The globalised world poses both challenges and opportunities for teachers, students and their parents. New jobs require a high level of digital competence and the development of the so called 21st Century Skills (like critical and creative thinking, collaborating, media literacy). At the same time, we have the possibility to communicate and cooperate with people from other countries thanks to social networks and digital media. Unfortunately, we are facing social, cultural and economic situations in which values like tolerance and respect are at risk. Consequently, we have to create new ways of teaching in order to help our students achieving the skills and abilities they need in their future life. We intend to share ideas between teachers about different practices in order to improve the collaboration between students and we aim to promote innovative methods and pedagogies with the support of the use of ICT in classroom. Moreover, we mean to raise our students’ interest in exploring other European cultures and to foster the use of a foreign language as an instrument for collaborations between students and teachers from other countries. Furthermore, we intend to improve the digital skills to let our students act properly and think critically about the information in the Internet. There are 944 students and their families and 71 teachers (including the principals) who will participate and profit from the project. The project coordinators are especially educated in the use of ICT in education. Moreover, students and teachers are supported by other groups of persons like secretaries, school assistants, parent associations and ICT-administrators. During the project, students and teachers will prepare digital presentations and digital games about national symbols, festivals, famous personalities, food, music and dances. We will share the information via the Internet and in videoconferences. Moreover, there will be demonstrations of the prepared products at the European project meetings. The products that result from the students’ activities are common e-books, a calendar and a dictionary containing words and phrases in five languages. We intend to apply the student-centered approach while using the teaching methods cooperative learning, project-based learning and inquiry-based learning because these methods and the usage of different kinds of digital technology serve to achieve our goals like fostering the 21st century skills – critical thinking, creative thinking, collaborating and communicating. We expect that the project results in a wider understanding and respect for people from other countries and cultures, an improvement of the students’ language skills and an enhancement of their digital skills in line with an independent and fluent handling of digital applications. Furthermore, we expect the teachers to improve their ICT competencies and to extend their pedagogical repertoire by integrating new methods in their lessons. All participants will permanently benefit from the project because the lessons are improved because of the new learning and teaching methods and the integration of digital media and ICT in class. The creation of international contacts and friendships will result in long-term collaborations and cooperations.
The "Working Together" project involved four schools which differed in size, location and technical equipment. Equally different were the teachers in terms of their skills and students and their families in terms of their social and socio-economic backgrounds. This diversity in the age of the digital revolution represents both, one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest opportunities for teachers, students and their parents. That is why it was so important for us to develop, through intercultural exchange, a sense of European citizenship that leaves no room for intolerance and racism. We also understood the acquisition of 21st century skills (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication) and social competences (autonomy, responsibility, leadership, empathy, teamwork, self-confidence) as well as the acquisition of digital skills as a prerequisite for personal development and successful professional progress. In teaching these skills and competencies, we considered innovative teaching practices in a student-centered approach to be particularly effective. Within this project, cooperative learning, problem-based learning and project-based learning were applied. Students exchanged information on cultural and traditional aspects (e.g. national symbols, food, holidays/festivals, music and dance, games) in the activities carried out. The pupils created their own digital presentations and videos, digital games and eBooks about feelings, recipes and as a dictionary. During the Learning Teaching and Training Activities, workshops were held on various digital applications (e.g. www.bookcreator.com, www.thinglink.com, www.learningapps.org) and coding. New methods such as BreakoutEDU games and Geocaching were also tested. In the course of the project, the "working together" became a "learning and developing together", because the effect on the teachers, pupils, parents and institutions involved could be clearly observed. So all participants developed a greater understanding of other cultures, which was accompanied by a greater sense of belonging to Europe. In addition, both teachers and pupils improved their digital competences, which was reflected in an independent and fluent handling of digital applications. Students learned to work together creatively, cooperatively and communicatively, showing a high degree of autonomy and responsibility for their learning process and empathy for their fellow students. As the participating institutions also recognised the importance of such projects and integrated content aspects of the project into their school curriculum and plan to participate in further projects, the idea of collaborative work will continue after the project and teachers, students and their parents will benefit from it in the future.