Electromobility is one of the potential solutions to achieve sustainable mobility for the future due to the pressing need to prepare for a post-petrol era and to promote ecological awareness. The title “Ready, Steady, Go!” represents our readiness for a new era of electromobility in the automotive industry, “steady” means our strong determination, and “go” stands for a command to start the project. The partnership of foreign schools reinforces the educational impact on the participants by the improvement of their second language skills and recognizing their cultural uniqueness as a benefit for further technological progress in this area. The objectives of this project are the strengthening of the secondary VET learners´ key competences in VET and their development to achieve high-quality vocational skills by individual involvement in constructing the electric go-karts. The objectives also include the development of the competences in ICT skills based on learners’ participation in the virtual cooperation on eTwinning platform, and promoting their communication in the second language within their virtual classroom as well as increasing the learners´ knowledge of electric motors installation and relevant technologies in vehicles. This project is meant for secondary VET learners aged 15 - 19 from Romania, Poland, Greece, and the Czech Republic who are trained as car mechanics and electro technicians. Each school has an opportunity to send six of their learners to partner schools to participate in their vocational training and to share their experience and to work in nationally mixed groups. Due to the fact that virtual classroom cooperation allows the participation of higher number of students, which depends on each school, the number of learners involved can reach up to 120 learners. The learning-teaching activities are divided into four sectors. The first one is a classroom project preparation during which learners are prepared for their vocational training where they learn about the technology of electric vehicles such as the theory of electric motors, control units, batteries, transmissions and others. The classroom project learning involves also their preparation for the communication in the second language with their partner schoolmates on eTwinning platform and during the mobilities. The second sector includes an individual cooperation of learners in their virtual classroom, sharing ideas, discussions and exchange of knowledge in the second language. The third sector covers the preparation in the workshops and garages including the construction of the electric go-kart based on preceding brainstorming with partner schools via eTwinning. The last sector provides learning, teaching, and training activities during the mobilities when each school contributes to a specific part of the construction such as Romania contributes to the installation of brake systems, Poland to gears and sprockets, the Czech Republic to the programming of control units, and Greece to the selection of batteries and installation of the electric system. These are areas in which the partner schools take the lead before the others, so they can contribute to the educational process in the partners´ schools. The educational process is thus carried out by the combination of blended learning via eTwinning with teacher´s facilitation, peer-to-peer teaching during the classroom project activities when learners present their outcomes to their peer schoolmates and CLIL while using the second language in the technical subjects relevant to the project. The output of all the activities and the whole learning-teaching process includes results in the digital form such as an English manual with a multilingual technical dictionary (English, Czech, Polish, Greek, and Romanian) with all the constructions of the electric go-karts, and manuals with the technical dictionaries involving the construction of each school´s go-kart separately. Finally, the electric go-karts themselves will be used for the didactic purposes as well as for the instructional demonstrations of the electric motor installation at schools. The knowledge acquired in the fields of electromobility and its ecological impact will be implemented in the educational process and in the school curricula of all the participating schools. The output of this project in the form of technical manuals and the go-karts will be utilized in the theoretical and vocational learning by the following learners that will study at our schools. The schools will gain experience with the organisation of the international projects and cooperation via eTwinning platform. This experience will enable all the participating schools to develop their cooperation with other schools from abroad. Additionally, the cooperation of schools from different EU countries helps to eliminate prejudice leading to national conflicts and to set the basis for the future prosperity of Europe.
Electro-mobility is one of the potential solutions to achieve sustainable mobility for the future due to the pressing need to prepare for a post-petrol era and to promote ecological awareness. The project title “Ready, Steady, Go!” was chosen to express our readiness for a new era of electro-mobility in the automotive industry which was hidden in the word “Ready”, “Steady” stood for our strong determination to deal with this issue, and “Go!” should provoke the start of the project. The partnership of foreign schools reinforced the educational impact on the participants by the improvement of their second language skills and recognition of the cultural uniqueness as a benefit for further technological progress in this area. The objectives of this project were the further strengthening of the secondary VET learners´ key competences in VET and their development to achieve high-quality vocational skills by individual involvement in constructing the electric go-karts. The objectives also included the development of the competences in ICT skills based on learners’ participation in the virtual cooperation on eTwinning platform, and promoting their communication in the second language within their virtual classroom as well as increasing the learners´ knowledge of electric engines installation and relevant technologies in vehicles. This project was intended for secondary VET learners aged 15 - 19 from Romania, Poland, Greece, and the Czech Republic who were trained as car mechanics and electro technicians, or secondary school students of relating branches. Each school had an opportunity to send six of their students to partner schools in order to participate in their vocational training and to share their experience within work in nationally mixed groups. Further cooperation via eTwinning platform gave opportunity to many other students to join the project. The learning-teaching activities included a classroom project preparation during which students were prepared for their vocational training where they learned about the technology of electric vehicles such as the theory of electric engines, control units, batteries, transmissions and others. The classroom project learning involved also the students’ preparation for the communication in the second language with the schoolmates from the partner schools not only on eTwinning platform but also during the mobilities. The students were encouraged to individual cooperation in the virtual classroom in order to share ideas and exchange knowledge in the second language. The essential part of the project was the students’ preparation in the workshops and garages where the construction process of the electric go-karts was implemented. The educational process was thus carried out by the combination of blended learning via eTwinning with teacher´s facilitation, peer-to-peer teaching during the classroom project activities when students presented their outcomes to their peer schoolmates, and CLIL while using the second language in the technical subjects relevant to the project. At the end of the project, all four schools had opportunity to test their go-karts together at the kart track in the Czech Republic. Each school came up with a different construction approach and focused on a different priority. The Romanian team put the emphasis on the safety, the Greek team on economy, the Polish team as the Czech team paid more attention to kart’s performance but they chose different components and assembly. The construction of each go-kart is described in one of the four manuals which have been written in English and in the language of the school where the go-kart was assembled. The final version of the manual is a collection of all four go-karts’ manuals written in English. The output of all the activities and the whole learning-teaching process includes results in the digital form such as the English manual with a multilingual technical dictionary (English, Czech, Polish, Greek, and Romanian) and individual manuals with the construction of the go-karts of each school separately including the technical dictionary at the back. Finally, the electric go-karts themselves were used for the educational purposes as well as for the instructional presentation of the electric engine installation. The schools gained experience with the management of the international projects and cooperation via eTwinning platform. This experience enabled all the participating schools to develop their cooperation and learn about the ways of educating abroad. The output of this project in the form of technical manuals and the go-karts can be used by teachers in the future too. Finally, the professional profile of the staff has been strengthened, the teachers had to learn new technologies and introduce them to students, each school team shared their best practice and most of all the national differences vanished by helping each other to achieve the goal.