This project aims to foster autonomy in all the students from the partnership and enhance their skills by creating a real-life meaningful context where they will learn and practise basic entrepreneurship skills. We hope to foster an eco-friendly mind-set and to make the most of online platforms and technology. Our young entrepreneurs will establish a company with different departments that sells online traditional games (board games) made of recycled materials; each student will apply for a job by presenting their own CV, and they will be selected for a department, according to their interests, motivations and skills. They will also design and run a website to sell the traditional games. The final product of the project will be a guide, written by the students, with all the necessary steps to follow in order to create a successful online selling company. In accordance to the curriculum, the students will develop their English, Arts and Technology skills. However, this project has an important cultural and traditional background (students will connect with their own roots and other cultures' traditions as they research traditional games). This will help students become more aware of what makes their culture unique and irreplaceable, while also showing them that other cultures can simultaneously be very different and very similar to each other. Students, teachers and the whole community will learn about other cultures not only when discovering new traditional games from different countries but also when working cooperatively or when visiting partner countries. The entrepreneurial skills the students will learn will give them future abilities that they might use in their adult lives and teachers will learn how to apply these skills in their curriculums; students will learn the theoretical and practical steps required to establish a company and they will acquire the self-confidence and autonomy they need to realise they can achieve any goal. There will be a clear, cooperative organizational structure in each class. The regular use of technology throughout the whole project and the introduction of sustainability by using recyled materials to create the products will also be an added value to the success of this innovative project and it will also encourage students to work co-operatively. Each department will play a crucial role in achieving the company's main goal, which will engage students and encourage them to work collaboratively and do their best. The company will be divided into seven departments: 1) Managerial Department: coordinate the company's departments with regular meetings. They will explain the whole project through conferences to the whole community and to the local media. 2) Visuals department: create visual evidence of the whole process. They will create the video presenting the company and the students in every department. They also will learn photography skills and will share their discoveries with other students taking pictures of all the activities performed. They will develop all the visual support required for the website and they will also film the advertisement of the product. 3) Marketing Department: publicize and sell the products. They will design and produce the advertisements of the company to sell its products. They will create and organise all the marketing for the website and they will also produce the advertisements to publicize the project to the whole community. 4) Web Organisation Department: create the website. They will have to search what an online shop needs in order to be successful. They will share their discoveries, coordinate the production of the company's website and create the outline and the design. 5) Recycling Department: obtain the main materials to produce the traditional games. They will coordinate, research and decide which are the best materials to create the products and obtain them. Their will make sure all materials are supplied on time. 6) Crafts Department: in charge of the production process. They will design the samples of the product and its components. They will also coordinate and organise the manufacturing process. 7) Accounting Department: responsible for balancing the company’s budget and prepare presentations to distribute the information about the whole process to the public. They will calculate the cost of production and the profit margins. They will look for the cheapest way to complete the manufacturing process and decide the price of the recylcled traditional games. All the company members will be in charge of distributing the traditional games to the customers who bought them. This project will aid all participants in developing multiple skills such as creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership, autonomy, critical thinking, environmental awareness and ICT. Their academic abilities will be enhanced by learning these skills through real life experiences that will help them in envisaging their future careers.
Our project created a real-life meaningful context where participants learnt and practiced basic entrepreneurship skills. We fostered an eco-friendly mind-set to make the most of online platforms and technology. Students developed their English, Arts and Technology skills. Moreover, this project had an important cultural and traditional background connecting traditions from each country. The partnership of this project was formed by 6 primary schools which had common needs and interests and saw the chance to benefit from each other’s experience: Latvia had a proved experience in teaching entrepreneurship and in international projects, as well as Italy and Greece. Greece had experience on the evaluation of projects and Italy usually collaborates with environmental associations creating products with recycled material. Spain had a specific crafts teaching program which could be applied to the project. Croatia had a teacher who is expert on using eTwinning and Ireland had a special technology program. The project helped students become more aware of what makes their culture unique and irreplaceable, while also showing them that other cultures can simultaneously be very different and very similar to each other so students, teachers and the whole community learnt about other cultures. The entrepreneurial skills the students learnt give them future abilities that they will be able to use in their adult lives and teachers learnt how to apply these skills in their curriculums; students learnt the theoretical and practical steps required to create a company and they acquired the self-confidence and autonomy they need to realize they can achieve any goal. The regular use of technology throughout the whole project and the introduction of sustainability by using recycled materials to create the products was also an added value to the success of this innovative project and it encouraged students to work co-operatively in a local and international way. The project objectives were divided in three main groups. For the schools: • Introduce or develop a new Entrepreneurship program in the curriculums of school's across Europe • Boost innovative learning through technology • Develop, improve and apply new teaching methods to the curriculum • Broaden the use of recycled product and cultivate sustainability • Gain Knowledge and experience in European projects For the teachers: • Broad their knowledge of entrepreneurship, creativity, technology and sustainability • Explore new methods and techniques to teach entrepreneurship • Share and exchange good teaching practices • Improve and apply ICT skills to their teaching • Develop intercultural competences and skills • Enhance their foreign language skills • Broaden their social skills For the students: • Provide the learners with basic notions about entrepreneurship • Boost their ICT skills • Enhance their foreign language skills • Develop their creativity • Learn and explore the culture and daily life of other European Countries • Acquire new vocabulary related to entrepreneurship and other areas of the project • Raise awareness of multiculturalism and European Citizenship To achieve these goals, we followed these activities: Our young entrepreneurs established a company with different departments that sold online traditional games (board games) made of recycled materials; each student applied for a job by presenting their own CV, and they were selected for a department (Managerial, Visuals, Marketing, Recycling, Website, Accounting and Crafts), according to their interests, motivations and skills. Students researched about traditional games, agreed which one they were going to create, made samples of the board games using recycled material, organized the whole recollect of the materials after calculating the amount of materials they were going to need and created the games to sell. They also researched, designed and run a website to sell the traditional games, and they make all the visual support (photos, advertising flyers and videos) and manager tools (online form to make the orders, calculating the prices and costs, and the amount of games they were going to sell) that they needed working cooperatively. All these activities were supported by the workshops done in the Learning and Teaching activities and conferences related to the topics of the project were provided by our teachers and experts on the field. The final product of the project was a guide, written by the students, with all the necessary steps to follow in order to create a successful online selling company. This innovative project provided its participants with priceless benefits, which are crucial for their future careers and lives, such as learning of new methods of teaching entrepreneurship, enhancing ICT skills,boosting creativity and autonomy skills, fostering the importance of recycling, boosting cooperative work or gving a meaningful context to improve communicative skills.