As the pandemic unfolds across countries around the world, the normal lifestyle and educational practices face challenges. This proposal draws upon the needs emerged in secondary school education during the pandemic outbreak. Amongst many institutions secondary schools have alsoshifted their base to online platforms to conduct classes online as an alternative to ordinary face to face classes. However, the teachers in many countries were not ready for this rapid change. The project builds a strategic partnership for Digital Education Readiness in the field of STEMeducation, aiming at reinforcing the ability of school education to provide high quality, inclusive digital education in the field of STEM with the focus on building capacity to implement online, distance teaching and learning.The proposal aims at supporting secondary school teachers of STEM subjects in continuing their teaching online. In achieving this goal, an online course with 4 projects will be developed with a focus on Physics, Math, Engineering and Programming. These projects will act as exemplary projects for online education and will come together with training materials, simulations, videos, presentations. The training materials will be tailored to the thematic of each project. The participant teachers will be trained online in these projects and will be called to use the developed resources and online methods with their students.The innovative aspect of the project is that instead of simply providing ready-made resources, it smoothly reveals the methodology (pedagogical and technical) upon which these resources are designed. In other words, the teachers not only use the resources for carrying out the 4 projectsbut also explore how these resources are designed. The online course that will be designed will guide them through this process. Several tools suitable for online teaching will be selected for supporting brainstorming, online collaboration, ideation, creation and sharing. Having practically engaged the teachers in the 4 projects and released the online/distance methodology, the project goes a step further by calling the teachers to design their own projects and resources and test for students them online with students with the support of the project team. In this way, the project ensures that the knowledge gained is really put into practice.Main outputs include:-The pedagogical handbook which includes the development of the online/distance methodology: project-based learning, supporting teamwork, serving synchronous teaching (live webinars) and asynchronous online classes. -The online course that revolves around the development of 4 exemplary interdisciplinary STEM projects for secondary school education. These 4 projects come together with training materials suitable for online/distance learning incl. simulations, video, presentations and how-to instructions (that will enable teachers to look behind the development of the resources). - The development of Open Educational Resources that follows the project methodology and results in STEM projects and OERs for students for online education. It is estimated that the BEREADY learning intervention will be validated with 120 students and 40 teachers through specifically designed pilot stages. Many more students (approx. 200) and teachers (approx. 600) will be involved in the project in the context of dissemination events and workshops, multiplier events and promotional webinars.Since teachers play a fundamental role in supporting students to develop STEM skills, 21st century skills and positive attitudes towards STEM, particularly in the current situation, the communication of project results and the wider adoption of the innovative and flexible training and learning scheme can benefit school communities (apart from local) at regional, national and European level. The partnership aims at promoting networking of institutions across the EU, sharing of resources and expertise, collaboration with digital technology experts in STEM Education and finally contributing to the development of online & distance pedagogical practices based on project- based learning and costructivism/constructionism pedagogy as a response to the challenges faced during the pandemic outbreak.

The technology-driven economy and skilled workforce in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields are considered the driving forces for innovation and growth in the European economy. However, a number of European studies register a declining interest in students’ interest and enthusiasm in STEM education. This declining interest in STEM, leads to low levels of entry to STEM tertiary studies and STEM careers – posing a major challenge for the future competitiveness of European countries on the world stage and calling for actions towards STEM raising interest and uptake. HOLOMAKERS aims at inspiring secondary school students (14-17 years old) in making STEM fields a career choice and continue their science education at university level by introducing them in the magic world of hologram making and virtual image processing and design. The project infuses Arts into STEM (leading to STEAM), links STEAM to real life and current laboratory practices and engages students in hologram making. Hologram making is used as a creative vehicle for bringing school community closer to the research community, familiarize students with laboratory practices in the area of STEAM, demonstrating scientific techniques through practical use of a range of technologies and tools and challenging students’ thinking on the underlying scientific concepts. The project targets also STEAM teachers/educators with the aim of helping them update their teaching skills, feel more confident in using innovative methods, digital resources and making tools in STEAM teaching, carrying out engaging and hands-on learning activities in STEAM and inspiring students towards STEAM related disciplines. The HOLOMAKERS project developed: 1) A technical reference guide that details the basics of holography, image processing and the making of holograms (https://www.dropbox.com/s/tnlqlbfh67r1ay8/HOLOMAKERS%20Technical%20Reference%20Guide.pdf?dl=0). 2) A number of portable holography kits that enable the making of holograms in the classroom, outside a specialized scientific laboratory, along with guidelines on the reproduction of the kits by the teachers for educational purposes 3) The HOLOMAKERS curriculum (https://holomakers.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/O3-curriculum_final.pdf) with Open Educational Resources in STEAM for teachers and students (https://holomakers.eu/oers)4) Hands-on activities for computer generated and analog making holograms (https://holomakers.eu/activities)5) An online class that will support teachers’ training in the HOLOMAKERS learning intervention (https://holomakers.eu/online-class)6) A pilot protocol that will guide the pedagogical implementation of the learning intervention (https://holomakers.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/O4-PilotProtocol-_final.pdf) 7) Final Evaluation Report (https://www.dropbox.com/s/i72umwuna2og6ud/HOLOMAKERS_Final_Evaluation_Report.docx?dl=0)The project brings together 6 organizations from 4 countries: Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), Edumotiva -European Lab for Educational Technology (Greece), FMD (Italy), AIJU (Spain) and secondary schools from Poland, Greece represented by ILO (Poland) and 6EK A PEIRAIA (Greece). All these organizations form an international team of experts and educational practitioners that complement each other towards propelling STEAM education, enhancing teachers’ professional roles, helping school students through innovative and creative hands-on activities that are interlinked to real life and scientific practices to develop positive attitudes towards STEM subjects and to acquire the skills needed in the European job market of the 21st century.

Digitalisation is rapidly transforming our societies, transforming the dynamics of our interactions, transforming the culture of our debates. Trust plays a critical role in establishing intellectual humility and interpersonal civility in argumentation and discourse: without it, credibility is doomed, reputation is endangered, cooperation is compromised. The major threats associated with digitalisation - hate speech and fake news - are violations of the basic conditions for trusting and being trustworthy which are key for constructive, reasonable and responsible communication as well as for the collaborative and ethical organisation of societies. These behaviours eventually lead to polarisation, when users repeatedly attack each other in highly emotional terms, focusing on what divides people, not what unites them. Focusing on three timely domains of interest – public health, gender equality and global warming – iTRUST will deliver (i) the largest ever dataset of online text, annotated with features relevant for ethos, pathos and reframing; (ii) a new methodology of large-scale comparative trust analytics to detect implicit patterns and trends in hate speech and fake news; (iii) a novel empirical account of how these patterns affect polarisation in online communication and in society at large; and (iv) AI-based applications that will transfer these insights into interventions against hate speech, fake news and polarisation. Given the relevance for the knowledge-based society, the project puts great emphasis on outreach activities and users’ awareness in collaboration with media, museums and other partners. The consortium consists of five experienced PIs with expertise in rhetoric, comparative political science, corpus linguistics, natural language processing, multi-agent systems and computational argumentation. The group is complemented by senior experts (ACP and KEP) in fields that provide valuable extensions, such as media studies and AI-based technologies. Our long-term ambition is to establish a pan-European network and foundations for trustworthy AI in response to the EC priority of “Europe fit for the Digital Age”.