SWIS project started from the need to bring the scientific world, as a driving force of change, closer to European schools which need and require an active boost in their educational methodologies. Its primary objectives and goals are: reducing absenteeism and early school leaving, fostering and encouraging social inclusion and improving students’ scientific competences. SWIS project will promote common European values, help to support social integration, to improve intercultural understanding and gender equality, and to acquire a sense of belonging to the community. Additionally, it will also improve linguistic communication competence in English. This project involves four European schools: Seville (Spain), Bucharest (Romania), Utena (Lithuania) and Sroda Wielkopolska (Poland). All of them pursue their students’ success through methodologies such as the one the SWIS project introduces and follows. IES Antonio Domínguez Ortiz from Seville, one of the promoting schools of the project, firmly stands for innovative learning strategies which allow its students, who live in risk situations of social exclusion, to feel part themselves of their own school. The Local Laboratory in Seville, a formal partner of SWIS and also a driving force for the project itself, will provide students with the opportunity to show and present its scientific work environment, designing specific experimental activities for the students of all partner schools and providing constant advice and guidance to teachers interested in the implementation of such experiences in their classroom. On the other hand, SWIS project also counts with the support and participation of the non-formal entity partner from the university "The Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity" (Cri- paris.org) and the Open Society School (both from Paris). This non-formal partner will allow teachers to train in new methodological strategies related to scientific research in the European classrooms, making SWIS collaborate with the European project H2020 DITOs (Doing It Together) as they share parallel objectives. In SWIS, the activities to be completed and performed have been designed so that students are active participants and actors in their own learning process, as they will carry out laboratory experiments, develop their own reports and explore classroom problems that may arise from their own scientific interest. The results of these studies will be presented by the students from all the schools in a Congress to be held as the culmination of the project. Part of the results will be published within a book under the title "Guide to Scientific Experiences in Secondary School European Environments", together with a glossary of scientific terms. It will be published both in English and in the official language of each partner country of the project, too. Together with this guide, SWIS challenges to achieve other tangible results, such as the YouTube channel for scientific videos, the cultural blog, the project website and the reports that support the process and its own results. They are all means intended to broaden and enlarge free dissemination of the project. Yet, the SWIS project will have a positive impact on teachers, students and their families as well as on related local and regional actors in order to foster real change in the future education of European youth, regardless their social level.
The SWIS project was designed to create synergies between the real scientific world, studies and scientific projects designed and developed by professionals from the world of scientific research and professionals from the public sector who were in direct contact with scientific knowledge and secondary schools in Europe. In this way, the project could motivate and create interest in Science in students with low academic level, high level of absenteeism and disinterest in higher studies related to Science. Thus the objectives met have been: -Improve interest in the scientific world. -Improve the techniques of the scientific method in secondary schools linked to the project. -Improve communication in English. -Improve coexistence between European regions. -Know other cultures outside the borders of the neighborhood. -Improve self-esteem. -Improve communication skills. -Improve the capacity in techniques of exposition of scientific works. - Provide schools with resources and material resources to be able to devote themselves to scientific research in health and environmental fields. -Know the importance of scientific research in topics of social and environmental interest. The social profile of students has been very diverse, but this has not been an impediment for all of them without exception to develop the same scientific experiences and prepare the same research papers. In addition to the training activities they have shown great interest in participating in them and learning from other students. Both in training in Seville and in Bucharest, students have exchanged enriching cultural experiences. It has been a complex project in the organization because it has been difficult for materials and products to reach schools at the same time, but this has not been inconvenient for its realization. It is true that coordinating that the work will be carried out in the school times of each school has been an extra effort, because there is not the same schedule and work and holiday time, but all of them have carried out the activities designed by the research staff correctly .The number of scientific activities developed in each school has been slightly less than the number of research activities proposed in the project, since we realized that the research works were of great depth and we should devote much more time than expected to work it in the classrooms On the other hand, the time it took to provide the necessary chemical products and the purchase of necessary equipment was also longer than the stipulated one. All this had to be combined with the official curriculum of each school. However, we are very satisfied with the result since there have been 12 research projects developed by students in schools and during the training week in Seville and Bucharest. From the research work carried out by students in schools, a compilation of scientific videos was carried out explaining the methodology that was carried out in all of them. In these videos, all the students involved expose the development process of each experience. It can be seen on the Project website: https://erasmusplusswiscom.wordpress.com/scientific-work-swis/ In addition, also on this website you can collect the research work developed by them in pdf format to be easily downloaded. The activities developed by the students are compiled in the published Didactic Guide and that can be accessed from the project website. Once the experiences were carried out by the students in each school, they presented the report to the researcher who received and supervised these reports. Subsequently the scientific video was made explaining the research process so that the same experience could be reproduced in any school. In the last part of the project, students, with the results obtained, had to design the scientific infographics, which are also displayed on the project website. This served as dissemination material in the multiplier event where they were exhibited. In addition, the students participating in the Bucharest Congress did their exhibition work (also published on the web) that they showed very professionally in this training week. Students very motivated and enthusiastic about the final result of these two years of collaboration. Parallel to the scientific works, the cultural activities that were celebrated in the schools were disseminated in a blog created for it (access from the web) so that we exchanged these experiences among all. The educational impact is unquestionable.