We are a group of five schools from towns and communities on the edge of Europe - from Hammerfest, Norway in the north, to Adana, Turkey and Iglesias, Italy in the south, Brae in Scotland to the west and Gulbene in Lativa to the east - who have joined together to examine the issues that affect our pupils. Our schools and communities although far away from each other have faced similar issues over the last few years. The changing nature of our towns has greatly affected local societies and we want to teach our pupils how to cope with these changes. One of the biggest changes has been the changing needs of the employment market. With the change in industries traditional career paths have become less attractive and less sustainable. Our project will help pupils to learn about the new industries and increase the labour market relevance of the pupils. Another central element will be developing active citizenship and encouraging our pupils to learn more about entrepreneurship and how to react to the labour market; this will help our pupils develop into active citizens with increased employability and a greater understanding of local industries. Migration is also an issue that has affected all of the project partners, both immigration into the regions and emigration from the regions, we want to get pupils to learn about the consequences of this migration and to help them better understand both the positive and negative effects migration has on the nature of our communities. Our project is for pupils aged 16-18 years and about 250 pupils in total from our five schools will be taking part in the project directly with many more being affected indirectly. Our pupils face all the normal trials of teenages growing up in today's world but with the added challenges of living in remote areas that have often been overlooked by capital-centric government policies and the changing nature of economies moving from primary industries to secondary and tertiary industries that tend to be more centralised and which require new and different skills. Due to the challenges that they face many of our pupils lack motivation and a significant proportion to don't complete their studies and are thus unable to gain employment in their home regions. The participants will over the course of the project's two years not only learn more about their own communities but also about the similar situations other communities are facing. International collaboration helps pupils learn more about themselves as well as the wider European community. By working together we can enhance the quality and relevance of learning in our schools and help each other develop new and innovative approaches, at the same time we can promote and support the dissemination of best practice. By carrying out five exchanges, one to each of the partner schools, our students will be able to see how different communities have reacted to the same issues. During each visit as well as running relevant workshops at each school, each exchange will be centered around a visit to an important local industry. Teachers will also benefit greatly from these exchanges where there will be round table discussions about different pedagogical technics and practices which will help teachers increase the diversity of their teaching methods. Our project managed to complete all the planned activities, exchanges and workshops. While some elements took on a greater role than originally envisioned; local industries for example became central to all exchanges, we found that all the topics we had hoped to include in the project were relevant to our target group - the pupils. In addition to the formal workshops and excursions during the exchanges the informal meetings and brainstorming that the teachers took part in among themselves were invaluable and enriched both this short two-year project as well as the wider social capital at the partner schools. Another important impact has been the relationships built with local industries who hopefully can continue to be fruitful in coming projects. Much of what has been learn and achieved is hard to document but its impact on the teachers, partners and relevant, local stakeholders will develop over the next few years as the our international work and partnerships continue. The impact that the project has had on the pupils has been great, first and foremost their English language and communication skills have improved. Another important impact has been upon the pupils social skills, by taking part in exchanges they have learn to adapt to a different culture. By comparing and contrasting their own situations and possible career paths to the pupils' at our partner schools they have learnt much about their own society and the wider European community in which they live in. This project has helped our pupils learn how to express their views and become motivated, empowered young adults with the skills and drive needed to make a positive impact on their regions.

Today’s school graduates must be able to adapt to ongoing change in many aspects of their lives. For most young people career-life planning will not be a matter of making one major decision and living with it for a lifetime. The educators should accept this situation. Their key question “What do you want to be in your future life?” should be replaced by the other one “What skills and competences do you need to be competitive in the labour market in the definite area of your interests?” If students leave school being unaware of their skills and unaware of their competences that our century looks for, they will be unprepared for the challenges of society and workforce. This challenging present situation at 6 project partner schools united them in working on the idea of the project – how can we organize the education process at school effectively and help young people to improve their skills and competences for their further working pathway. The project is the challenge both for teachers and students. During the project preparation stage all schools have done the SWOT analysis. It turned out that all schools need to find the best way how to develop the adults of tomorrow. The schools need to broadens their borders and integrate all possibilities of their local communes in their education process. Bringing the real world in the classroom or taking pupils out of the classroom will motivate them to develop their skills and competences. It will not only broaden the borders of the school but also broaden the horizon both for teachers and students to realize the offered possibilities outside the school premises for development of their skills and competences. By sharing experience, the project partners could find new ideas and ways how to do that. Each school has a definite input in career-education but as all borders of the EU countries are opened for young people it is worth to compare the skills and competences needed for them in the EU context. The overall aim of the project is to highlight possibilities of development students’ skills and possibilities outside school premises and disseminate the best practices. That will be the way how to raise both pupils and teachers’ competences and find the effective way of collaboration. The project is pupils centred and we would like to address pupils with different interests and challenges. During the project activities both teachers and students are encouraged to turn academic knowledge into the practical ones. The local communes could be of great help. All these activities are highly practical and based upon participants’ practical experience of coping with real life situations or problems. The project will run for two years and are split into 6 modules. We feel that dividing the main aim of the project into 6 topics gives the project a clear and well-defined frame which will help us structure our activities well and allow for the pupils with different interests get the most of the project. While doing job shadowing and volunteer work, summarizing experience of the representatives of the inherited industries, interviewing entrepreneurs and students with experience of studying abroad, examining the requested skills and competences of the 21st job market – the project participants will see the vast area of possibilities of improving their skills and competences outside the school premises. As a result of implementation of this project the students will have an individual portfolio which will serve as a starting point in the development of their employability competence. Besides, the teachers will find out of using these possibilities in their everyday work. As the final product will be the summary of possibilities of the development of students’ skills and competences outside the school premises for their further working life it will be of great help for the teachers at all project partners schools. The project could be the spring board how career advisors could elaborate system of co-operating with the subject teachers in students’ career education.All in all, the title of the project “Do, develop, donate” reflects the idea of the project in the best way – while you are at school you should do everything by using all possibilities to develop your skills and competences to donate to the development of the society in your further working pathway.

This project addressed the key issue of the project partners schools and corresponding communities – how could the education process at schools be organized effectively and how the development of pupils’ competences, motivation and critical thinking be supported to be them the responsible 21st century citizens. During the project preparation stage all schools had done the SWOT analysis. It turned out that all schools were facing the challenges how could the adults of tomorrow be better developed. The world is changing and education needs to adapt to these fast changes. All project schools represent formal education but during discussions and analysis it turned out that not all formal education methods work at schools anymore, the elements of non-formal education should be integrated. Bringing the real world in the classroom or taking pupils out of the classroom motivate them to develop their competences and critical thinking. The overall aim of the project was to identify and disseminate the best practices in the use of non-formal education methods into formal one. That is the way how to raise both pupils and teachers’ competences and find the effective way of collaboration. The project was pupils centred and it addressed the pupils with different interests and challenges, therefore we have chosen the four main topic areas – social, cultural, political and economics. At the same time the teachers also benefited greatly, not every teacher was knowledgeable how to use non-formal education methods to develop pupils’ competences and above all pupils’ motivation and critical thinking. As we had chosen four main topic areas, wide range of different subject teachers were involved in carrying out the objectives of the project. It was important that schools from different European regions – Portugal, Latvia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain and Slovenia - collaborated, we had different background and international collaboration helped pupils learn more about themselves as well as the wider European community. All schools are situated on Europe’s periphery and had faced similar changes over the last decade but had started to deal with them in different way. By working together we enhanced the quality and relevance of learning in our schools and helped each other develop new and innovative approaches. All project activities were worked out to lead to achievements of the project’s objectives. The project was split into 6 modules, two of which were introduction and conclusion and 4 topic modules. The four topic models represented the main challenges facing our schools and even our communes. The worked structure of the project provided clear rules for cooperation and smooth work together. The four topics models gave the project a clear and well-defined frame which helped us structure our activities and allowed for the pupils with different interests got the most of the project. The working methods were tailored based upon participants’ practical experience of coping with real life situations or problems. Non-formal education methods and tools were used throughout the project creating a productive and inspiring environment and giving the participants experience what non-formal learning is. In all four topic areas the non-formal education methods were shared, piloted by other schools and giving feedback. Everyone appreciated the learned methods like – how to organize political debates, Mediation programme, how to work with cultural heritage and how to collaborate with the local entrepreneurs. Practical approach developed students’ critical thinking and analytical skills. As the final product of the project is a booklet of the piloted non-formal education methods/feedback it could be of great help for all teachers and pupils at schools. The project is a spring board to elaborate the system in each school how with the integration of non-formal education methods into formal education pupils’ competences, motivation and critical thinking could be raised. The wide choice of topics and corresponding subject teachers being involved in the project provided that. Even more, cooperation in the project and sharing non-formal education methods gave a new input during the distance teaching/learning period. The objectives of the project and reached results motivated each school evaluate the offered possibilities of the local communes to take education processes out of the classrooms. That is the key component of the changes in education nowadays. The project activities proved that the pupils could not only develop their competences by doing academic studying. The world is changing and sometimes pupils are confused, they need to learn how to evaluate their interests, skills and concentrate on the field they are interested in. For teachers it is very important to provide that opportunity for students and choose the right methodology. The realization of this project was one more step in this direction.

"Our project was a project aiming to develop skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engeenering, Math) and ICT for pupils, teachers in 6 primary schools: Belgium, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia. Some met at a Contact Seminar in the STEM field. Norway and Belgium had been partners in two Comenius projects. Poland was experienced as well, but not the 3 others. The beneficiary School was ""Årum skole"", Norway.We started this project with common needs to adapt new learning strategies and teaching methods in order to prepare our pupils for the 21st century skills, adjust our curricula and create high-quality learning environment for our pupils. We also paid attention to girls` motivation for STEM. The overall objectives;Promote innovative, motivating methods that will lead to high-quality teaching and learning in STEM.Improve the teachers` and pupils` skills for transnational collaboration, communication.Improved skills for teachers and pupils in ICT related to STEM activities.Develop a program for teaching, learning coding. Improved digital judgment on e-safety issues.Increase girls` motivation for STEM.Making a plan for persistent transnational collaboration in STEM education between partnersDisseminate results to target groups, stakeholders.Methods, activities:The document called “The three lanes road” was the main guideline.Lane 1 for learning, development and innovation of organizations, which was tested, evaluated, adjusted in lane 2 for Transnational Collaboration and Communication between teachers and pupils by means of ICT. Lane 3 was for dissemination of the results during/after the project period. Another key document was an assessment plan with an overall view of the project`s objectives, expected results and the assessment tools that we planned to use, and did use, to measure our achievements. We created a common platform in Office 365 for sharing documents, collaboration and monitoring of the project. The teachers and the pupils took part in 3 inquiries (in English) during the project period, created in Office 365 using Forms. There were 2 learning meetings for teachers (Finland, Poland), where teachers gained new skills in coding, created manuals for teaching coding to different grades, learned “The Scientific Research Method”, “Nysgjerrigper”, learned different movie making applications, and created ideas for “The Big Challenge"" (STEM challenges) on different levels for all pupils and all grades. Participants exchanged their good methods, shared new ideas, knowledge and skills and took it back home, sharing it with their colleagues in workshops.There were 4 project meetings (Belgium, Latvia, Slovakia, Norway). During these meetings we learned to use Skype for Business, Office 365 as a common platform for communication and collaboration. We increased our knowledge about e-safety issues and developed a plan to teach pupils at all grades about safety on internet and preparing parents` meetings on the same topic. The project was evaluated; the process, management, communication, making sure that the planned activities were consistent with the objectives and the impact on participants so far. We discussed project reports and analyzed the 3 inquiries. Partners and participants communicated using Skype, e-mail and some of the oldest pupils tried to cooperate in joint documents. We also monitored and evaluated our project in 2 Skype meetings with all coordinators. Results, impact achieved:All activities have been carried out as planned and the objectives have, in our opinion, been met in a successful way.The participants, participating organisations have:-improved competences in transnational cooperation, communication -Improved motivation for STEM -improved knowledge, skills in teaching STEM; The Science Research Method -learned how to teach coding on different age levels-improved skills in using ICT -increased awareness on E-safety for teachers, pupils and parents -created a plan for further transnational cooperation,communication between partners-improved professional development by learning from each other`s expertise on certain domains -improved skills in using a foreign language, increased awareness of being European citizensSustainabilityThe project outcome has been disseminated by a link from each school`s website to our common platform in Office 365. A revised overview of useful information, documents and other materials is published on https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/ We will integrate the new teaching methods for STEM education through TCC in the school`s curricula and strategic documents.The working methods, learning strategies used by pupils and teachers in the project have given us valuable experience in deep learning strategies that we will develop further.Our plan for future collaboration with the partners will ensure that we maintain and further improve our new skills as to ICT and STEM education."