Modern technologies have a tremendous impact on both modern societies and individuals, in particular on young people, who are affected and challenged every day by the constant changes and the need to be up-to-date. Technology is in fact a double-edged sword: we have realised that our students, and this is a common point for all the seven schools, have a restricted vision of technology, as they only tend to use it for entertaining purposes (video games) or as a means of communication (social networks). The departing idea of our project is an analysis of the "haves" and "needs" of every participating school with reference to the topic of project. We consider this kind of exchange as innovative for our seven schools: exchange of classroom topics and activities, of methods how to structure learning processes and of the approaches characteristic of the various national school realities. The topic of the project - Care or Scare: Challenges of modern technologies - lends itself to this educational approach. As much as possible we want to make use of "open" methods in teaching and learning, such as project work, debating, students' research, presentation methods and online communication. Seven schools from seven different countries (I, NL, TR, ROM, D, CZ, E) are going to take part in this project, of which five have general secondary profile and two have a mixed approach (general secondary - vocational training). All schools have identified groups of pupils with difficult or under-privileged backgrounds. Three schools have taken groups of recent refugee teenagers - a new challenge. We are going to reach out to all these groups. The three project years (2016-2019) are each under a specific heading - environment, health care and social life & education. At each school classroom activities will be conducted around these headings. These activities are going to be connected to as many partner schools as possible. The results are going to be shared, enlarged, discussed in workshops at the Learning Teaching and Training activities. The central element of every LTT activity is scheduled to be a debate around the issues worked on. There are going to be two of these activities per year plus a seventh activity to round up and to evaluate the project. Thus every partner of the project will host one of these activities. The results and the impact we envisage can be divided into two categories. On a practical level the participants are expected to learn and improve certain skills - working with technologies, in a foreign language, with modern media. In addition to that attitudes are going to be challenged and maybe revised - lifestyles, use of energy, ethical questions. It goes without saying that the social aspect, the development of friendships, even of a long-lasting nature , can be a more than welcome impact. Both the concrete project results and products as well as the work before, during and after the LTTs with a strong international outlook will have effects on all participating schools. These effects will concern ways how to conduct lessons and how to organize "learning time" for pupils in sustainable way.
Seven schools from seven different countries took part in this three-years project. They comprised both schools preparing for a general Abitur-like qualification (Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Turkey and Germany) and schools with a technological focus (Spain and Romania). The schools are located in big cities like Palermo, Timisoara or small towns such as Vezirköprü, Carlet, Hückelhoven or Culemborg. Hückelhoven is the only school that starts with pupils around the age of 10, all other schools start at 13 or 14. The biggest school is the KWC in Culemborg with more than 2000 pupils whereas in Turkey and the Czech Republic the number of students is below 500. The school in the Czech Republic is the only privately owned school - the owner happens to be the principal. Most of the participating schools already used to work together in previous Comenius projects and bilaterals. The project topic was born because of the awareness of tremendous challenges through the rapid changes of technologies. Therefore we intended to explore and also accompany critically this process - chances and challenges of modern technologies. All participating schools were capable of putting in their strengths and competences: e.g. Romania - the school's cooperation with the university, especially with regard to modern energy sources, The Netherlands - the country's concern with water and water management, Italy – (linked to issues raised at the LTT in Spain) the cooperation with the maritime station and work with disabled persons, Spain – the school's technological projects Carusso, Cyrano and Aquaponic, Germany – the school's geographical position near the border. In our application we also referred to the „needs“ of the participating schools. In general all schools have been benefiting from the experiences to be had during the stays abroad. This has much to do with different ways of school organization (the existence of certain school subjects, organization in fixed classes/forms or rather flexible courses, the existence of certain project groups, the availability of supporting non-teaching staff). It was one of the main objectives to organize a process to learn from one another - to bridge the gap between "needs" and "haves". Thematically the main objectives were to provide insights, explore various aspects of modern technologies, to understand the social processes sparked off by technological progress. The other areas of objectives concern the improvement of English, the improvement of rhetorical skills/research and presentation techniques as well as the fight of stereotypes. In all four areas the project was supposed to give participants, especially students a push. Of course all of them are part of a life-long learning process. At the end of three years we are convinced that we achieved what we wanted to reach. The evidence is based on the evaluation carried out and also on the innumerable contacts between project teams and students/colleagues/non-teaching staff. We organized, on average, one LTT with a special topic-related focus in each semester. Work was undertaken at every school before to prepare the LTT. It must be admitted that the international side of the preparatory work ahead of the LTT was not satisfactory before the third project year after coordination teams introduced a new, more flexible system. During the LTTs there was mixture of presenting the work prepared before and its continuation/completion/enlargement. Added to this were always field trips to external partners, such as research institutes, enterprises or local bodies.