With regard to a worrying high unemployment rate among young people in Europe, in particular in some of our partner countries (Spain:42%,Italy:38%,Finland:20,3),it is of the utmost importance to prepare our students for the professional world.They often complain that they don’t feel well prepared for the entering in the labour market (high drop-out rate in apprenticeships & universities).In addition, companies often deplore the lack of the key competencies of young people leaving school.The objectives of this project are to enhance the acquisition of skills and competences that are considered as important by recruiters of companies and the promotion of entrepreneurial thinking & empowerment of students by producing audio-guides. The context we have chosen is tourism which is economically one of the most important sectors world-wide (230 million jobs in mobility, hotel industry,entertainment, service providers, marketing and communication). The number of tourists is about 1,2 milliard and due to increased mobility it will steadily rise. The global phenomena of mass-tourism destroys nature, the traditional infrastructure and culture of a region. In this project, we want to take young tourists away from typical mass-tourism places and to sensitize them for a more responsible tourism.Sustainability and regionalism in terms of environmental, cultural and social issues will be promoted. Students are an important target group in tourism of today and tomorrow. We prepare them to behave as customers aware of the consequences of their behavior. The areas in which our 5 partner schools are located are less known and little popular as travel destinations for young people: in the north of Europe (Laitila/Finnland), in the middle of Europe (Fritzlar/Northern Hesse,Germany, Wroclaw/Poland), in the south-west of Europe (Montijo/Extremadura,Spain) and in the south of Europe (San Miniato/Italy).The participants of our project “Young Tourism: listen and discover.” will experience the natural and cultural richness of our areas and they will promote it to young people all over Europe by creating multilingual audio guides (Spanish, Italian, Polish,German,Finnish).This marketing tool will be available in the “real life” as download on mobiles published on different websites (e.g. tourism offices, our schools, other stakeholders: the association “Medienblitz e.V.”,Kassel and “Listening Foundation”, Munich).Thus, the students will be stimulated to create a product of high quality.The impact of our project will be enormous even after the completion of it due to the fact that the audio guides will be used by young people discovering our areas.Audio guides can easily be produced in schools with the help of user-friendly digital software.Therefore,audio editors and recorders are the perfect tool to be embedded in the school curricula. During the international meetings, the young people learn from others and deepen their knowledge. They will be introduced to different techniques and methods to produce an audio guide by experts dealing with tourism marketing as well as with media and communication.In this way, they will become experts themselves and will “educate” peers.Thus, the project will combine these both sides of education (learning and teaching) to improve the self-esteem and self-worth of each student. The production of an audio guide is a sophisticated process that is realized in different steps1) getting familiar with the places that are presented on the audio guides, 2) inventing & writing a storyboard, 3) choosing&producing noises,music, 4) recording in different languages,5) cutting &montage, 6) editorial work by experts (e.g. tourist guides). Media & computer technologies represent a fascinating world for young people, the “digital natives”. We will derive benefit from it in order to promote empowerment & critical consumer awareness related to sustainable issues.Our aim is to enhance active media work that imparts abilities to the young people which they need for a self-confident & responsible utilisation of new media.The students will develop a variety of skills and competences: - professional skills: customer-orientated approach, business expertise (choice of presentation format), entrepreneurial thinking,practical doing - methodological skills:project management, efficient problem solving,results orientation - personal skills:creativity,self-empowerment - social skills:teamwork,communication, sense of responsibility - ICT skills: use of innovative web tools (audio guides), research &selection of digital information - language skills: acquisition of technical vocabulary (tourism), confident use of foreign languages during production of audio guide, use of mother tongue (recording texts) We consider the production of an audio guide in a transnational project as an appropriate way to promote the acquisition of important skills and competences as well as entrepreneurship thinking & empowerment of young people.
With regard to a worrying high unemployment rate among young people in Europe, we suggested a mulitlateral association project whereby pupils should approach to the business world. The objectives of this project were to enhance the acquisition of skills and competences that are considered as important by recruiters of companies and the promotion of entrepreneurial thinking & empowerment of students by producing audio guides. The context we had chosen in this project "YOUNG TOURISM: listen and discover." was tourism which is economically one of the most important sectors world-wide (230 million jobs in mobility, hotel industry,entertainment, service providers, marketing and communication). The global phenomena of mass-tourism destroys nature, the traditional infrastructure and culture of a region. In this project, we took young tourists away from typical mass-tourism places and sensitized them for a more responsible tourism.Sustainability and regionalism in terms of environmental, cultural and social issues were promoted. Students are an important target group in tourism of today and tomorrow. We prepared them to behave as customers aware of the consequences of their behavior. The areas in which our 5 partner schools are located are less known and little popular as travel destinations for young people: in the north of Europe (Laitila/Finnland), in the middle of Europe (Fritzlar/Northern Hesse,Germany, Wroclaw/Poland), in the south-west of Europe (Montijo/Extremadura,Spain) and in the south of Europe (San Miniato/Italy).The participants of our project, aged between 13 and 19 years, experienced the natural and cultural richness of different European areas and promoted it to young people all over Europe by creating multilingual audio guides (Spanish, Italian, Polish, German,Finnish, English).This electronic tool allows customers to discover places of interest on their own. It is available in the “real life” as download on mobiles published on different websites (e.g. tourism offices, our school homepages, other stakeholders: "Medienblitz e.V.”,Kassel etc.). This "real life experience" stimulated the students to create products of high quality.The impact of our project is enormous even after the completion due to the fact that the audio guides are used by young people (and other people) discovering our areas. Audio guides can easily be produced in schools with the help of user-friendly digital software.Therefore,audio editors and recorders are the perfect tool to be embedded in the school curricula. The audio guides have already been used by students from other schools in the surrounding. During the international meetings, the young people learnt from others and deepened their knowledge in the fields of tourism, media etc. They were introduced to different techniques and methods to produce audio guides by a variety of experts dealing with tourism marketing as well as with media and communication.In this way, they became experts themselves and were able to “teach” their mates.Thus, the project combined these both sides of education (learning and teaching) to improve the self-esteem and self-worth of each student. The production of audio guides was a sophisticated process that was realized in different steps: 1) getting familiar with the places that are presented on the audio guides, 2) inventing & writing storyboards, 3) choosing & producing noises,music, 4) recording in different languages, 5) cutting &montage, 6) editorial work by tourism and media experts and language teachers. Media & computer technologies represent a fascinating world for young people, the “digital natives”. We derived benefit from it in order to promote empowerment & critical consumer awareness related to sustainable issues. We enhanced active media work that imparted abilities to the young people which they need for a self-confident & responsible utilisation of new media. The evaluation forms at the end of each learning activity showed that the students developed a variety of skills and competences: - professional skills: customer-orientated approach, business expertise (choice of presentation format), entrepreneurial thinking,practical doing - methodological skills:project management, efficient problem solving,results orientation - personal skills:creativity,self-empowerment - social skills: teamwork,communication, sense of responsibility - ICT skills: use of innovative web tools (audio guides), research &selection of digital information - language skills: acquisition of technical vocabulary (tourism), confident use of foreign languages during the production of the audio guides, use of mother tongue (recording texts) etc. The production of audio guides in a transnational project was the appropriate way to promote the acquisition of important skills and competences as well as entrepreneurship thinking & empowerment of young people. Please have a look at the whole project: https://youtu.be/u-SalV0c140