"A more diverse multicultural environment and changes in societies, are the factors which affect today's education system. Schools have to adapt with these changes and develop a social environment that promotes citizenship and European values, respect for ethnic and cultural diversity and promote each child's initiative and ensure his/her prosperity. Today's teachers must not only develop their professional skills and knowledge, but also foster values such as care and commitment, creativity, open-mindedness and positive thinking.The project aims to promote citizenship through activities and campaigns, encouraging pupils to express their views and letting them know that their input (opinions, decisions, and participation) as citizens is important.Working in an international team they will get a better understanding of the essence of democratic principles, cultivate a spirit of patriotism and engender respect for the history, traditions, culture of others leading to tolerance and respect for difference.We hope to strengthen cooperation between the school and parents, learn more about the problems and situations the child encounters and offer a professional assistance for ensuring a safe and comfortable environment for the child's welfare.The young people will have meetings with representatives of local authorities and campaigns will reveal common issues young people across Europe have and will offer each other wide range of solutions.The international team of teachers together with school psychologists, social pedagogues,parents and school management will work together and select experience and samples which will be put together into a tool-kit called ""The school that you are looking for"", which will be translated into eight languages. This will contain useful information and innovative methods as well as suggestions to support schools and teachers, parents and the community in educating an open-minded, creative, responsible and inquiring generation."

Imagine Europe without educational borders. Imagine Europe joining different cultural heritages as a central objective but keeping their individuality. Think of different cultures, different philosophies, and different histories joined under a common vision of a prosperous future for all European citizens. Education is the key and of course we have to provide and ensure all conditions leading to this goal.During the meeting in the three mentioned countries our students will perform some traditional Cypriot, Italian and Greek dances depicting some parts of our culture (costumes, way of life). Also our students and teachers will teach some of these dances and get all the European counterparts, teachers and students join in the learning of the steps. This activity will bring together the students and promote the team spirit to conduct a project together and have a mutual respect towards the cultural differences. We are also proposing a number of visits to Historical Monuments representing global humanitarian values. Visiting Ancient Olympia will develop experientially the understanding of athleticism, peace and ceasing fire. Also, the common origins will be strengthened under the prospective of globally spread humanitarian basis. During our visits in such Monuments students and teachers will record information, data and education material inquiring thus the values that developed the vision of a united Europe . We want students to realize and not just learn about global humanitarian values and face the consequences of breaking these values.Furthermore, through these visits we wish to further develop our students' skills, especially in the field of non-typical learning, such as foreign languages, communication, ICT and technology. We wish students to practice their knowledge in foreign languages and communication.Of course, we propose also a sequence of activities such as poster exhibition, exhibition about European Monuments, video presentations and multicultural videos and workshops. Through all these activities we wish to develop students consciousness and awareness as far as concerns humanitarian values that developed the basis of European Union.We believe that nowadays more than ever it is of high importance to empower young people beliefs to global, international values as presented and promoted within European Union. This will be mainly achieved by mentioning the common roots and origins of all European people, visiting historical monuments, communicating, exchanging ideas and traveling.We want open minded students, that really feel and act as European citizens. Our main goal, according to this project is directly oriented towards this direction, as we will encourage students to become shareholders of the European Civilization through the centuries and especially focus on each country’s monuments of world value.Thus the topic learning through traditional dancing and ancient theatre will lead students to the result that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world.

"The Erasmus + project ""Cultivating Languages ​​and Youth Entrepreneurs"" brought together partners from Estonia, Greece, Italy and Latvia. The coordinator was Aloja Ausekla Secondary School from Latvia. The project was aimed for secondary school students. 100 participants, both students and teachers, took part in transnational learning activities and 3 transnational project meetings. More students and teachers were involved in the local project activities, thus benefiting from the project.This project was based on the promotion of a European dimension in partner schools, especially since it was the first Erasmus+ project for all. This project gave students and teachers an opportunity to acquire and improve foreign language skills, learn about entrepreneurship, ICT and promote awareness and tolerance for social and intercultural inclusion. Another major project theme was reducing food waste. Participation in activities promoted the ability to collaborate and team spirit. The partner schools and the educators involved have expressed a desire to continue their cooperation. This was an opportunity for both the school and the teachers to learn project management and the use of ICT in it. The project motivated the practical use of foreign language skills as well as learning new words and phrases, especially for students in host families.The project promoted cross-curricular links across topics such as language, business English, entrepreneurship, ICT and food production and waste, biology, geography, history, social sciences, music. Pupils and educators took part in a series of activities to improve their knowledge of the issues covered, as well as to improve their foreign language skills, intercultural understanding and tolerance, thanks to the opportunity to cooperate in the context of European Union.Students prepared questionnaires and surveyed more than 100 respondents to find out about the habits of local households in terms of purchasing food and reducing waste. The results were compared between partner schools and posted on school website.The participants also had the opportunity to find out what partner schools are doing about the issue, to look at the Greek school garden, to compost, During the study trip in Greece, the students planted something typical from their country in the international garden of the project. During the presentations, the participants explained or showed more about the plant, its use.During the project, the partner schools also got to know the eTwinning platform and created a project site there.The project gave an idea of ​​employment in the partner school countries, regions, prospects, unemployment as well as traditional jobs as well as jobs related to the environment and tourism, business. The participants learned about the role of foreign languages ​​in different companies and sectors.The participants made presentations about the project activities, told at school meetings, wrote articles for school and municipal websites and newspapers."

<< Objectives >>The main objective of the RAISE project is to design and develop a 3D Virtual World Learning Environment (VWLE) using the potential of a gamification-based approach in which school students will engage in activities that will enhance their levels of environmental knowledge and awareness. Environmental education for sustainable futures could increasingly engage students in public life and participation, helping them to face socio-ecological crises caused by human activity.<< Implementation >>We are going to implement PM activities (WP1), (2.1) Survey research (2.2) Scenario & education material, (3.1-3.3) Development of the 3D VWLE Alpha version, (3.4.) System Documentation; (4.1-4.3) Piloting and regional results, (4.4) Documentation of piloting results, and of course multiplier events to get in touch with the target groups and the wider public, and TPMs in order to get the partners in face-to-face teamwork.<< Results >>The results of the project are (2.1) Documentation of Survey results (2.2)Educational material (2.3)Scenarios (3.1)3d VWLE (3 versions) (3.2) User Manual (3.3) System documentation (3.4) Demonstrating Videos (4.1) Documentation of piloting results (4.2) Multiplier Events brief reports. RAISE will manage to raise EK&A to students, and at the same time disseminate the project in such a way that teachers and students will engage in environmental education goals.

<< Background >>Homework is a relatively widespread and common educational activity, especially among elementary and high school students. It facilitates both students’ engagement and performance (Magalhães et al., 2020; Hagger et al., 2015). Despite the apparent benefits of assigning homework to students (learning, consolidation, and application of learning content, better time management in the classroom), it appears to be a tremendous discomfort to students. Trying to make students get their homework done was always a big challenge -not only during the pandemic- faced by teachers and by parents as well. Therefore, the need to address this issue strongly emerges. Research data have shown the effectiveness of gamification techniques in the educational process because they are highly engaging, motivating and thus they enhance learning compared to traditional learning techniques (Hamari et al., 2014; DomíNguez et al., 2013).However, converting educational material and exercises into online educational games for online learning and assessment for each course is a virtually impossible task for teachers and school institutions. The project’s objective is to develop an online gamified environment that overcomes this challenge (the transfer of physical learning material and exercises into digital form) while conserving the motivational mechanics of games to help students better engage with their homework improving their learning outcomes. The proposed gamified homework environment will allow the easy creation of gamified experiences independent of the specifics of each course, thus providing a versatile educational tool encouraging the take-up, use, and adoption in all schools regardless of the courses they provide. This goal will be achieved by eliminating the difficulties of creating educational games that incorporate all the learning content and by associating the gamified elements with the homework activitiesThe GameWork project aims to help alleviate students’ reluctance to do homework by developing a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to engage and motivate students to do their homework.Therefore, this approach promotes innovative pedagogies and methods for teaching, learning, and assessment and supports students and teachers to use digital technologies in creative, collaborative, and efficient ways. Moreover, the GameWork project is about developing digital learning materials and tools, particularly Open Educational Resources and Open Source Educational Software.Finally, the GameWork proposal is also about tackling learning disadvantage, early school leaving, and low proficiency in basic skills since the use of the gamified homework environment will help teachers gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually, the progress they record, and the time completion for each task. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student. ReferencesMagalhães, P., Ferreira, D., Cunha, J., & Rosário, P. (2020). Online vs traditional homework: A systematic review on the benefits to students’ performance. Computers & Education, 152, 103869.Hagger, M. S., Sultan, S., Hardcastle, S. J., & Chatzisarantis, N. L. (2015). Perceived autonomy support and autonomous motivation toward mathematics activities in educational and out-of-schoolcontexts is related to mathematics homework behavior and attainment. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 41, 111-123.Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences(HICSS), 3025–3034.DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J.-J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380–392.<< Objectives >>This project aims to motivate students to work on their homework and alleviate their reluctance to do homework. Towards this goal, we will develop a gamified environment for organising homework that will use gamification techniques to motivate students to do their homework. The GameWork project focuses on three precise objectives:1) Homework organisationLearners can access the environment with their smartphone or tablet and see the daily list of activities that they must perform to prepare for the next day, ticking the completed ones. Each activity can provide details that will help the student better organise their time while doing their homework. Some of such details can be: the estimated time to complete an activity which would give students an indication of how to fit each activity into their schedule better, a suggested activity order that would provide a proposed order in activities that depend on each other, complex activities can be divided into subactivities that will better guide the student towards completing them references to educational material that the student already comprehends before completing each activity, etc. This functionality will allow the student to see a complete overview of their homework at a glance and support them to better estimate, organise, and, in the end, complete their homework.2) Student engagementTowards this aim, the GameWork project will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide the gamified features and courses included in the development creating a gamified homework environment that will engage students in doing their homework. Some gamification features that could be included in the environment could be: rewards: upon completing their homework, students can earn points that will increase their level in the environment, prompting them to complete their homework to earn more rewardsrankings: based on the students’ performance, a ranking system can indicate the relative performance of each student, motivating them to do better than their classmatescontent unlocking: content can be unlocked when a student reaches a certain level that can include fun material not related to homework, such as a funny video or an imagenotification: student can receive notifications when they level up to motivate them to continue their progress3) Progress monitoring (for students and teachers)A verification process will be designed for a student not to skip the assignments and declare them untruthfully complete. The platform will ask for answers to one or more questions essential for each task. This verification process serves two purposes: a) it is a safety measure against cheating, b) it constitutes an incentive for students that would not otherwise do their homework learning at least the minimum of the essential questions.Furthermore, performance analytics will be provided for each student, alongside their classroom performance. In addition, students will be held accountable to the teachers, the parents but most important to themselves. Teachers can also add complementary material and content according to their students’ needs (pictures, external links, videos, voice recordings, etc.) to facilitate the learning process. Teachers will gain insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually and the progress they record. That way, they can intervene individually based on the specific particularities of each student.<< Implementation >>The following project activities are planned (details on the project Gantt Chart, see Annex): A01: Project Plan (UPatras) A detailed Project Plan (first version M2, final M22) will describe the working process of the project, tasks, activities, and deadlines. It will be a living document being continuously updated throughout the project.A02: Project Quality Plan (UPatras) The Project Quality Plan (PQP) (M2, M6) will describe the internal procedures (peer review process of outputs, communication plan, risk management, internal monitoring procedures, tangible project results templates, etc.) that need to be followed by all partners to ensure the fulfilment of the objectives and the scope of the project. A03: Project Promotion Plan (Arsakeio) Development of the Promotion Plan which will be a living document (first version M4, final M24) describing the sharing and promotion strategy to ensure the widest possible promotion of the project. The plan will describe the envisaged sharing and promotion activities that need to be carried out during the project, but also after its completion. A04: Online PM tools (UPatras) Online Project management (PM) tools will be deployed by UPatras (M3) to facilitate communication between partners. The PM tools will include the use of a project email list, an online project management system that will include project tasks and activities combined with a monitor mechanism, and a secure file sharing system for the storage of project documentation and files, and a virtual classroom system. A05: Project website (ISMAI)The project website (M3, continuously updated until M24) will be created by ISMAI with the contribution of all partners and it will provide information regarding the project and its goals, expected outcomes, and partnership. It will also provide access to project results. A06: Project Social Media (KJGAG) Project pages in social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) will make use of Web 2.0 technologies for the promotion of the project. These media pages will be created by KJGAG (M3) and will be continuously updated during the project lifetime including contributions from all partners.A07: Project Logo, and leaflets (Freixo) The Project Logo (created by Freixo at M2) will be used in all formal and informal communication of the project. Project leaflets will be released in two versions at M6 and M18. A08: Project newsletter and video (UPatras) During the project lifetime, 4 newsletters (M6, M14, M19, M23) will be created and communicated through project communication channels to stakeholders. A promotional video will be released (M10) in English. A new version, including features from the final version of the environment, will be available at M18. A09: Internal Evaluation Reports (UPatras) UPatras will control the internal evaluation of all major events, tangible project results, and activities and will collect all responses from all the partners and will combine them into a report. This report will be delivered periodically (every 6 months) and will serve as the internal monitoring of the Quality Assurance Procedure of the project. A10: Progress Report (UPatras) The coordinator will prepare the interim progress report for the National Agency (M12). A11: Partnership Agreement (UPatras) Partnership Agreement which will reflect the major principles ruling the cooperation among project partners and the exploitation of existing & project generated value will be created by UPatras (first version at M2 and final version at M6). A12: IPR Agreement (Arsakeio) The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Agreement will reflect all intellectual property rights of all elements created within the project. The first version will be available on M2 and it will be agreed upon, but the final version will be signed after the final version of the system (M20). A13: Closure Report (UPatras) Closure Project Report for the National Agency will be prepared at M24.<< Results >>The GameWork project will include the following project results:PR1: Needs analysis, course selection, gamification featuresThis PR will engage students from the early stages of development, allowing us to investigate their views and ideas about gamified homework. The work underdone will be included in the report “How students would like to have fun with their homework,” which will combine the literature findings with the students’ views collected from the GameWork schools. This report will also identify the courses selected to be included in the implementation phase (PR3), based on the feedback from the schools. Furthermore, following the feedback from students (Arsakeio, KJGAG, Freixo), the psychologists (ISMAI) of the consortium will work along with the developers to analyse the findings and conclude to a set of features that would be implemented into the gamified environment. We expect that the needs analysis from the student’s feedback would provide more features that could be included in the development. All these will be included in a report called “Analysis of the gamification features” and, based on a typical software engineering approach, will be used as the analysis and design blueprints for the development of the various versions of the gamified environment.Therefore, the work on this PR will be presented in two reports:· How students would like to have fun with their homework· Analysis of the gamification featuresPR2: Development of the environment Alpha, Beta, and Final versionFollowing the work on PR1, a gamified environment for homework will be developed. This environment will offer features and functionalities that will be defined in detail in PR1. Such features could be (based on preparation analysis): allowing students to self-evaluate their homework progress, further motivating students that delaying, introducing a healthy competition among students (using awards and leader boards), offering rewards to students, allowing the teachers to monitor the activities (both progress and correctness), and allowing teachers to modify future homework based on students’ progress. The environment will offer a gamification-based approach in which the students will engage in homework-related activities that will help them be better prepared for their studies and the exams.The main outputs of this PR are:· The environment (Alpha, Beta, and Final Version)· A technical report for the future content creators that will use the environment after the end of the funding period.· Three demonstrative videos of the environment for the three roles (student, teacher, creator) that will explain the system features.PR3: Implementation, Students’ feedback, and ReportingFollowing the iterative development of the gamified homework environment, which is the focus of the PR2, in this PR, the GameWork partners will start inviting students, teachers, and course creators (primarily teachers) into the environment. This PR is the one most related to the impact of the gamified homework environment. The innovative character of this environment will be demonstrated to educators, students, and all types of stakeholders (education providers, local administration), thus having a multiplying effect. The main output of this PR is a report on “Implementation and Students and Teachers’ feedback.” This report will present all data collected anonymously. The report will include implementation strategies, success stories, dos and don’ts, best practices, and the results from the environment evaluation. These results will be analysed (both statistically and qualitatively) and will be reported. The report will focus on cultural differences and will compare results across countries. Due to its nature, this report is expected to be innovative, highly influential, and will probably lead to scientific publications.