Our project titled: “Ecobusiness.eu” unites the efforts of teachers in 5 countries to tackle the key competences – communication in foreign languages, digital competences and entrepreneurship, which are part of the eight competences according to the EU Commission of education. Another issue that has become paramount for us, and for our future, is the protection of our environment, and that is why we have focused our virtual company to serve that purpose, together with training events and workshops that should underline the critical factor it is for our near and distant future. Given the pressure on timetables in our schools and the curriculum requirements which have to be met, we felt that Enterprise and environment were topics that could benefit our students in many ways. The constant demands of modern everyday life requires that our students need to be innovative, resilient and intellectually curious and even though enterprise is not embedded in our curriculum, we believe that involvement in this project will provide an opportunity for the participants to become familiar with it, which is a vital component of any successful free economy. We are also acutely aware that there is a difference between enterprise and entrepreneurship; the former may well feed the latter, but it can be utilised in so many different ways. Enterprise education doesn’t have to be about business start-ups alone. Many of our students may well become very successful entrepreneurs, but others will use enterprise to positively impact on their community, the employers they work for and for their own professional prospects in the future. Through this project, we aim to plant the seed of enterprise in our students through the development and enhancement of their soft skills - often lacking according to employers- the use of critical and independent thinking, working together, presenting ideas to one another using ICTs, analysing those ideas together to find the best way forward, and learning the value of volunteering to support others on a local and global scale. Our activities and tasks are structured in such a way as to cover aspects of enterprise that we feel is necessary to gain maximum benefit from the project. We have planned activities such as preparing a glossary of basic economic concepts, looking for the companies of green entrepreneurship, visiting one of them in each mobility, setting up a virtual advertisement company, looking for ways of funding it, creating advertising campaigns, making a database about green jobs of the future, creating a guide for young entrepreneurs. Active learning methodologies like structured discussion and role-play, issue tracking, surveys and online group forums will be used throughout the project. The main methodology is innovative approaches to ICT, fostering new learning opportunities and access to information. The teachers from Poland, Greece, Finland, Ireland and Spain bring a wide range of experience to the table.Some have coordinated programmes before, others have led eTwinning projects that have been awarded best practice accolades, all have a broad European perspective which is founded on a common denominator of having a keen interest in multicultural education and an eagerness to work hard to ensure the success of the project. We expect this project will impact on our students in such a way as to enable them to learn about and appreciate the concepts of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, Environment and allow them to contribute in a very real and meaningful way to our society’s future, because everybody has a voice. Some are just reluctant or unsure how to use it.
Our project titled “Ecobusiness.eu” unites the efforts of teachers in 5 countries to tackle the key competences – communication in foreign languages, digital competence and entrepreneurship, which are part of the eight competences according to the EU Commission of education. The background for our project was lack of knowledge about entrepreneurship and economics we had previously detected in a large percentage of our students. Our objectives were to group a series of essential issues in one single project. We wanted our students to learn about economics, entrepreneurship, new technologies and develop a lasting respect for our environment. That is the main reason why we came up with the idea to create a virtual company which would produce advertising campaigns for real life businesses with explicit environmental values. About the participants, more than one hundred students and 30 teachers took part in mobilities and/or activities directly related to the project. We involved several real life companies in our project (Apivita, Euroglas, Mëtsa Group, La Fageda, Bioshell. Llagurt) either having our students preparing advertising campaigns for them, or by having experts from these companies visit us to help with their expertise and insight. The activities we have carried out during these two years can be divided into 2 sections: the advertising campaigns designed for each of the four mobilities on one hand, and all the training and research involved to create those campaigns on the other. This second set of activities took part between mobilities, when students could share and exchange their ideas and feedback internationally. The results we have attained are four full-fledged advertising campaigns, where students have created (for each one): a video advertisement, a website, several examples of graphic design (posters and brochures), radio advertisement, media advertisement (internet ads) and an environmental impact study. Apart from all this, we have produced presentations on each country's economics and another with instructions on how to set up a company in each city. We can also prove that our students have reached a much deeper understanding of what the European Union means and have learned and shared about theirs and other European cultures. Families have been highly supportive and local entities have also been key in the project. The impact of this project can be measured in the knowledge acquired by the participating students, but also with the feedback of the companies involved in the project and the materials created by the students, which will be used in the future in all schools which ask for it. All in all, we think we have attained our objective and our students are more knowledgeable on economics, new technologies and entrepreneurship. We are positive this knowledge will be extremely useful in the future to come.