"SmArt TeenagersBoth secondary schools involved in the partnership, Berger Scholengemeenschap (Bergen, The Netherlands) and Gimnazija Titusa Brezovackog (Zagreb, Croatia), value artistic interests and talents of their students greatly, so it was easy to decide that the topic of the project will be art. We named the project ""SmArt Teenagers"" meaning that teenagers will be working smartly on an art project. Participating students will have the opportunity to show and develop their initiative, critical thinking and creativity by designing two websites: „Artistic guide through Netherlands for teenagers“ and ""Artistic guide through Croatia for teenagers"". They will be working with different ICT tools to present art related topics to their peers on-line. They will cover following topics through the presentations: classical music, traditional music, modern music, dancing, painting, sculpture, architecture, literary arts, film, photography, theater, comics, video games, fashion design and street art. Students' presentations will be used to design websites . Apart from their mother tongue and English they will have a chance to improve their French, German and Italian language skills because the materials for the website will be translated into these languages too. The websites could be used by any young tourists visiting our two countries.During the short term exchanges, the students will have the possibility to work together on artistic projects and then present their work to public. The topics of the artistic projects will be ""Musical journey through The Netherlands and Croatia"", ""Our interpretation of the traditional Dutch and Croatian art"" and ""Creating a Dutch-Croatian brand in fashion"". 60 students will participate in this project.Throughout the project the students will be improving their foreign language skills, their digital competences but also their social skills which, are necessary for their future educational, professional and personal life. Teachers will have the opportunity to improve their teaching competences and to develop professionally. They will do that through mentoring the students’ activities but also through the teachers' exchange. Art teachers will have the opportunity to visit fellow teachers abroad and learn from their good practices. We will also do a case study comparing Dutch and Croatian educational systems. There will be 16 staff members involved in the project, including principals, project coordinators, art teachers, ICT teachers and foreign language teachers. The results of the project will be presented to teachers, students and parents inside the schools but also to fellow professionals outside of schools."

The context of the project lies on the importance of caring and learning about the European heritage which is unquestionablly important for every European citizen, especially for the young generations who soon will be fully responsible and mature members of the European society. As being part of the educational system and playing the important role in transferring the knowledge, this project gives great opportunity to the teaching stuff and the students as participants who will explore the national heritage and goods of their own country with the aim to connect that with the European heritage and values by learning and comparing the ideas and work of various European schools representing their countries through several topics revealing national heritage. The target groups of the project are students and professional school stuff (total number 186), the local communities of each country and web visitors as an possible audience. During 5 mobilities, participants from Croatia, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Portugal will participate in the activities about natural, cultural, musical, sports, industrial and human heritage. The students who will participate will improve their social skills and English language. Visiting other countries and communicating with other students from different cultures will provide the European dimension. This will also strengthen the teaching professions by exchanging different teaching methods and experiences. All partners will benefit from the European dimension of the project and they will spread that to their schools and local population, especially through presenting their results on eTwinning at the end of every exchange, having a virtual meeting with one school which has never been part of the Erasmus exchange.At each school there will be a special place to put the information about the project: a ‘Project Board’ or ‘Erasmus+ Corner’ to disseminate the project materials in schools. Classes can visit these boards to study the displayed materials. The activities and results of each mobility will be shown on eTwinning, school website, project Facebook page and Instagram, such as teen tourguide from every country, cooking book, cultural,musical, ecological and sports presentations and posts which will be presented to touristic centres.The results expected for the students and teachers during the project and longer benefits are:-to develop a sense of belonging to the national and European community-improving the skills of foreign languages for students and teachers-to practice digital skills for communication and education-developing more organisational, social and life skills through travelling and hosting-exploring and more appreciation of national heritage -exploring and valuing European heritage through arts, culture, ecological and natural treasures and costumes of partner countries-taking active role in the society through planning and organizing workshops, field trips and presenting the project and its results-expanding the knowledge and observing different educational styles and teaching methods-making education more attractive and dynamic-strenghtening teaching professions through international cooperation-empowering young population for international exchanges or studying and working in the EU countries-including the students of lower socioeconomic status to take a part in the international exchange We plan to continue using the results of the project after the project's end to demonstrate the importance of the heritage learned during the exchanges.We will have workshops for attendants for each school involved, we will create annually events under the form of a students conference showing the results achieved in different fields of our educational system. We`ll encourage participants to stay connected on eTwinning and keep doing eTwinning projects in the long terms choosing different topics. Students will be motivated to attend meetings with their skills and competence, they will spread project idea in their family and among their friends, enlarging the project impact. We will also establish sessions to inform local community about the project stages and its contribution to educational process in schools involved. Those sessions will include press articles, short presentations to parents meetings, announcements on media and Internet channels, attendance to local educational events such as book fairs, and cultural evenings. Local schools community will be informed and invited to attend using meetings with other teachers. At international level we will use eTwinning platform to invite schools which haven`t been part of the Erasmus exchange, in this way other schools will take part to our activities. The participation in this project will contribute to the development of the schools involved since we want to improve teaching and management skills of school staff and ensure active students involvement in each stage of the project.

"Modern science - especially natural science are a very interesting and important topic for the future of Europe. For the employees of the future, for pupils and for teachers, influencer and trainer this subject and the social skills will be also most important. But we see that science mainly is teached to young people in schools using the methods of formal education. On the other hand pupils, trainers, influencers and teachers come to outdoor centres and looking for active-oriented methods. Companies are looking for workers with social skills and knowledge in natural science. Young people want to increase their knowledge of the culture of other European nations and want to travel and see pupils from other states. Because of this we have made an exchange program by using intercultural, outdoor, environmental and experience education and active-oriented methods. The innovative idea was that not only whole school classes will take part in this project, but 5-6 pupils from different schools from Germany, the U.K., Croatia (as a new member of the EU) and France. Germany and France are used in partnership activities for many years, the partnership with Croatia and the U.K. was new und has been grown up during the project. there has been a teach the teacher program so that teachers from different schools and nations come together, learning active-oriented methods, use a common language (english) and get knowing a lot of the different cultures and of new teaching methods. They also get knowledge to improve their own competences. This teach-the-teacher Exchange was planned on the beginning but during the first Project team meeting the idea was grown that it make more sense and is more value to make this Exchange at the end, parallel with the fifth student Exchange. For the last, the sixth, Student Exchange program we have the chance to make a great evaluation with this pupils who are the ambassadors for the schools. So the sustainibilty of the project and a follow up and on-going is possible. The second step has been the student exchanges - two a year for three years - so there was a lot of sustainability possible. The network and partnership between the partners has been strengthened and is (without the U.K. - sorry because of the Brexit) on-going. The students increased their knowledge of the culture of other nations - so they can easily travel to other countries, also as an employee or take part on another volunteer or Exchange program in future. The students increased also their own competences for natural science and social skills, so they will be interesting for employers. The students and all participants found out the European ideas, the value of the European solidarity and will be interested for the E.U. and for political activities and engagement. So there is a big value for Europe. Because more than 300 participants took part in the project. To realize this aims formal (school) and non-formal partners worked together for three years and will working together the next years. Most of the pupils used a foreign language and all participants met others from a different cultural background. So the participants will be sensible European citizens. There is a nice and good conclusion I think - one pupil quotation from the evaluation sheet: ""I know now that we - the young people - can change the European Union, can make a lot against rassism and should build on a good or better Europe in future. We are responsible for peace on our continent""."