<< Objectives >>SAYL enables young children (3-5) to engage in new adventurous stories. The project aims to build a book platform that includes excellent interactive digital stories in the majority and minority languages used in the five participating countries (Germany, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, and Turkey). The platform is online and constructed to allow free access through most modern devices. The platform can thus make books available to children for various reasons deprived of good picture books.<< Implementation >>The books will have multimedia features that make them helpful in supporting meaning-making. In addition, the books include the possibility of adapting the semantic richness to children's narrative understanding, choosing a language, and interacting with audio, video, and animation. We present the books on a platform that provides, apart from access, the possibility to select a book and a language. Furthermore, it is equipped with features to motivate children to return to the platform.<< Results >>We expect the book platform to increase and enrich book reading in ECEC organizations and families. In addition, families' close cooperation with ECEC organizations due to access to the same books can bolster a book reading routine in families. Furthermore, the platform may boost book reading, particularly in disadvantaged groups, like immigrant children, children speaking a minority language, or children deprived of good picture books due to socio-economic factors or a pandemic.

Urban agriculture (UA) represents a growing movement toward transforming vacant lots, backyards, and even rooftops into productive green spaces. As such the urban agriculture has the potential to offer a wealth of benefits. Like any urban green space, urban farms and gardens can help improve air quality, moderate temperatures, and reduce storm water runoff. For many inner-city residents, urban farms and gardens may also be the only places where they can regularly experience nature. The majority of people today live in urban environments, and it is estimated that future population growth will be concentrated in urban areas of less developed countries. Urban agriculture has been drawing a lot of attention recently for several reasons: the majority of the world population has shifted from living in rural to urban areas; the environmental impact of agriculture is a matter of rising concern; and food insecurity, especially the accessibility of food, remains a major challenge. UA has often been proposed as a solution to some of these issues, for example by producing food in places where population density is highest, reducing transportation costs, connecting people directly to food systems, and using urban areas efficiently. However, to date, no study has examined how much food could actually be produced in urban areas on a global scale. Overall, the space required is regrettably the highest where UA is most needed, i.e., in countries like Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey where a considerable percentage of the population has poor income. We also show that smaller urban clusters (i.e., <100 km2 each) together represent about two-thirds of the global urban extent; thus UA discourse and policies should not focus on large cities exclusively, but should also target smaller urban areas that offer the greatest potential in terms of physical space. Our project developed a training curriculum, training videos, training course for adults (aged 18+), who are interested to explore ecological urban agriculture either to produce their own food, to sell the product to small outdoor markers, or as part of their activities during their spare time/hobby. The training materials are provided via e-learning portal and two mobile applications for Android and iOS mobile devices. The following indicators were achieved: INDICATOR 1: Knowledge and good practice widely spread among adult educators on national and EU level INDICATOR 2: Spread of innovative approaches from country to country and their integration into common practice INDICATOR 3: Participants as learning communities became aware and exploited the project deliverables • Number of involved representatives of the adult educators - 1295 • Number of visitors - 5450 visitors • Number of educational institutions which are using the project resources - 32 institutions in total for the project. • Number of involved representatives of policy makers and systematic level gatekeepers - 87 on national levels + 12 on EU level. • Increased percentage of the increased number of stakeholders who have been attracted to use the app resources by the end of the piloting phase influenced by the results of their adult peers who have participated. INDICATOR 4: Active participation (including time availability) of project stakeholders and gatekeepers At the end of the project realisation, we may conclude on the reached impact:Those trained by the project are able to achieve better realisation on the market, where we expect an increase of the employment rate on local and regional levels in the next months. The project results were tested with illiterate, low qualified and low skilled people as well as NEETs. We helped them to acquire new knowledge, skills and competences as well as to have better chances for realisation in the labour market and to achieve better inclusion in the society. We covered the learning gap in terms of lack of provision of Adult education training materials in the field of ecological and urban agriculture. We supported the stabilisation of the eco-farming sector by increasing the number of potential newly established micro SMEs in this sector in Bulgaria. We achieved further strengthening of the capacity building of our organisation, which led to further extension of our staff’ competences, communication and team working abilities to cooperate with other colleagues on an EU level. The ECO-AGRI curriculum supported the National plan for the development of the agricultural sector in Bulgaria. This output improved the Adult training opportunities for existing adult educators, which received up-to date training materials provided via blended learning facilitation (platform and two mobile application – for Android and for iOS mobile devices). Overall the post impact after the realized training is definitely leading to an improved quality of the production of urban agriculture, which will support better health conditions of the entire society.

Erosion is a major threat to the ecosystemic services provided by soils, especially for nutrient cycling, provision of food, water purification, leading to significant on- and off-site effects that needs to be monitored, studied and prevented. EUROSION will tackle this issue by developing and demonstrating a dynamic soil erosion monitoring system able to continuously and precisely estimate soil erosion across spatial and temporal scales, considering water, wind and tillage effects in agricultural lands. This will be achieved with: (i) the creation of a robust multi-scale monitoring network composed of EUROSION partnership and representatives of complementary monitoring stakeholders, (ii) the elaboration of a monitoring scheme using harmonized monitoring methods allowing to collect up-to-date and reliable data, (iii) interrelated wind-water-tillage-related process-based erosion models capable of quantifying soil erosion from local to EU scale and across time and estimate the impact of management practices. These enhanced knowledge and innovative bricks will lead to the development of a user-friendly interactive and open-access platform for policymakers, researchers and monitoring stakeholders to visualize dynamic maps of erosion and conduct further research. Thus, EUROSION soil erosion monitoring system will deliver reliable estimates and validated indicators, on which the project will take stock to provide policymakers and agricultural land managers with recommendations on best management practices reducing soil erosion, supported by tailored cost-benefit analysis. EUROSION will also enable science-based trade-offs for the development and update of soil-related policies, including the new CAP. The project will run in close collaboration with local stakeholders, EU policymakers, and the JRC, and will be implemented in specific 12 Monitoring Nodes, representing European erosion hot spots and key agricultural areas.

<< Objectives >>The project aims to provide adequate training to- school staff and especially teachers in primary/secondary education on how to accommodate STICORDI teaching approaches for children with disabilities; and on how to specifically accommodate for children with dyslexia;- parents on how to specifically accommodate for children with dyslexia when studying at home (doing homework) or following online education.We also aim to lobby policy makers by targeting ministries of education.<< Implementation >>As project we will:- develop/pilot STICORDI measures adapted from best practices in Belgium and transfer them to Bulgaria and Turkey through customisation and adaptation to the local realities;- develop/pilot training manuals for school staff/teachers from primary/secondary education how to apply STICORDI measures, and how to address students with dyslexia;- develop/pilot training manuals for parents how to overcome current barriers/challenges with children with dyslexia studying from home.<< Results >>White papers towards policy makers to strengthen inclusive education and provide adequate training to school staff in primary and secondary education;A dedicated manual with STICORDI measures for schools in EN, BG, TR;A dyslexia manual for school teachers in primary and secondary education in EN, BG, TR;A dyslexia manual for parents of children with dyslexia in EN, BG, TR.All the above will be supported by an online and mobile (iOS, Android) multilingual training platform.

"<< Background >>In today's world where technology has penetrated into almost all spheres of our lives, automation systems and robots have become alternative to humans in many business sectors from agriculture to industry. Many factories have already automatised, started to employ a minimum number of people and for example, about 1.7 million manufacturing jobs have already been lost to robots since 2000, including 400,000 in Europe (https://teamstage.io/jobs-lost-to-automation-statistics/). This has also led to the emergence of new jobs in the labour market such as product owners, customer success specialists, and sales development representatives, behaviour health technicians, etc., highlighting both cognitive and affective skills of humans in business interactions. Therefore, social and emotional learning skills have become prominent in terms of increasing employability and facilitating social relations, but in reality, these skills are always needed to maintain strong and healthy relations with others, provide resilience in difficult conditions and deal with challenges in real-life situations.Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) refers to the concept of developing social-emotional skills in order to make students more effective in learning (Guerra & Bradshaw, 2008). Therefore, SEL is the ability to be aware of one's own emotions, manage emotions, solve problems, build relationships and empathize (Waltz, 2013) and it is of great importance in students' ability to function in school settings as well as in real life. A structural approach to fostering SEL skills can facilitate teachers to help students attain these skills more effectively.Thus, the integration of computational thinking comes in view promisingly, referring to “the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent” (Wing 2011). It involves a set of skills in which students can leverage to tackle hard problems of all kinds. These skills are named decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and algorithmic thinking.Computational thinking, as a problem-solving process, can be used in any discipline (Yadav, Mayfield, Zhou, Hambrusch & Korb, 2014). Supportingly, Bundy (2007) states that the use of computational thinking concepts in other disciplines via problem-solving techniques was a success and that the ability to think computationally is essential to ""every discipline"". Thus, fostering social-emotional learning skills by employing computational thinking skills step-by-step will facilitate students to make progress more consciously.Since education must cultivate the student as a whole, it is crucial to improve students' SEL skills so students are not only equipped with the knowledge they need to achieve their goals but also discover the ways of accomplishment and pull others along with them. It is literally what it means to be future-ready. By bringing computational thinking and social and emotional learning into instruction and course delivery we will humanise data and 21st-century problems by employing essential social and emotional skills. This will enable us to ensure a holistic future that becomes more accessible to students.<< Objectives >>School is a learning environment where learning acquisitions and activities affecting learning, are planned and framed carefully. Therefore school is the only perfect place that may help an individual grow as a person who can comprehend and describe his/her own emotions, realize others' feelings and establish healthy relationships. In this regard, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), as a key competence, becomes prominent not only for healthy social interactions but also for academic achievement, since success comes from having a meaning in our lives, doing what we have passionate in and being aware of why and how we learn, that is all of these depend on our emotional conditions while doing something.In literature, one of the descriptions of SEL (SEL, 2003) is given as the ability to understand, manage, and express the social and emotional aspects of one's life in ways that enable the successful management of life tasks such as learning, forming relationships, solving problems, and adapting to the complex demands of growth and development (Cherniss, 2000).COMPUSEL aims to improve the SEL Skills of primary students and training primary school teachers for this purpose. We will develop a curriculum and digital stories including examples of different social and emotional challenges that we will discuss and seek solutions together with primary school teachers to foster self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship or responsible decision-making.When it comes to purposeful learning and student achievement, teachers always matter most (RAND, 2012). Teachers’ competencies and performances have powerful effects on student achievement: up to three-quarters of school effects on the student, outcomes can be explained by teacher effects (Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain, 2005). Teachers' efficiency during teaching activities is directly proportional to the continuous development of their professional skills and competencies.Therefore, it is essential to equip students with the necessary skills for their future. In this project, through computational thinking, students will find an opportunity to navigate complex problems regarding SEL. Besides, the roles of teachers and schools are also changing, and so are expectations about them: teachers have been required to implement innovative teaching methods in their classrooms. Computational thinking to be administered in this project is not just a foundation for technology skills like coding, but it is instead a vehicle to generate social and emotional attitudes needed for students to be future-ready. Accordingly, this project will support teachers to use innovative approaches (such as the use of computational thinking as well as digital stories)OBJECTIVESTherefore, with this project, through integrating computational thinking skills and digital stories in teaching SEL, we aim to teach children to structure problems so they can be solved. Accordingly, this will help students to master an art of thinking that will enable them to tackle complex challenges in all aspects of their lives. To actualise this, we will train primary school teachers about how to employ computational thinking skills to strengthen SEL skills.The other objectives pursued by the project practicea- to support teachers to help their students regarding full social inclusionb- to support teachers to help their students strive for success by developing their SEL skillsTARGET GROUPSThe first main target group of the project practice will be a total of 100 primary school teachers in the partner countries. These teachers will be involved in the project practice actively through seminars, workshops and training activities (piloting). The second main target group of the project consists of 100 primary school students attending public schools (associatedpartners) in the partner countries and will be trained during the piloting. 17 teacher educators (lecturers/trainers) are another target group of the project.<< Implementation >>METHODOLOGYWe will carry out the content development phases through descriptive methods; document analysis, literature reviews, workshops, individual work and teamwork.We will carry out seminars and piloting processes through experimental methods; interview teachers at the beginning and end of the seminars; apply questionnaires to the students and teachers to reveal the effectiveness of the piloting activities.We will carry out COMPUSEL Project in 3 phases and the method we will use is as follows.CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENTA - Knowledge Paper Preparation1- A priory study will be conducted to clarify the focal points of the SEL curriculum. For this reason, a Knowledge Paper will be prepared.2- Literature reviews, small group works and small workshops with the participation of teachers, teacher trainers and other relevant stakeholders will be carried out for the content development. In these activities, students' behavioural problems and the challenges that they face will be handled. SEL skills to be focused on will be clarified.B - Curriculum Development Process1- Curriculum will be in a modular design.2- Module components will be determined.3- Computational thinking will be used as an instructional strategy. Computational thinking consists of four elements that are named ""decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and algorithmic skills"". Decomposition requires breaking down a complex problem or system into smaller, more manageable parts. Abstraction requires changing the way data is presented such as visual ways of accessing data. Thus, this stage focuses on the important information only, ignores irrelevant detail. Pattern recognition looks for similarities among and within problems. Algorithmic thinking skills developing a step-by-step solution to the problem, or the rules to follow to solve the problem. These steps will be considered as an instructional strategy during the development of the curriculum.4- Semi-structured interviews will be administered for teachers to understand to what extent they think the curriculum effective to develop primary school students’ SEL skills. Besides, a questionnaire will be developed for students to understand their views of the curriculum.DIGITAL STORIESA- Creation of Digital Stories1- Digital Stories will be prepared based on the objectives and acquisitions indicated in the SEL curriculum.2- 2 stories will be prepared by each partner organisation. Digital stories will consist of problems regarding SEL skills that primary school students meet in their school and/or out of school lives. Then, after students watch the digital stories, they will use the steps in computational thinking stated above to find a solution to these problems. 3- All stories will be gathered in one document, then translations will be made, and 5 different language versions of the document will be sent to Ed-Tech Company for technical operations.B - Development of Digital Stories1- Typesetting, graphic design, embedding, interactive presentations and animations will be developed by Ed-Tech company for the preparation of the digital stories.2- It will be in 6 different language versions.GUIDE FOR TEACHERS1- All partners will prepare the guide for teachers through individual work and teamwork.2- The guide will include suggestions for teachers on how to apply the SEL curriculum and how (when, where, why) to do the developed learning activities.3- Therefore the guidebook will give information about the instructional strategy (how to employ computational thinking skills to foster SEL skills) and also provide learning activities for quality course delivery.4- Partners and external experts will give feedback about the Guide and it will be finalised.<< Results >>Expected results of the project practice as follows.1- Process-oriented resultsa- Transnational Project MeetingsIn this process, partners will work together face-to-face and personal dialogue will be improved. Communication and cooperation will be maintained effectively and any conflicts will be solved immediately. Exchange of know-how will be realised and archiving will be checked regularly. The quality functioning of the project practice will be ensured in this way.b- Preparation Process of Project ResultsResearch, literature reviews, interviews, content development through individual works and teamwork will be carried out. These will increase the capacity of the project team members on SEL in terms of knowledge accumulation and research experience.c- Multiplier Events & Other Activities to Share and Promote the Project ResultsProject Results and project practice will be introduced to nearly 300 stakeholders during the 5 multiplier events and other promotional events. Capacity building through the exchange of know-how will be realised as a result of these events. Participant educators will be more aware of learning activities related to how to foster the social and emotional learning skills of students.d- Seminars (For Teachers)Teachers will be informed related to the teaching practices of SEL during the seminars. This will provide teachers to gain insight into how to create awareness of students related to realising, controlling or managing emotions for more effective social relations and commitment to lifelong learning.e- Piloting5 teachers working in primary schools will apply the curriculum in their schools. They will do the prepared extracurricular activities with students in the allocated hours during the spring semester of 2024. At the end of the piloting, the effectiveness of the project results will be revealed. Teachers' and students' views on their experiences will be questioned through semi-structured interviews. The effect of the practices in terms of students' school connectedness, the increase in their interests and motivations in studying, and their commitment to attend school regularly will be revealed at the end of the interviews. Their satisfaction levels will also be determined. The results of the piloting will lead the partnership either to make new arrangements in the project results or keep them as they are.f- Improvement of SEL skills of primary school studentsToday's children represent the mind and manpower of the future, so we need to have effective means to assist them to grow as people who have integrity, resilience and commitment to make efforts for themselves, their success, their societies and for humanity. The piloting process will reflect the change in the students' attainments. A questionnaire will be administered to understand to what extent primary school students’ social-emotional learning skills are developed throughout the piloting process.2- Product-oriented resultsa- Project ResultsPR1- SEL curriculum/module for primary school students will have been prepared during the project practice.PR2- Digital Stories including challenging situations in terms of improving SEL skills will have been prepared after the preparation of PR1.PR3- Guide for Teachers will have been prepared after the preparation of PR2 to assist teachers to apply the SEL curriculum and affiliated learning activities during the piloting.b- Deliverables- Confidential Deliverables: Main Contract, Partnership Agreements, Quality Assurance Plan, Quality Evaluation Forms, Quality Reports, Sharing and Promotion Reports, Sharing and Promotion Plan, Interim and Final Reports, Budget Reports, Archived Documents for the Provision of Budget- Common Deliverables: Knowledge Paper, Project Website, The Content of the Digital Stories, e-brochures, e-newsletters and Infographics, Newswire Releases, Promotional Materials"