Our school partnership with schools in Czechia and France occurs on various levels and thereby intends to be conducive to a good and sustainable internationalization of our schools. Through mutual personal visits and regular exchange through various opportunities, which modern media provide (e Twinning, Office, 365, Email, etc.), a lively and active exchange with French and Czech colleagues to create lasting joint projects is expected to be established and maintained. The participating students are aged between 14 to 19 years old and will be advised by the respective teaching staff (Languages: German, French, English; Logistics, Business, Media). We have planned to establish and maintain contact with students via eTwinning and other digital platforms. The collaboration of the students via the practice firms and junior firms is of particular to us. Maintaining and regularly evaluating contact will be the responsibility of the faculty. Aside from that, mutual visits between partner schools have also been planned. The purpose of these trips is to help students between the ages of 16 and 19 and teachers become acquainted with their respective exchange partners. What is important to us is not only taking part in educational and linguistic exchange with the involved parties in this Erasmus Project, but also cultural exchange. Furthermore, this project supports a proficient use of new media. Digital communication and the ability to make oneself understandable to counterparts through the most diverse array of new technologies, e.g. e Twinning, One Note, etc., are central to our project. In cooperation with the Czech partner school, we will organize a media workshop. Starting with the first years (14 years old), the students in the Perg Business Academy learn French. Aside from that, a Czech intensive course will be offered to the students of our school within the framework of this exchange project. In this way, students can use their newly acquired language in practice. Aside from that, we will resort to English as a lingua franca in some situations, through which it will be applied to real-world situations as training for the student’s future. Starting with the third year students (16 years old), we have planned a personal exchange between individual classes. There, the students will take part in classes with their exchange partners. This project also offers the opportunity to organize trips to Czech and French businesses that specialize in sales, trading, accountancy, and other related sectors. We consider this project to be an initiation, which will nurture our students into even more open-minded and intercultural citizens of the world and will impart upon them a transnational European perspective and way of thinking. Thus, we will make an important societal contribution and our students will simultaneously be prepared for the European labor market.
The school partnership project "Entrepreneurship - Media - Languages" at School of the BHAK Perg with the partner schools in France and Kaplice from 2019, was extended to 2020 due to the pandemic. The aim of the project has been the exchange of students and knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship, the promotion of sustainable cooperation and internationalisation of our schools in the future. All three partner schools offer education with a focus on business and thus have entrepreneurship (training firms). Due to our expertise, BHAK Perg played a pioneering role in this exchange. We were glad to pass our know-how to the partner schools. The results will be shown in the training firm project "get started". The students of the BHAK Perg (14 to 19 years old) learn English and French. In the exchange with the French partners, they were able to employ and practice their French language skills, however in blended learning sessions, due to the travelling restrictions caused by the pandemic situation. All students of the Lycée Jessé de Forest and the SOŠ a SOU Kaplice (14 to 19 years old) have English language classes. In addition, some of those students learn German as well. Due to the pandemic, all students were able to use and practise their command of English, French and German within the framework of the project, mainly in the form of blended learning. Mutual personal visits to France and the Czech Republic with regular exchanges and employing new technologies were planned. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic modified part of the project goals. The planned mutual personal exchanges (for both teachers and students) with the partner schools in the Czech Republic and France had to be cancelled or postponed due to the labourious travel conditions during the project period. The project extension was extremely favourable for all participants as travelling and mutual visits were only possible in the summer semester of 2022. The planned regular contact and exchange between teachers and students took place via various online platforms and video conferences. Contributions were uploaded to the eTwinning platform. The pandemic forced the teachers to exchange and collaborate mainly via video conferencing and social media. The students got to know each other via video conferencing and worked together employing the framework of blended learning . The contact is still maintained via social media. The cooperation of the students and the exchange of learning content on the topic of training firms were predominantly prepared and carried out in the form of blended learning. The progress and success of the collaboration were regularly monitored and evaluated by the teachers in charge. Due to the pandemic, home schooling and travel restrictions a personal exchange between the students of the BHAK Perg and the Lycée in France took place in March 2022. An exchange between BHAK Perg and the school in the Czech Republic took place in June 2022. BHAK Perg visited the school in Kaplice at the beginning of July 2022. The participating students (aged 16 to 18) were supervised by their teachers. During the project period, which was extended due to the pandemic, there was a lot of video conferencing, lively correspondence via e-mails and social media contacts. The close cooperation between the teachers of the participating partner schools was maintained through blended learning. Project logos were designed for this project (Kloud.com). Most of the exchanges between the students took place through blended learning: video conferencing, online platforms, social media. The students attended lectures in their schools and the students from the partner schools were able to follow them online. The project helped our students to become more open-minded and interculturally sensitive people. To experience the European perspective - thinking beyond national borders. An important social contribution was made to the development of our students and their employability on the European labour market. However, the pandemic situation and travel restrictions shifted the focus from face-to-face collaboration to blended learning setting. The pandemic forced us to establish and maintain contact between students through online platforms, video conferencing and social media. We learned a lot in the field of social learning, in the professional field at the level of training firms (virtual exchange, marketing, etc.) and the competent use of new technologies. Digital communication and the ability to exchange via blended learning were central to the project. The mutual visits of the partner schools, which were only possible at the end of the project period due to travel facilitation, served to meet the participating school partners. Our goals, both linguistic and professional, as well as our collaboration (virtual exchange and face-to-face communication) with all the parties involved in the Erasmus project in an intercultural setting have been fulfilled.