. Transnational project meetings were held in Otrokovice in the Czech Republic, in Iasi in Romania, in Szeged in Hungary and in Pisa in Italy. The main aims of the TPMs were: - To establish an international project team, set administrative and financial rules, agree on a way of communication - To exchange of experience, examples of good practice and awareness of new teaching methods - To gain new knowledge on the field of catering and tourism teaching - To discuss and agree on a form of the two intellectual outputs – Methodology and OER - To follow the creation of the two IOs, its progress, piloting and testing and final completion Over the 3 years partners were committed to give the best of themselves in order to come up with the most suitable solution to the question this project addresses: "how to improve ourselves as catering and tourism teachers and give appropriate tools to future generations?" In duration of the 3-year-project 2 IOs were created: 1) Methodology The Methodology is a useful document of 87 pages, freely available and contains an introduction of a partner´s institution, studying fields, type of education, school programme for catering and tourism, teaching methods, worksheets and glossary of the most useful vocabulary in all partners’ languages. The Methodology is available in English language and all parts, except for worksheets, were translated into the partners ‘languages. The Methodology is accessible on the project websites and on the partners ‘school websites. http://europeanictproject.wixsite.com/ictproject 2) OER This output (OER) was agreed after discussion about different events, activities at schools. Partners agreed on a form of this OER and decided to create eBook of local recipes and to enrich it by some stories which were created by students. The eBook of recipes is available in English language on the project websites and on the partners ‘school websites. http://europeanictproject.wixsite.com/ictproject/oer---downloads Teachers selected the most traditional meals and their recipes to be prepared, to be described the process of preparing, to be taken some photos of them. Students were searching the net to find some stories connected to every recipe, read them and wrote their own short story. Some recipes were preparing in school training kitchens and some at home, it depended on the possibilities of each school. Especially teachers from partners ‘schools were involved in creation of the IOs but their students helped them to create stories and to pilot, test and comment the outputs. Both IOs are now ready to use by teachers and students of the catering and tourism. It can be used in an electronic or printed version, it can be used for practising of English language skills or for inspiration for creation of new methodological materials. However, not only the creation of both IOs was counted as a fulfilled target. Especially the exchanging of experience and examples of good practice, meeting new methods at European schools and discussions about them brought the most important benefit to all project partners. The biggest impact of the project was - on the target group of students – they can use new methodological materials - on the target groups of catering and tourism teachers - they can use new methodological materials and they are inspired by new experience, knowledge and skills - on the catering and tourism companies – they gained awareness about possibilities to employ catering and tourism students and to cooperate with schools on the field of catering and tourism. - on the other schools with the same or similar fields - they can use the materials, intellectual outputs, they can be inspired to experience something similar or they can cooperate on creation of next teaching materials.