"From 2016 to 2018, four schools - Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Finland - jointly carried out an Erasmus+ project with the theme ""Comparative studies for individual support and digital competence"". The cooperation between the schools proved to be very good, successful and pleasant. At the last meeting of the coordinating teachers, the participants decided to plan a new joint project on sustainability. In view of the climate change that can now be increasingly observed, everyone felt that this topic was urgent and cross-national. In the meantime, the Finnish school has joined another Erasmus+ project group. The three other schools decided to take a fourth school on board again. The Italian school, which had already taken part in many Erasmus+ projects, showed interest in the topic and joined the project group. This is considered an enrichment by all.So the four European schools have set themselves the goal of collectively addressing the issue of education for sustainability as a crosscurricular topic. Our main objectives are to make our students aware of their environment and the climate change. Teachers and everybody working at school have to take social and environmental responsibility. We want our students to become aware of environmental issues. We also want to raise the awareness their parents and the local communitiy about the importance to take care of our planet earth. It's our duty to encourage the young people to behave responsible and be proactive with nature. Not only our students but all people belonging to our school environment should understand how important the planned activities are. Other goals are the development of personal competences among the pupils and the continuation of the goal of the last project. This was the expansion of digital competences. Another key objective is to meet young people from other European countries. Through these encounters, the European idea, the importance of the European Union and friendship are spread across national borders.At every school Erasmus+groups will be established. In these groups there will be about 18 - 20 students per school. They will meet regularly with Erasmus+ teachers to discuss sustainability, identify regional environmental issues, plan activities and take part in mobilities to exchange ideas. The confrontation with our project title sustainability is to be worked on by all those involved in school life and by extracurricular groups as an superordinate topic. This is the only way to achieve long-term results. During the project phase and beyond, the topic of sustainability is dealt with in various subjects. The teachers of natural sciences, social sciences, nutrition, technology, computer science and English are particularly in demand. Theoretical and practical approaches are initiated in the lessons. The following methods and approaches are mentioned here as examples of our project work: Interwiews, discussions, experiments, evaluation of results, graphical representations, use of digital tools, presentation techniques, communication in the foreign language English. As an overall result we see the reduction of the ecological footprint of our schools. In concrete terms, this means that after taking inventory of school and regional problem areas we want to reduce or eliminate the problem. Here the activities reuse, reduce and reecyling are of particular importance. At the transnational meetings, activities are implemented that are exemplary for dealing with environmental problems. For example at the meeting in Portugal: collecting garbage on the beach, separating the garbage, recognising recyclable raw materials, putting up signs with tips on how to avoid garbage on the beach, summarize the activities, record results and process them so that they can be presented to others.As a joint result, we want to create a digital and a handmade handbook on sustainability in order to present our work to other schools and motivate them to imitate it. We hope that this will have a positive impact on our students in terms of increased environmental awareness and responsibility for this planet. Other impacts will be that students will be able to develop and implement personal competences such as self-confidence, responsibility, endurance, communication skills and digital competences in relation to lifelong learning. There will be several long-term benefits from the Erasmus+ project:- The development of a spiral curriculum on sustainability that will assign themes and activities to different subjects and grades.- The further cooperation with environmental groups and thus the deeper anchoring of the school in the community. - The awareness of pupils that it is a transnational issue and therefore the exchange between nations is necessary.- The solidarity with the participating countries and thus the further consideration of their problems and solutions.- Feeling the European idea and the importance of the European Union."

The participating schools of Portugal, Sweden, Finland and Germany had experiences in international projects before. These were eTwinning and Comenius projects. The coordinators of the schools felt encouraged by the success of the previous avtivities and wanted to start a new project with more schools. The partnership was established as the coordinator teams have started an eTwinning project. Objectives:Soon the coordinators found topics and commonalities for a KA 2 - project. Two educational fields were chosen: digital competence and individual support. All schools want to prepare students for an international and digital society. Therefore the teachers use I-pads in lessons to improve the digital competence of their learners. Not only the ability to use specific tools or applications is in focus of the project. Other ojectives are innovation, collaboration, sharing, evalutaion and problem solving. One task for the pupils was to use and evaluate learning apps. Another task was to present the chosen apps to the other partners and evaluate them together. So the students should gain a broad range of fitting apps for different tasks at school. Due to the globalization of our society and economy the pupils were trained to take part in international projects. Individual support was chosen to optimize the supporting concepts of every school. The exchange about the different concepts in the other European nations was helpful for teachers and pupils. The members compared their concepts and learned to know new ideas for their schools.As already mentioned there were four schools that took part in the project:- Mörike Comprehension school, Backnang Germany. About 600 pupils. Primary school from year 1 to 4 and a secondary school from year 5 to 10. The school offers two school degrees. It has an all-day concept. On Wednesdays the school offers special courses. Pupils have the the posssibility to have a breakfast and lunch at school every day. Nearly 50 percent of the pupils have a migration background. There are special classes for immigrants and refugees. The school has 27 students with special needs, who are part of the regular classes. Diversity is a main topic at the school: special gifted pupils, slow learners and pupils with emotional problems. The school has a focus on new media. Three social workers support teachers to carry out a social curriculum. - Agrupamento de Escolas Carlos Gargaté, Almada, Portugal This school is a basic school for students aged between 6 and 15. In 1996/1997 the school started with a new project: Flexible management of national curriculum. The aim of the project was assure all pupils to learn in a more meaningful way, become more independent and develop all skills they are supposed to have at the end of their school career. The school's policy has been based on internal reflection and self-evaluation. The Portugese school is an innovative school. The teachers are ITC skilled. The school started the Byod strategy. I-Pads are used in lessons. - Turengin yhteiskoulo Janakkalan kunta, Turenki, Finland The school is a secondary school of 30 teachers and 380 students aged 13 to 16. The teachers offer a lot of optionals courses and school clubs.The school has a digital track, in which pupils are learning without paper books. The school is also home to a unique learning environment - lowering the noise by different measures. The staff is trained to use I-Pads and different platforms for digital education.- Stora Sätrskola, Gävle, Sweden It's a secondary school with 35 teachers and about 350 students, aged 12 to 16. It's a public school with 70 % of students, that have an immigrant background. There is one language preparation class and there are two classes for students with special needs. The school offers I-Pads to all students in grade 7 and computers for all students grade 8 and 9. The school offers lunch for free to all students. The school has a social worker and a nurse.The main activities were: - Using learning apps, evaluate them and prepare a presentation of the results for the other schools.- Stay in contact with each other using the twinspace, websites, mails, ...- Meetings for pupils and the coordinators in every participating country.- Visit the schools, taking part in lessons, present and use the learning apps. Evaluate the apps.- Discuss the indiviual support of the four schools and compare the different concepts.- Visit historical and important places and learn about the different cultures.- Living in host families and learn about the daily life of people in other countries.Results and impacts:- The students improved their digital competence.- They became more self-confident and developed key compentences.- The schools got new ideas to optimize their individual support.- Intercultural education Longer-term benefits:- cultural awareness- living the European idea - international friendships