The name of our project is ‘Phoenix’. It is a symbol of a lightened firebird rising from the ashes into a bright future. We chose it for our project because it fits to a huge amount of participating students whose past had been defined by failures and demotivation in school. With the help of ‘Phoenix’ we open new access and approaches to disadvantaged and highly efficient students by working together in international teams, using new media, gaining new strategies for learning, showing them new perspectives for life after school and raising their awareness about the fact of taking charge of their own future. Our project will increase several competences, such as social competence by working with and learning from each other, media competence by discovering and trying out 21st century skills. Therefore they will seek to examine past and present trends concerning media and last but not least self competence by widening their horizons and gaining new knowledge.“Phoenix” is based on close cooperation between six European schools. The target group includes teachers, students and their families and local communities. We intent to work with interested students aged 14-18 and some adult Greek students because the relevance of successfully passing exams and questions related to job perspectives is pretty high. For short term student exchanges we want to travel with three students and two teachers from each participating school. In seminars we want to deal with relevant topics, such as “Detecting problems and difficulties of socialization of students at drop out risk ”, “Possibilities of motivating students”, “How to enhance students’ motivation to learn”, “Bilingual lessons” and “Experience and good practices on how to improve the atmosphere in the class”, “Technology enhanced teaching”, “Most innovative online tools to create digital contents, such as Calibre for e-books, padlet for learning diaries...’. In associated cooperative workshops we want to discuss and work on questions about possible certificates and jobchances, dream job, what to know about life after school, sustainability, raise civil awareness, most sustainable learning methods and their impact on reducing early school leaving, impacts of communication and cultural products, manifold usage of new media in lessons, challenges and importance of language assessment, different cultures and different traditions (fests, religions, meals...).The products will be:- short movies of participating schools in different languages (German, English, French, Italian, Greek and Spanish)- surveys on effectiveness of approaching different ‘new’ learning methods- poem-website-e-book with a logical structure to all activities carried out over the two years. The handbook will be divided into the following chapters:1. Effective engagement at school: how to put it into practice?2. Career support for students with learning difficulties and advanced learners3. Effective sustainable business: study cases and successful examples4. Evaluation solutions: a final table for evaluating the level of sustainability practiced in every participating schoolConcrete project objectives are studying and understanding European cultural and linguistic diversity, encouraging communication and cooperation between students from different European countries, helping to create positive attitudes towards learning among students and to new and collaborative teaching approaches among teachers, integrating project activities into the regular activities of the school, encouraging students to learn foreign languages, helping students to improve their ICT skills.Our project makes participants to gain consciousness about their belonging to a wider Europe where many differences and similarities coexist. They develop understandings to contribute to, and benefit from, reconciliation between indigenous and non- indigenous EU's identity and cultural diversity which overlaps with the other learning emphasis in global education.
Our project's name was "Phoenix". It symolized a firebird rising from the ashes of educational despair with high aspirations and expectations. We chose that name because it should be a symbol of a huge amount of students taking part in the project whose past was influenced by failures and demotivation at school. With the help of this project we opened new opportunities for disadvantaged, inefficient and especially efficient students. This way they were given the chance to work together in international teams in order to increase their motivation to learn. Thereby we used new media, created new learning strategies and showed them new perspectives for live after school, sharpened their awareness how to take their future in their own hands. We met our objective to increase their self-, social- and media competences/skills. Social skills with cooperating and learning from each other in international teams. Media skills by discovering and trying the 21st century skills. Self competence by increasing the students' self confidence because they had to present their presentations in front of all participants and actively take part in several workshops. In addition they trusted in and improved their English knowledge which was means of communication. All participants widened their knowledge of other cultures, traditions and ways of life and benefited from it. We also felt positively impressed by getting to know other schools systems and exchanging of innovative teaching and learning methods. New media trends were tested, knowledge about them broadened, such as city guides. Six European schools took part in the "Phoenix" project. The amount in percentage of students with drop out behaviour was pretty high in the participating schools. The Greek evening school teaches students who try to pass their exams in a second-chance education. During the mobilities we dealt in seminars and workshops with the fllowing aspects: problems and risks for drop out, possibilities of motivating students, how to increase motivation, exchange of innovative teachiing and learning methods, opportunities of technological lessons (digital whiteboard, new media), professional orientation at participating schools, cooperation with parents and local authorities, use of several current online tools for digital presentations/results (website, padlet, ebook, powtoon, learning apps, quizlet and others), effectively sustainable local enterprises. Apart from the mobilities many other students took part in the logo contest, created city guides and their subtitles in English and their mother tongue, produced a rap, learned and used techniques of graffit, created role-plays on the topic integration and presented them in front of an international audience, produced a common picture story on cultural diversity, used eTwinning, made an exhibition about the participating schools and the logo contest, showcases and flyers about the progress of the project, released articles in newspapers and on school homepages, live streaming, tv presentations, completed our youTube channel, websites and evaluations. All participating students, teachers, parents and stakeholders could be fascinated by the Erasmus+ idea in the course of the project. Dissimination was strengthened by publications in local press and on tv. The long-term benefit of the project was and is mainly measured in the increasing willingness of colleagues to run international projects (eTwinning), the more attractive way of teaching lessons by less fear of contact with new media and the sustainable effect of authentic meetings in other countries and partly in other families.