The partner schools identified the following conditions: - Girls are less often using modern technology than boys. - Theoretical knowledge of students who attend gymnasium is higher, but they cannot transfer this knowledge into everyday life situations. - We miss activities that would encourage the integration of two seemingly different areas; these are social sciences and natural sciences. - There is no content in the gymnasium program that would enable the development of technological competences, although technological literacy is a very important factor both in studying and in finding a job. - In order to be genuinely gymnasiums should also have knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship - how to change the idea into a product, promote it and market it. - The living environment is still poorly adapted for the blind and visually impaired. With the project Unlock! we want to draw attention to these shortcomings and to soften them. The project is innovative because visually impaired and blind people could cooperate and try an escape room. Our goals are: a) to integrate knowledge from social sciences and science, and apply this in life situations, b) intercultural connection, to learn about other language cultures, c) to develop technological and ICT literacy, d) to develop mathematical literacy, e) to learn a part of local history, f) to strengthen entrepreneurial skills, g) to enable girls and people with fewer opportunities (visually impaired, blind, students from socially weaker environments) to work with technology and ICT, h) to encourage students to take non-formal education. Our intention is to actively involve pupils in every part of the project; when planning dissemination, students will learn marketing and communication with the public in order to achieve the longevity and sustainability of the project. The project's prevalence planning will focus on the development of local tourism, which will be promoted on the World Wide Web. Project teams from each country will have participants from natural sciences and social sciences programs, and we will also ensure balanced gender representation in groups. Each team will build an escape room in their local environment. Students will explore the local cultural and historical heritage, prepare the concept of the story, plan the development of the necessary elements for the escape room, test the functionalities of their concept in the real environment, evaluate and develop final solutions, and ultimately produce an effective plan for disseminating information about the project. Teachers / mentors will have two different but interconnected roles in this project in order to achieve the best possible results. Their main task will be to mentor students, and the second task will be to research and implement new methods of education through the exchange of good practices between the partners involved. The results of the project will be four rooms in the local environments of the participating countries. They will represent a local cultural and historical heritage. Users will develop mathematical competences. Three escape rooms will be built in a real environment. One of them will be virtual, published online, which will allow anyone to use with an Internet connection. Virtual Escape Room is a guarantee for the sustainability of the project. We are proud of the innovative idea of adapting one real escape room to the use of the visually impaired and blind. This is the escape room in Slovenske Konjice. In the long term, we see a continuation of the project in the development of escape rooms that will be adapted to other vulnerable groups (deaf, physically disabled, people with intellectual disabilities ...) We build bridges between natural sciences and social sciences, between different cultures and languages, between knowledge and skills, between theory and practice, in order to develop the most appropriate methodology of education. With our method we will fill the gaps of missing skills that are necessary for todays and future jobs, and students will gain some experience to use them in real life.
During writing the project we stick to findings we came to in the process of quality monitoring: High school students cannot transfer theoretical knowledge into everyday life situations. There are less activities that would combine different fields (mathematics and history in our case). There are no contents in gymnasium programme that would enable the development of technological competencies. Boys use modern technology more often than girls. Students need knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship. The living environment is still poorly adapted for the blind or partially sighted people. In the project Open it we wanted to draw attention to those shortcomings and mitigate them. Our goals: - to connect knowledge from social science and natural science and apply it into life situation - to develop mathematics, technological and digital literacy - to get to know a part of local history - to strenghten entrepreneurship skills - to enable girls and people with fewer opportunities (the blind or partially sighted people, students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds) to work with modern machines - to encourage students to take up non-formal education - to connect interculturally, to get to know other language cultures. During the implementation of the project we achieved some other goals that we did not anticipate when applying. While creating the escape room students were developing entrepreneurship skills and manual skills. We became acquainted with the work of the Intellectual Property Office as the initial project name Unlock is a registered trademark so we had to change it. The result of the project are four escape rooms: classic, outdoor, virtual and room adapted for blind and partially sighted. In Hranice, it was built in a former school shop. They involved the life of Sigmund Freud who was born near their town. Students from Opatija took advantage of the city park and dedicated the story to the history of tourism. Students from Slovenske Konjice turned a small classroom in the attic into an escape room for the blind and partially sighted. Their story is dedicated to the Konus Company which employed a large part of locals during Yugoslav era. All three project teams included both sexes in a balanced way. Students with disabilities also participated. The students planned work by themselves, acquired knowledge, chose stories for the escape room, arranged the rooms, and put together puzzles. Students explored local history by interviewing elderly citizens and investigating contents on the Internet and in the books. Girls were encouraged to work with technologies in the lab to gain experience and knowledge that is not otherwise typical for them: erecting plaster walls, treating and painting them, making gadgets for the puzzles in the U-lab. Some students drawed old maps by hand, some searched the GPS coordinates of locations used in the escape park for example. Students used the software for text and photo editing and some of them researched the block programming and applied the knowledge on micro:bit. In order to operate sustainably very little new furniture were bought and rather adapted the old one (the Konus Company donated furniture and products). In Hranice, a lot of furniture and decorations were obtained from municipal waste and domestic attics. Most of the equipment in the escape rooms is such that it can be reused in classrooms. Assembling mental tasks proved to be a difficult task. We realized that a good idea is also distinguished by a simple implementation. The most difficult thing was to assess whether a task was really difficult. We tested the shortlist among classmates. We put the best tasks in the room. The promotion of our escape rooms was published in local newspapers and online. Project web page and brochures were designed. We purchased 360° image capture cameras. We learned how to use tools to make a virtual escape room. For simplicity and accessibility, we have moved the virtual escape room from originally planned veer.tv.app to Google forms. The more students were involved in the project, the more teachers performed as tutors, no longer guiding the students on the path of discovering new knowledge, but following them and learning together with them. The escape rooms are used by students from secondary and primary schools from the surrounding area. They are available to tourists, so we connect with tourist information centres. In Sl. Konjice we will invite the society for the blind and visually impaired. The virtual escape room will be freely available on websites of our schools. In the long term, we see the continuation of the project in the development of escape rooms that will be adapted to other vulnerable groups (deaf, handicapped, people with intellectual disabilities, ….). Students gained a lot of competencies needed for today's and future jobs during their participation in the project.