In all partner countries it is necessary to change teaching methodes in order to make learning more attractive for our students. Furthermore, most youngsters today are not able to work independently anymore, although this skill is absolutely essential in today's world of work. Our project focuses on the fact that young people use "smart" media on a daily basis today, but in spite of that their digital competence is rather weak and they are not able to use "smart" devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets and social media) effectively and purposefully.In addition, our students' general education and basic competences are deteriorating constantly in all partner countries. Our project reacts to this problem, as we intend to prepare our students for the labour market. A major problem is poor reading comprehension. This is the case for learners who learn the official language of the partner country as a first as well as second language. Poor reading skills are particularly problematic in our knowledge society.As there is a connection between deteriorating reading skills and a decreasing interest of youngsters in literature, we intend to arouse their interest again by dealing with literature in a creative way.The target group of our project is students aged 16 to 18 who are about to enter the labour market. At vocational school students have the last chance to improve the following skills that are essential in the working world: (1) digital competence, (2) language and reading skills and (3) independent learning. We also intend to include refugees/ migrants in our project, who live in one of the partner countries and need to learn the official language in order to get a school-leaving qualification and to be prepared for the world of work. The main objectives of our project are as follows:- improving digital or "smart" competences- promoting independent learning- improving reading and language skills- development of classroom teachingWe intend to reach these objectives by carrying out activities separately in each partner school or in multinational groups during transnational project meetings. Our project activities are:- using students as cultural embassadors preparing and holding a presentation called "Welcome to my country / city / school / class"- dealing with a variety of assignments in a "traditional" or in a "smart" way- collecting data referring to language use in all partner countries in order to find reasons for deteriorating language skills- promoting reading skills by reading a novel of each partner country and preparing a (digital) poster advertising reading as a free-time activity- improving (foreign) language skills by preparing tutorials to teach basic vocabulary of the official languages of each partner country- using English at work, i.e. practising customer service in role plays in different situations (at the hotel bar, restaurant, reception)Our project intends to make a contribution to independent learning and a strategic use of information and communication technology. We also expect to achieve positive effects on the basic competences of the participants (especially reading skills and motivation as well as social skills). Furthermore, professional skills will be promoted (customer service) and the use of English as a lingua franca.As these skills become more and more important in education, we expect to be able to profit from our project results in the long run. We will be able to use them as a basis and to continue working on this issue. Furthermore, our project results may serve as an inspiration for other institutions.
B.Smart4Europe - “Learning to read is lighting a fire” (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables) With increasing digitalization in all situations of life, but especially in professional life, it is becoming increasingly important for young people to develop the appropriate reading skills or comprehension strategies. They need to develop an awareness of responsible use of texts and information. This is particularly challenging for young people with a migrant background. At the same time, young people are increasingly losing interest in reading texts or deciphering core ideas. By focusing on smart media (e.g. smartphones, iPads), young people are strongly prone to unreflective knowledge consumption and blunt in their problem-solving creativity. With the B.Smart4Europe project, schools from Belgium, Germany, Finland, Italy and Austria tried to counteract the decreasing enthusiasm for reading and reading skills of students in a smart and innovative way. The aim was to highlight the importance of reading and reading comprehension in an increasingly digital world and to work together with the students to promote student-activating and creative (smart, digital) teaching concepts for the use of texts and literature. The participating project schools are vocational schools from five European countries which have recognised that the above challenges are similar in all project countries and that this problem is best addressed through European cooperation. The project schools are: - Belgium: Vrij Technisch Instituut Voorzienigheid (Diest) - Germany: Max-Weber-Berufskolleg (Düsseldorf) - Finland: OSAO (Oulu) - Italy: Istituto Istruzione Superiore Alfredo Panzini (Senigallia) and Landesberufsschule für das Gastgewerbe SAVOY (Merano) - Austria: Landesberufsschule Hartberg For more than three years, the project schools have worked intensively on smart and digital teaching approaches to promote reading skills in the classroom and/or complementary teaching modules/concepts. The schools chose different approaches to implement the ideas, depending on their organizational structure: - Working groups (Senigallia, Diest, Hartberg), - Foreign language teaching (Merano) or bilingual teaching (Oulu, Dusseldorf) - Teaching modules (Senigallia, Hartberg, Düsseldorf) - and at six transnational project meetings. The students have also made a decisive contribution to the success of the "B.Smart4Europe" project. Before and during six transnational learning activities, the students intensively applied, tested and gave feedback on the smart learning concepts developed. They dealt with youth books in English in a smart/digital way and herewith developed a creative approach to reading and reading competence. The following youth books have been selected for assignments including smart media (e.g. tablet computers and apps) to promote reading skills: - As red as blood - The Wave - Tschick - Fly away home - In the sea there are crocodiles The assignments and examples of the student results are published on the project blog: www.bsmart4europe.eu as well as in the eTwinning project B.Smart4Europe. Already during the project, the results were presented and discussed in schools in various ways (e.g. information at conferences, in-school training). In the long term, each project school has defined a specific concept for continuation (e.g. implementation in curricula). With the B.Smart4Europe project, students were inspired to read youth books in an innovative and creative way. At the same time, they were shown that tablet computers and smartphones could be used in various productive ways in learning processes. In the long term, the project has improved the concept of teaching and school development as follows and has supported the partner schools in their process of professional digitalization: - Smart, digital teaching strategies - Individual support (incl. self-organized learning) - Promoting language and reading skills - (In-school) teacher training - Innovative and forward-looking organizational changes (e.g. project teaching, teaching modules) - Adding (digital, smart) teaching sequences or teaching content to the curricula - Internationalizing teaching and taking the international background of pupils into account