The strategic partnership aims at developing teaching activities fostering innovation, experience and know-how exchange among different typologies of education, training and industrial organizations. In Italy, the law rules the school-job alternation activities in the higher schools, providing training paths with companies and organization for internships or vocational training about the work world and different careers. The project aims at raising what promoted by the law, fostering the cooperation among schools, companies, centres of research, teachers and students, through shared lessons among different countries institutions, by exporting the school-job alternation activities, adding the international component and virtually widening the class borders. For companies the project could lead to cooperate with others in the Research, Development and Training fields. Cooperation relationships will be set up on vocational and education activities for students, teachers professional upgrading, and implementation of the ministry school programmes in the partner schools and, later, in other schools where the project template shall be adopted, by guaranteeing the long term project sustainability. The partnership has been set up by considering previous cooperation. The teaching activities contents has been defined basing on the requirement of territories which are similar from the morphologic and economic point of view, characterized by activities related to the port logistics and the ecosystem protection. The following are the project regions and partners: Italy – La Spezia (Liguria): Distretto Ligure delle Tecnologie Marine, dealing with the marine technology field; IIS “Capellini-Sauro” (Applied Science High School, professional diploma in Mechatronics, Electronics, Material Chemistry, IT, Nautical Sciences and Logistics and Transports); Circle Srl, a company which support other companies development through innovation and process efficiency, they are expert of communication and European project management; Ecoplanet with its experience in European project management. PACA Region– Toulon (France) “Lycée Rouvière” (learning paths in energy, environment, eco-sustainability, IT, applied sciences). Region of Cartagena and Barcelona (Spain) Universidad Politecnica de Cartagena (laboratory of underwater vehicles and learning paths in automatic control, fluid mechanics, aerobiology and environmental toxicology, mechanics and electrical engineering for the company economy, applied mathematics, chemical engineering, metallurgy, physics, ship technology); Istituto de Nautica de Barcelona, with specialisation in pleasure craft sciences and several laboratories. The training path develops on three steps, which repeat three times: THEORETICAL PHASE about mechatronics, electronics, IT and marine robotics; chemistry, biology, physics and geophysics; ship management, port logistics. The course contents will be prepared by international workgroups, composed by partner countries teachers. Lessons will be held simultaneously in the different countries. Pupils will simultaneously attend courses both in presence and in webinar mode, lessons will be held in English language by different partner country teachers who alternate themselves. PRACTICAL PHASE/STUDENT EXCHANGE + FINAL REPORT ORGANISATION: it corresponds to the three workshop, which will be held in the partner countries. The pupils residing in a foreign partner country will welcome a student selection for each country. After the workshop, in the afternoon the students divided into groups will start to organize the final reports. FINAL REPORT DRAW UP: the groups will start to work on reports about topics related to the theoretical teaching activities and chosen by the same groups, which are formed by students of the different countries. Students will learn different working approaches, they will carry out researches, learn to use the ICT tech to achieve targets and cooperate at international level. From the impact point of view, the project aims to: - improve the education and the European young skill quality, by combining excellence and attractiveness with greater opportunities for all, including the less advantaged ones; - education highly matched with the requirements and opportunities offered by the work world, more tight connections with companies; - improvement of the base and soft skills (entrepreneurship, social, civic, intercultural, digital and language skills, critical thought); - strategic and integrated use of the ICT Tech. The long term expected results are: • integration of the institutional teaching methodology with practical activities and ICT resources; • cooperative learning, even at international level, fostering vocational actions leading to know careers required by companies and centers of research; • integration in the teaching activities of the School-job alternation potentialities; use of cooperative tools and possibilities offered by an on-line
The aim of the project was to create an innovative School-Job activity in order to build an ideal bridge between secondary education and the world of work, which can be exploited in two-ways mode, by the main actors of production companies, research bodies and public administrations and by those responsible for higher education of young people and also by the students themselves. The project was almost completely implemented even though in March 2020 due to the Corona Virus pandemic the schools were closed and only a few activities could be carried out online. Analysing in detail the project progress, the operation of the partners network was fundamental: even remotely, everybody collaborated in the necessary documentation preparation as well as in organising logistics and time to start the activities for the main beneficiaries: the students. The project staff was composed by Headmasters and teachers of the three partner schools, professors and researchers of the University of Cartagena, Senior Experts in the design and implementation of European Training, Research and Development projects, Experts in communication and information activities on the network and especially the experts of the Ligurian Cluster of Marine Technologies for the network of contacts with companies and organizations in the maritime sector, for a total of about 70 people involved. A total of 123 students were involved in the project, chosen among those of the fourth year of each partner Technical High School. The project was framed in a sector of activity closely linked to the vocational characteristics of the high school areas involved: the maritime sector, in which it is easy to include the shipbuilding and pleasure craft industries, with all the local manufacturing industries, the research centres responsible for the control and monitoring of marine environments, the port authorities for marine logistics. The first project activities were the realization of individual training projects to start the School-Job path considering the needs of morphologically and economically similar territories, characterized by activities related to port logistics and ecosystem protection. This led to the creation of the three specialist courses foreseen by the project: Mechanics, Electronics and Precision Electronics, Environmental Risk Monitoring, Marine Logistics, carried out with great commitment by both students and human resources involved: teachers, company experts and researchers from the University and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Portovenere. In the third year, another specialist training course was carried out for the construction of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), remote-controlled submarines used in the analytical field for monitoring marine environments, obviously including a series of innovative solutions in the field of mechatronics and environmental analysis. A considerable impact on both students and teaching staff of the schools arose from the participation in the transnational exchange activities: participants had an experience of international exchange of knowledge, methodologies, employment opportunities and intercultural relations. A student from the Barcelona Nautical Institute, after the exchange in Italy, made arrangements with a company in La Spezia, during the first student exchange, to carry out a training internship at the end of the school year: therefore, he returned later to Italy for its internship. The Capellini Sauro Institute renewed some workshops, taking as its starting point the visit to the Lycée Rouvière of Toulon and the French workshops. These were obviously unforeseen and unforeseeable results, but important in underlining the enormous importance of communication and collaboration in a small European network. The teaching programmes, the training projects, all the preparatory documentation for the School-Job activities and all the evaluation forms of the activities and skills acquired have been included on the Erasmus results platform and on the partners' websites, also in a format that can be edited and downloaded free of charge by anyone, with the aim of favouring other schools and the world of work that would like to implement and experiment this type of didactic approach for a real connection to the world of work and give greater strength to a vocational activity that should be more present within the institutional activities of a school.