STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are continuously growing, but the number of technical workers does not accompany thatgrowth. As the 21st century has brought new challenges, students should be prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments that willprivilege proficiency in Learning and Innovation Skills that include Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communicationand Collaboration [Framework for 21st Century Learning, 2017]. Also, the need to continuously explore new pedagogical practices in teaching andlearning creates an opportunity to shape new contents by balancing a stable and tested curriculum with new tools that stimulate creativity, allowingstudents to understand better the world they live in.This project will develop a low-cost mobile robotic kit aimed at children and adolescents from 10 to 13 years of age, designed to work as aninterdisciplinary teaching tool that can be applied directly to a curriculum, promoting students' technical skills and allowing them develop new skills likeComputational Thinking and Problem Solving, driven by the motivation created by a Robotics Competition.The methodology will consist of developing a collaborative training plan for the teachers involved in the project. Then a training course will also be madebased on the plan developed by all partners and will be put into practice with these teachers. During the training process, it is intended that interventionsin an educational context may be the object of collaborative reflections that respond to the project objectives. Then, teachers will apply what they havelearned with their students, analyse their pedagogical practices, reflect and share with the partners.During the course planning and execution, the partners will create teaching and learning toolkits explaining the new robotic kit and with activities andpedagogical practices with innovative educational scenarios for teachers and students. The partnership will also have a book that reports the teachers'experiences and students' perceptions on their pedagogical practices during the process.The importance of transnationality is mainly related to the richness that the diversity of pedagogical practices already existing in each of the countriesinvolved can bring to all partners in this project. It is also believed that experiencing this new teaching methodology in such differentiated places willcreate per se a unique set of challenges and opportunities in each context that can be so enriched by the group that the application of the model becomesmore effective in all contexts. The personal, cultural and linguistic richness that will be brought to all actors directly or indirectly involved is also evident, providing a highly enriching personal and academic growth/development.

SSaW has produced a sign vocabulary (based on International Sign) of around 200 essential Health and Safety (H&S) words and phrases (in multilingual glossary and eLearning resource format), to facilitate workplace communication between all employees, whatever their hearing and language ability. The planned impact of the SSaW project - the improvement of employment opportunities and social inclusion for the deaf/hearing-impaired and migrant communities - was successfully gained. The project is creating opportunities for companies and organisations to enhance their workplace environment by keeping ahead of the increasing demand for high Health and Safety standards coming from employees, authorities and the public. As safety in the workplace is being increasingly discussed in the wake of the emergence of COVID-19, this trans-European project opens new ways of communicating Health and Safety messages so they are as effective and inclusive as possible. This objective was formulated around known needs, based on existing research policy, and is strongly aligned with Erasmus+ objectives and priorities. The European Framework Directive 89/391 on Safety and Health at Work is a milestone in improving safety and health at work, which guarantees minimum safety and health requirements throughout Europe. Employers are therefore strongly motivated to ensure their employees' health and safety in the workplace, and an easy way for all employees to communicate urgent messages, particularly in high-risk situations, helps to do this. It will also reduce employers' concerns about workplace communication issues, which should encourage an increase in the employment of D/deaf/HI people, and migrants, (acting on the horizontal priority of social inclusion). Furthermore, manufacturing and construction are the industries with the highest rates of industrial deafness cases, and so employers who do not have systems in place for D/deaf/HI employees are likely to lose more experienced workers whose hearing becomes impaired over time. The ability to retain older workers (an issue raised in the EC’s Strategic Framework on Health & Safety at Work 2014-2020) is an additional and longer term benefit of this project. The project has created 4 intellectual outputs: O1 - Sign vocabulary 200 Health and Safety words and phrases, created in English by experts in manufacturing, Health and Safety and sign language, then transferred into a signed form (based on International Sign wherever possible). O2 - Online glossaryGlossary with videos of all the sign vocabulary signs, with translation (and additional information where required) in English, British Sign Language, German, Austrian Sign Language, Italian and Italian Sign Language. The signs are available to view online for free on desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet. O3 - E-learning resourceFreely available online eLearning resource containing 14 modules in three different languages, with scenario-based learning activities, taking International Sign videos from the online glossary in order to teach the sign vocabulary. O4 - Guidelines for diversity in health and safety Information on national Health and Safety qualifications, how the eLearning resource can be incorporated into VET providers' existing health and safety training courses, and information about how people with hearing impairment can specialise in a career in health and safety. Partners identified eight groups of people with which they worked to produce the SSaW resources outlined above and who they expect will most benefit from this innovative project: - Employees with hearing impairment - Migrant employees - Employees with no hearing or language issues (they will also need to use the sign vocabulary, if it is to become widespread) - Health and Safety experts and/or officers - Training Curricula developers - Human Resource policymakers - Social-inclusion activists - Health and Safety teachers The project's ultimate aim is increased access to employment for D/deaf/HI and migrant community. Around 5000 people have been reached directly and indirectly through project activities.The project has worked to include stakeholders from each of the groups covered by the project (D/deaf, foreign Deaf people, experts in the field of H&S) in all phases from glossary design to production and dissemination. This has ensured a real inclusion of possible stakeholders in the project as a whole.A further longer term benefit of SSaW is the real potential of the Glossary and E-learning resource to serve as a blueprint for a resource that can be extended or transferred across other sectors (to cover other national sign languages, other industries or to accommodate other forms of communication issues such as those caused by autism, Dyslexia or Down's Syndrome)

"<< Background >>One reason we apply for the project is to develop our organisations and the capacities of staff. In the three schools, STEM is already recognised as having had a significant role in educational development in recent years, and the Partners are convinced that STEAM is inevitably going to be a part of educational development in the years to come, accelerating its influence on public policy. Most schools are going to need to work in a STEAM environment, but many have not fully thought through how Art can be used to add an extra dimension to the idea of STEM to make it far more significant. The four Partners that are not schools represent stakeholders in educational development, and this project will help each to understand the potential of STEAM in terms of their own research and activity, their staff recruitment, and their application of continuing professional development. These are all vital areas for the Partners that we will approach during the course of the project.A core goal for our Partnership is to enable its organisations to increase the quality and relevance of their activities and this project meets that. Our actions have been developed for both our development and the target groups along with their members. We consciously identify the importance of increasing quality in the work, activities and practices of all participants and stakeholders involved in this project while opening up to new actors during the course of the project. STEAM as a subject area lends itself for further development for all the Partners. We have different sets of experience in the area of STEAM and so different sets of learning that we can achieve. Three areas of development are common to the Partners:(1) build our capacity as organisations to work transnationally and across sectors;(2) enhance our ability to address common needs and priorities in the field of school education(3) enable transformation and change, at an individual and organisational level, which leads to improvements and new approaches.Participation in the project will allow us to support each of them.Promoting excellence in education and skills development is one of the key elements under the Europe 2020 strategy, and the EU recognises that weaknesses remain with science teaching; the skills for future responsible innovators/researchers as well as for ""science-active"" citizens have to be built starting from an early age including scientific reasoning. The EU also states the importance of transversal competencies such as Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication and Collaboration in its Framework for 21st Century Learning, 2017. Addressing this through an international, collaborative approach is a need that has been acknowledged in public life across Europe.STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) are continuously growing, but the number of technical workers in Europe does not accompany that growth. As the 21st century has brought new challenges that increasingly make STEAM relevant, students in each of the Partner countries need to be prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments that will privilege proficiency in Learning and Innovation Skills that include creativity, innovation and collaboration. However, most uses of technologies in schools today do not support 21st-century learning skills. In many cases, technologies are merely reinforcing old ways of teaching and learning and this is what makes STEAM so important. Current typical school science classes do not seem appropriate for fostering critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity since students across Europe tend to be guided through recipe-style guides towards the ‘discovery’ of predefined concepts.STEAM programmes, as a repurpose for STEM, aim to teach students innovation, to think critically and use engineering or technology in imaginative designs or creative approaches to real-world problems framed in social studies.<< Objectives >>The Partners have chosen to identify three priorities that need to be addressed and that this Partnership can have an impact for themselves, members of chosen target groups and the project participants:1. Promoting interest and excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the STEAM approach in schools2. Development of key competencies in school students3. Supporting teachers, school leaders and other teaching professions.In combining and addressing these priorities, the objective of ‘STEAMing Ahead’ is for the development of a broad yet detailed set of pedagogical, educational and research-based resources resulting from an in-depth implementation of a STEAM approach. These resources will then be accessible for schools across those countries in the EU and the other Erasmus+ Participating Countries as an outcome of the project activities.The Partners are convinced that STEAM is currently showing that it is essential development of STEM, making the intentions within STEM more accessible while also fulfilling enhanced access to key competencies. The application of STEAM education aims to teach students innovation, to think critically and use engineering or technology in imaginative designs or creative approaches to real-world problems framed in social studies. A core objective of the project is for students to be better able to take thoughtful risks, engage in experiential learning, persist in problem-solving, embrace collaboration, and work through the creative process, potentially becoming the innovators, educators, leaders, and learners of the 21st century. We aim to make STEAM a key that will unlock this potential.The partners seek to provide participants and target groups with The Golden Ratio (along with the place of the Golden Rectangle in the history of Art) as a practical choice for a subject area due to its relevance to all the original STEM subjects while drawing on reasoning, ethics and design principles and encouraging creative solutions, inserting the meaning of the STEAM distinction. Through the application of the Golden Ratio, we aim to create a living example of a subject area that when applied in a STEAM context can deliver critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, communication and negotiation skills, analytical skills, creativity, and intercultural skills, which are embedded throughout the key competencies.In the context of key competencies as defined in the Reference Framework, we want the work of our project, in deepening the effectiveness of a STEAM approach, to have an impact on policymakers, education and training providers, educational staff, guidance practitioners, employers, public employment services and learners themselves. We seek to promote key competencies as those which all individuals need for personal fulfilment and development, employability, a sustainable lifestyle and active citizenship. Our project aims for the acquisition of key competencies to have a rightful place in a lifelong-learning context, from early childhood throughout adult life, and through formal, non-formal and informal learning in all contexts, including family, school, workplace, neighbourhood and other communities.The work on the project is guided by the needs within the teaching profession for experience and a broad range of capacities. To this end, we seek to enhance teachers’ continuous professional development, first within the three school project Partners. By raising the profile of the STEAM approach through innovative and collaborative work, we seek to make teaching careers more attractive and diverse by opening doors to new, exciting pedagogies where teachers can be confident that they are helping to meet the needs of their students currently and in later life. We believe that the activities proposed here will support the development of stronger school leadership among teachers, with a more confident and visible application of the STEAM approach in schools.<< Implementation >>We identify the implementation activities in five sets: Management, Transnational Meetings, and a Learning Teaching Activity, which set the foundations for Result Production, and the Multiplier Events at the project’s conclusion.Our management activities include financial administration, dissemination of information on events, reached milestones, events, monitoring and evaluation, risk assessment, and online meetings. They also include internal communication activity. The project partners have also chosen to secure activities at Meetings that nurture mutual faith, trust and support within the Partnership when implementing responsibilities as this is a quality they seek for their organisations. It is also important that Partners undertake activities so that they develop as organisations; activities that stimulate knowledge about the project subject area, while also gaining knowledge about the organisational strengths and abilities displayed by other partners. This way Partners emerge from the project stronger – better able to contribute to this and future projects.Transnational Meeting activities take place in the context of ensuring mutual support within the partnership as well as effective project management. There are six meetings so the Partners can assess progress and discuss issues that arise face-to-face. The Meetings are valuable to counter our working remotely from one another, facilitating trust and bonding between the project Partners. The Meetings are all timed to try and work with the school calendar so that no meeting takes place in the middle of a term. The Learning Teaching Training Activity will play a direct role in applying Partner development, so the teachers in the schools who will be working directly with the students can embed their knowledge about the implementation of the STEAM approach in a structured manner, with specific reference to the Golden Ratio as a subject area. The goal for the activity is to ensure that the teachers leave stimulated by the teaching subject theme with a sound grasp of the pedagogical strategy that the project has established over the preceding months. The teacher participants will gain a comprehensive perspective about the context of the STEAMing Ahead project, and upgrade their pedagogical skills regarding a STEAM rather than a STEM approach.Building on these foundations, we will implement activities related to the Production of Project Results. The activities will be constructed to allow each result to be fed by the results that came before and in turn to feed the quality of those that come later. There will be four results, largely produced in sets of elements that complement one another and make the whole Result more than the sum of its parts in each case. The range of activities include: • delineating Teacher-centred, Learner-centred and Learning-centred pedagogical strategies, • researching appropriate OER that can be applied in the classroom and virtual teaching activities, • organising a set of artistic and cultural activities to support the curriculum and the theoretical purpose of STEAM in education, and • undertaking the editorial and production tasks necessary to complete the publication of the academic book commissioned to consider the evolution of a STEAM approach to education. More detail on this and the Results themselves is provided in the ‘Results’ section.Our Multiplier Events as project activities will allow our results to reach out to the identified stakeholders as the results have been conceived as practical tools that can concretely support a range of secondary schools, not just the Partners. The events will be organized by each host Partner with consideration of the audience they know. At the core of the event will be a presentation of the project achievements, but they will also include table-top group workshops, questions and answers as well as breaks for participants to introduce themselves and network among their peers.<< Results >>We have identified four Results, each comprising a set of outputs that combine to secure maximum value for the overall Result. These seek to cover the identified Priorities to maximise the potential for the results to secure impact on behalf of the target groups and participants.1. ‘Strategies, Methodologies and Analysis: preparing teachers to apply a STEAM approach through the application of the Golden Ratio’.This covers the production of a methodological framework, including a pedagogical strategy appropriate for curriculum development and the acquisition of educational resources that can be applied in the three school Partners. This will include analysis to secure the necessary quality in the documentation so that it can be applied by the target groups identified. Our needs analysis directs us towards a rethink of pedagogical strategy, going to first principles so that an effective STEAM approach in curricula can be implemented. For this, we choose the Golden Ratio as a subject case study and create guidance material for curriculum developers who seek to apply the framework.2. ‘Curricula, Resources and Assessments: collating materials for the implementation of the STEAM approach in the classroom’.This covers a course curriculum that will apply strategies and methodologies from the first result. The course curriculum will be supported by Open Education Resources available and sourced online for use in the digital elements of the teaching, together with original audio-visual material created within the project. The Partners will also establish an evaluation method and tool to fit the nature of the curriculum. Our needs analysis directs us to apply a new curriculum, to exploit the potential in the STEAM approach fully. There is a focus on key competencies being gained by school students through their school-based activities, with the strategies for the students to acquire them developed through a STEAM approach and the study of the Golden Ratio.3. ‘Courses, Modules and Peer–Learning Activities: Implementations in the classroom and virtually with cooperation across national borders’.This covers engagement of the schools in cooperation and network creation for their own development, between themselves and beyond. At the centre is cooperation in implementing the created curriculum, including the student peer-learning activities. This stage will include application of e-Learning material, at least two artistic or cultural events in each school and piloting of key parts of the curriculum created in the months prior to this implementation, with constant attention paid to the acquisition of key competencies by the students. There will be a physical exhibition at each school as part of this Result showing the work done by the students, as well as an online display hosted by the Project showing the collective work.4. ‘Guidelines, Publications and Recommendations: Publishing and presenting outcomes based on observations & evidence to share and promote the STEAM approach’. This covers a set of best practice guidelines appropriate for teachers to think about their own implementation of STEAM as part of the reporting on the implementation of the curriculum in the classroom when applying cooperation, collaboration and peer-learning. The full Result will include an academic book with a theme of the pedagogies that lie behind a STEAM approach to school education and a set of Policy Recommendations for public policymakers. The document form of this result will also act as the spine for a virtual training webinar for all of the staff in each of the three schools. The result will also be used in the Multiplier Events carried out by Partners.Together, the most important outcome we will gain is impact for the project Partners immediately the project concludes, but also for the target groups and participants so that they can be more confident in an innovative approach to implementing a STEAM approach."

Based on the partners' experience on barriers to e-Learning, 'Better e-Learning for All' ('Better-E') proposes a global approach to create better e-Learning. The Project's name is already providing information about its objectives by demanding an upgrading on the quality of e-Learning practices and simultaneously an enhancement on the number and characteristics of the Organizations and people to involve in e-Learning.Partners are aware of the common cross-borders barriers to e-Learning which had been previously identified by the partners. The barriers had been divided into three categories: - Access: the physical and technological infrastructures in which the learning occurs and through which the material is presented; the availability of appropriate learning resources; the social infrastructure in which the material is presented.- Stakeholders: learners, trainers and Organizations;- Course: contents and PedagogyConsidering this barriers' ensemble, 'Better-E' proposes tools and methodologies to diminish them, providing solutions both from a technological and a pedagogical perspectives, surely considering and empowering the necessary (and also the most fragile) stakeholders.The project Objectives are, among other:- to propose, to test and to create a user-friendly and pedagogy-centered e-Learning Platform for courses promotion;- to introduce and to incorporate e-Learning into Organizations (training provider NGOs, and other) usually not included into e-Learning practices;- to promote e-Learning as an inclusion device considering the fact that traditional Education and Training are regular social inclusion mechanisms but so far e-Learning is not;- to use e-Learning to encourage active citizenship and entrepreneurship through initiatives fostering green skills and entrepreneurial mind-sets and skills.The Project will directly target two main groups (further applicable to an endless number and type of users): Training Provider NGOs and their targeted audiences. The philosophy sustaining it is the need to generate e-Learning best practices near Organizations into Adult Education and Training Systems but usually not into e-Learning. Engaging them into e-Learning will consequently benefit their target-groups by engaging them with the new set of social support offers available. The Project foresees the direct involvement of dozens of NGOs from the involved countries.It should be noticed that the scientific, pedagogical and technological scopes of the deliverables are prepared and will be applicable to the entire range of e-Learning stakeholders, namely Schools, Universities, Training Provider Companies, among other.Project promoters will engage into a Preliminary Research to upgrade the state-of-arts within their contexts (Organizations, people, policies, Countries). They will then conceive, test and launch the 'Better-E Platform', an online tool to fully conceive e-Learning courses embedded of technological solutions and pedagogical concerns. In order to test the Platform and engage final-beneficiaries (NGOs and people), the Partnership proposes the conception, testing and deliver of 2 e-Learning courses: 'Entrepreneurship', promoting active citizenship and entrepreneurship and failing social exclusion cycles, and 'Easily Moving from Learning to e-Learning', an instruction course also teaching, but not restricted to, how to use the 'Better-E' Platform. During the entire process the Partnership will be committed with Dissemination activities and internal and external incorporation activities. Monitoring and Evaluation and Quality Assurance play an essential role through the entire Project cycle allowing the decision for the best inflection processes whenever needed.A participatory methodology is implemented in order to involve all the applicable stakeholders: promoters and users. The cycle of conceiving/testing/refining/launching requires the active involvement of final beneficiaries, generating mutual responsibility and ultimate ownership.Tangible products to deliver are fostering strong intangible results: the enhancement of both the practice and the quality of e-Learning, the increasing of the number and type of e-Learning promoters and, above all, the problems for which better e-Learning practices can contribute with a solution. Not only Education and Training are foreseen as e-Learning scopes, 'Better-E' Project fosters Social Inclusion and Cohesion.The chosen acronym, Better-E, reveals simultaneously this great concern towards the importance of better 'e-Learning', but is as well capable of providing additional interpretations of relevance in the current times: 'Better-E' may recall 'Better Europe', by means of strong European Partnerships contributing for better common societies; it may as well recall the English word 'Battery', symbolizing the strong energy of partners while developing the project together, making it aligned and responding to the Erasmus+ global priorities and aims.

"As stated above Article 27 of the UNCRPD and its Optional Protocol has 11 directives to secure ""the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others"" while the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 identified 8 areas for action for the elimination of barriers, two of these being 'Employment' along with 'Education and training'. However while there is intent, data suggests that more needs to be done if the barriers to employment for disabled people are to be eliminated. Currently good work is being done to enhance the training received by disabled people so they have the skills required to contribute, but there is a significant need to ensure that SMEs can face the directives with confidence, if the changes for disabled people are to take place.SupportAbility was created in order to address the gap in resources that currently prevents SMEs in the furniture and woodworking industries being full contributors to the aims of the UNCRPD. Its core aim was to provide resources to ensure that people living with disability can secure long-term employment through SMEs being able to supply the support they require from within the workplace. To this end, the project sought to gain access to available resources and construct new ones for SME Directors, Managers and employees to enable access to information needed when employing people with disability. SupportAbility had 6 partner organisations, from 4 countries (UK, Spain, Portugal and Turkey) that brought a diverse experience to deliver the objectives including working with SMEs, implementing VET, advocates for disabled people, creating e-Learning activities and analysing social research. The method for the project was founded on providing 5 substantial outputs as resources that assisted in delivering the objectives and are as follows: 1. A report on the current state of affairs for furniture industry SMEs in employing disabled people with an analysis of their needs. 2. A database providing resources for SME managers that can assist them in employing disabled people.3. A User Guide to assist them in navigating and applying the database.4. A curriculum for the training of mentors to support disabled people in the workplace. A set of learning activities was also developed. 5. An e-Learning course that can be implemented through a specific e-Learning platform.(Ref: All outputs are on the dissemination platform (DP))The work was undertaken in the order above and the work on each output informed the development of the next. In order to achieve the outcomes above, the partners made contact with over 100 organisations from across the sector in which they work and engaged with circa 500 stakeholders (Annex 1) in order to reach the objectives. The stakeholders mainly came from partner countries and took part in surveys, learning activities other eve and events. They also input into work for outputs 1, 2, 3 and 4. A key outcome was the creation of a curriculum and e-Learning VET course for the implementation of the curriculum developed (Ref: Outputs 4/5 DP). It took place in the form of a pilot which comprised two week face to face input and e -learning content in the interim. In the application 12 furniture industry employees were to train as mentors. However during the project, partners realised the special value of training for those people in organisations that need to implement the procedures, to support the employment of people with disability, including learning from their peers. For this reason and economic issues affecting SMEs the project partners proposed to the National Agency a change to the attendance from Spain. The proposal was accepted on the 26th February 2018 and 6 VET training students (beyond legal age) in the furniture sector attended, together with (initially 5 and for the second week 4 (due to force majeure issues) staff from UK furniture organisations. The partners believe this retained the principles and context of the activity whilst making the outcomes of the project more sustainable.The partners expect that within furniture industry SMEs, there will be a significant increase in their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship in their approach to recruitment. The outputs exist to enable SMEs to move past seeing the disability in a candidate for employment, so they can engage with them as part of a team while having the confidence to deal with any special needs systemically. Beyond the project's lifetime, SupportAbility can become an example of a practical implementation of the ethical position stated within directives like UNCRPD and the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020. In this context, SupportAbility can bring an increased inter-regional and transnational cooperation between public authorities in their VET commitment to supporting SMEs seeking to maximise accessibility to their world of work in all its forms. At grass root level the learning activity challenged the Spanish students career thinking."