The project is adressed to all the students of the school community, mainly to those aged 14-15 years who are in secondary education. It arises from the need to make students aware of the importance of healthy and sport lifestyles among teenagers all over the world in a technological society of the XXI century. All the patner schools have asked the school communities to answer a questionaire on their food and sport habits. The results show that the students want more sport lessons and nutrition lessons as well. The title, "Healthier minds, Smarter minds" results from some research studies which state that if students have a healthy lifestyle, they can learn better and improve results. Not to mention the importance of improving their self-steem, their physical appearance, so important when they are teenagers, and the fact that sport strenghthens the social ties that can be sometimes difficult to tackle together with students with special needs. On the one hand, there is an increase of unbalanced food among people in a society with many economic problems. On the other hand, we have to take into account the sedentary life that nowadays favours habits of staying at home playing online computer games, social networks and play stations.The fact that having a new and innovative school in Sweden( MTH utbildning AB) gives the project a reference of the ideal kind of school for our students. The project activities will involve collaborative work among the students of the partner schools, leading to different material created by students, such as the creation of Apps, websites and different digital products dealing with the Mediterranean diet and sport world and lifestyle, which will include the use of videos, interviews, slides, research and documentation, will be accurately collated and revised by the Erasmus teaching staff committee with the use of evaluation rubrics. The fact that two sport schools are also involved in the project, it will help us provide the maximum detailed information and specific background to the project during the two years.There is also a need to improve social inclusion in the school communities and include students with special needs in the European project so as to improve our teaching methods and learning strategies. We wll be able to take advantage of the Mediterranen Games which will have taken place in Tarragona in June this year 2018, information we will have at first hand about games, organization and results. The project is current and innovative because it tackles an important issue for teenagers nowadays. This issue has become one of the most relevant ones in our present society among teenagers, their health, both physically and mentally, it is directly related to the food they eat and the amount of sport they practise. The project is considered innovative because students will work collaboratively with European teenagers creating apps and other digital products included in the activities proposed along the project. As far dissemination is concerned, students of each participating school will also be European ambassors of good healthy habits and sport lifestyle in the different primary, secondary schools, local health centres and town hall of each country, not to mention the spreading of their project among higher education, such as the Technological Nutrition and Health Institute (CTNS)in Spain where the future nutrition professionals are formed, the education department to let them know about the need to change the school curricula and other local communities, such as Parents' associations or youth centres of each partner country and giving lectures about our European project to students in the Secondary Teachers' Master course for future teachers to let them know about our results. Although it is true that our school has not participated in an Erasmus project during the last three years, the school has participated in other local school projects, such as the Green school projects, GEP project participation some years ago(Experimenting Plurilingualism Group) and the German exchange some students took part in last year.
This Erasmus+ project was born because of the need to improve teenagers´healthy habits, making them aware of the need to follow daily sport routines and healthy diets. Consequently they would get higher results in their academic life, be able to socialise, improve their social skills, learn how to communicate with other European teenagers, develop their horizons, improve oral communication skills in foreign languages, know about the teenager´s healthy and sport routines around Europe and learn about digital tools. As it was a common issue around Europe we searched partners on the etwinning website and organized a team to create an Erasmus+ project of good practises called «Healthier minds, smarter minds» which started in September 2018 and ended in August 2021. The participants were teenagers from six European schools (Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal,Spain and Sweden) between 14 to 15 years old because at that age many teenagers dropped out of sport clubs because of changing schools, routines or low economic parental situations. We included the Erasmus activities in the school curriculum of each school so as to be able to make all school communities participate actively in the Erasmus projects. In each mobility there were four students and two teachers who participated in the learning activities in each country having the role of school ambassadors. We selected students by asking them motivational videos in which they had to talk about healthy habits and sport they practised. It was also a requirement to host Erasmus students. It is important to mention that the last two learning activities could not take place due to Covid pandemic and due to the fact that Sweden had to drop out because their school was closed down in December 2019. Some of the activities were also made virtually in order to follow the project schedule. As mentioned before, students from all schools participated indirectly in the project because before, while and after learning activities the schools helped spread the Erasmus environment among students and teachers. The results which were obtained from the project were more than the ones we had expected at the beginning of the project, so we can point out that we increased the awareness in healthy habits among teenagers, the number of sport activities among teenagers boosted by workshops which took place in each school.There was an improvement in the results of the basic competences tests which were taken in February every year in the last course of compulsory secondary school, results which have been enclosed in the final report,not only in foreign language but also in maths, ICT and reading and writing skills. Another important result has been that school communities have scheduled more sport events in their school agendas, for example the Sport week, the nutrition Day, events which were disseminated on each school website and the project website as well. Students increased their linguistic, communicative, digital and social competences after each mobility because they had to explain to the other students their experience with powerpoint presentations. Another important result was that families got conscious of the importance of hosting an Erasmus student and became more open-minded once their children travelled alone to a European country. There was an increase in the activities teachers devoted to the Erasmus project because school communities knew about the Erasmus project and its benefits.Teachers matched Erasmus activities with their lessons, for example the research project of two students was based on Creating an App to promote healthy habits, a project which lasted more than one year. Students from the school communities had the opportunity to get involved in the Erasmus project, for example,one student created a Roblox game for the project and other related activities. We also observed in students’ immediate and long-term achievements of the project objectives: a development of entrepreneurial skills and competences useful for their future professional lives when they had to create a school business for the mobility in Castel di Sangro, Italy. Students also learnt how to use digital tools because they used them to do several activities, such as the project App,”Follow me” which was created as part of a research digital project,a cookbook with recipes from the partner countries, how to publish a digital magazine, wrote the project blog, created digital posters using Padlet or Popplet programmes, made digital presentations, created videos with the pictures and recorded moments of mobilities, tools used to communicate as well and to be able to organise the virtual week in the school. There was also an improvement in their awareness of being European citizens because they were worried about presentations of their schools and countries during learning activities, so we could talk about a development of social, learning and personal skills. Students had to work in teams so they learnt how to cooperate, respected others while working, learnt how to speak in public, and there was a sense of belonging to the school and to Europe when they participated in mobilities. Schools noticed a rise of motivation in the study of foreign languages because they experienced that they were useful to communicate and express their own ideas. Students also learnt about cultural differences, economic and social problems during mobilities. After several mobilities schools experienced an increase in the number of students who wanted to participate in Erasmus related activities and mobilities for other projects. Students became really involved participants in virtual sessions who learnt by doing, got to know the importance of practising daily sport activities and were interested in participating in activities scheduled in the school communities along the year, for example the scheduled hip hop workshops to involve teenagers in the school. Students' commitment towards school activities and school dissemination increased among students who had participated in the Erasmus project. Students became aware of the importance of Erasmus mobilities and communication with European citizens. One year after the beginning of the project, each school had also asked other Erasmus+ projects and had other projects in mind because there was a great demand among students to participate in mobilities or teachers who were interested in joining eTwinning and school Gateway academy to search partners and training courses. The Portuguese school was given the Quality label award for the project where all the project activities were published. The project coordinator created the project webpage together with the cooperation of the Lithuanian partner where all the results, products are published to give a widespread dissemination of this Erasmus project, co-funded by the Erasmus programme of the European Union. On the project results platform all the results which were created during these years will be available. Our Erasmus team was very satisfied with the achievement of our main objective, the exchange of good practices among the partner schools and all the above mentioned results.