Encouraging collaboration on projects involving cross-border countries, languages and cultures. Students work on a project with a visible and real end product that has international benefits beyond the school. Promoting foreign language skills: Students were required to communicate with each other in English or Spanish for the collaboration, which primarily promotes oral language use. However, written language skills were also enhanced through the translation work for the app as well as filling out the questionnaires, creating the presentations, etc. Entrepreneurship and technology: In the project, based on the form of a digital web platform, the students had to deal with several practical digital aspects. For example, using professional image editing tools to develop a logo, creating CAD designs for 3-D printers, using and evaluating AI for translations, etc. Engagement: dealing with the development of their home city (Essen) and the city of Bilbao in terms of structural and especially environmental and social changes and reflecting on them critically.
The Helene-Lange-Realschule in Essen is a lower secondary school that focuses on four attributes in its school program. These are European learning, inclusive learning, social learning and future-oriented learning. We are a certified European School as well as a School of the Future. Furthermore, we are a school where inclusion is of great importance. We have an above-average number of students with special educational needs and a high number of students from migrant and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, we feel a special need to reinforce the European idea through the implementation of international projects and thereby develop a positive attitude towards other cultures. The theme of the "GreenTeen" app, the development of the city of Bilbao from an originally industrial city to a green city with cultural diversity, should encourage the participants to think about social as well as ecological developments. In the course of the project, they discover parallels to their hometown Essen, which has undergone a similar development.