Our Erasmus+ KA229 project focuses on Learner-Centred Approach (LCA). The project title is RECENTERING LEARNING - THE FOUR A’S OF MODERN LIFE. RECENTERING LEARNING refers to the hoped transition from Teacher-Centred learning to Learner-Centered learning. THE FOUR A'S refer to Arts, Athletics, Academics and Autonomy. These are the core parts of The National Curriculum for Education in each partner country and represent subjects studied at school. We have chosen these themes so that the LCA could be, as easily as possible, integrated to the everyday life of the school and the approach would support the learning of subjects.The six partner schools are Varpaisjärven koulu in Lapinlahti Finland (coordinator), Templemichael College in Longford Ireland, III. gimnazija Zagreb in Croatia, ZS s MS Skolska 49 in Zilina Slovakia, Fortes Lyceum in Gorichem The Netherlands and Colégio Militar in Lisbon Portugal. The representatives of each partner school met at an Erasmus+ contact seminar in Bratislava, Slovakia in October 2019. The theme of the seminar was the Learner-Centred Approach. This contact seminar was an excellent way to form our project group because all the partner schools were already interested in the same topic and wanted to further work on it.The main objective we would like to achieve with this project is the transition from teacher-centredness towards learner-centredness in all our partner schools. This is also the concrete result that we are trying to achieve. From the part of teaching staff, this means , first of all, the enhanced knowledge of the Learner-Centred Approach. Secondly, the idea is that the project will provide the necessary steps needed for this transition. This main objective also meets the priorities we have chosen for the project (‘Supporting individual in acquiring and developing skills and key competences’, ‘Supporting educators’ and ‘Reinforcing the development of key competences)’. The second important objective is the European Dimension this project will bring to the partner schools strengthening teachers' and students' sense of European citizenship.The key participants of the project will the staff and students of these six partner schools. Because our project has two levels and our goal is to develop both teacher and student competences, we want to launch the idea of ‘teacher-learners’ and ‘student-learners’. This means that we expect both parties to equally learn during the project. The partner schools have jointly agreed that the students actively taking part in the project activities (either working only in their own school or also taking part in transnational meetings) are going to be between the ages 14-16.The seven principles of Learner-Centred Approach (1.active learning, 2.content (relevant knowledge), 3.cognitive + affective domains, 4.approach to learners (acceptance, encouragement), 5.positive learning atmosphere, 6.teacher's role and 7.learner's role) define the methodology used in carrying out the project and its activities. Along with activities done on eTwinning and through ICT, we are organizing six transnational meetings during the two-year project period. There will be two short-term joint staff meetings, one at the very beginning of the project in Slovakia and another at the very end in The Netherlands. In between, we are organizing four short-term exchanges of groups of pupils (in Finland, Portugal, Ireland and Croatia). This way each partner school will be visited once. Each school will have an Erasmus+ club for the students involved in the project.We hope that this project will have a long-lasting impact on the partner schools and their view on teaching. This project is an integral part of the long-term strategy of the partner schools to make the principles of LCA a standard practice in our everyday teaching as required by our National Curriculums. The final results of the project will be, for example, a material database on LCA on eTwinning, a booklet 'Ideas and materials for the use of LCA in classrooms' and reports on the learning processes of both students and teachers. These will be available to everybody interested in LCA.

Culture in action involved teachers and students from 4 complementary schools from Cyprus, France, the Netherlands and Slovakia and it lasted 3 years. Our students were between 14 and 17 years old and came from 2 vocational schools and 2 general schools. Many of them came from socially disadvantaged families and were issued from immigration. Working together gave them the opportunity to come in contact with people from other countries and discover the culture from their partners. Most of our students lacked confidence in themselves, in autonomy and in self-esteem and we were convinced that the richness of the cultural heritage and diversity highlighted all along our project activities would allow our students to be more tolerant, more open minded and it would stimulate their mutual respect. Teaching with the profile of our students needed to be done in an innovative way to push them to carry on with their studies and to become active European citizens of tomorrow. Our objectives were: To gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of foreign culture and strengthen international relationships in creating an escape game.To confront challenges outside a familiar support network and comfort zone. To give our students the feeling they are European citizensWe had 5 Learning, Teaching and Training Activities. During the first year, 1 called “By understanding”in Slovakia where our students got to know each other, built our project identity, discovered some part of the Slovakian cultural heritage and started to work on the creation of quizzes for our escape game. 1 in France called “By valueing” where our students cooked a fusion meal in international teams, discovered some part of the cultural heritage and continued the creation of the escape game. During the second year, we had 1 in Cyprus called “By caring” where our students sang and danced traditional dances in the amphitheater of Kourion, discovered some part of the Cypriot culture heritage and invented the setting for the escape game and continued the creation of more quizzes for the escape game. Because of the worldwide lockdown we couldn’t have our Learning, Teaching and Training Activity in the Netherlands. So we asked for a one year extension for our project in hope to be able to do our last visit but in vain, because of the pandemic situation we finalised our project with a fifth Learning Teaching and Training activity with one three-day-online meeting. Our students could exchange with a Member of the European Parliament, visited virtually the European Parliament, discovered some part of the Dutch cultural heritage online and had great fun playing online with their escape game in international teams.We worked with the Twinspace of eTwinning. It enabled us to have a secure place where to work in teams, to discuss, to collaborate on the different themes and tasks which involved a much larger number of students between, during and after the Learning, Teaching and Training Activities. Our students worked in national or in international teams to get to know each other, to discover their countries, their gastronomy, their traditional songs and dances. They presented, analysed, synthesized, collaborated, evaluated and created various tasks and activities which improved languages, entrepreneurial and ICT skills. The tangible results are a Twinspace with all our project process and results; a multilingualism dictionary; a website; a netiquette chart; 4 emagazines summarizing our Learning Teaching and Training activities; 4 leaflets; a ecooking recipe book with all our recipe cooked by the students during the fusion meal; 8 films on our various subjects such as Learning Teaching and Training Activities and our students’ opinion on our project; 1 live TV show recorded during our online meeting; our Escape Game. The escape game setting was chosen by our students and it is composed of several quizzes on cultural facts of our four countries and created by our students. The impacts are huge for our participants. Our students were very active during all phases of our project, they were more interested in working to learn by doing and became more motivated in their studies and most of them had wished to pursue their studies. They gained confidence and self esteem. Working in international teams made them realise how important it is. The international part of this project enriched their linguistic skills and pushed them to be more curious and more tolerant toward their neighbours.The teachers reinforced their knowledge in project management and in innovative teaching. This project was highlighly disseminated to the eTwinning community thanks to the coordinators who are ambassadors and who participated in national and international webinars to share their expertise on collaborative activities and informing about our project as a way to implement student centered learning. Our project is visible on the Twinspace and is a source of inspiration for more teachers.

"The Erasmus+ KA229 project ""Sustain Environment and Culture in an App'' connected five European Institutions,Italy, the coordinator,Malta, Romania, Spain and The Netherlands, with the main purpose to provide students with hands-on learning opportunities to develop the eight key competences in the European Framework that must be mastered to collaborate effectively and problem solve in a global Green Economy . We also addressed the need to have an international perspective of Sustainable Development Education which could include academic, social, cultural elements by creating the SUSTAIN e.learning platform with lesson plans, methodologies and useful material for Sustainable Development and Cultural Heritage.In the educational process activated in the LTTAs and the eTwinning project, our inquiry-based models of learning and inclusive methodologies allowed students to naturally incorporate skills and competences, such as Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Active Citizenship, European identity and Cultural Heritage We provided them with the technology and experiential learning opportunities that they need to master these skills fully by establishing partnerships with local stakeholders integrating more ICT activities and innovative digital tools such as APPS. Students have been introduced to most available new trends in technology, engineering and science in their region by visiting clean technology industries, strengthening links with them and developing a clean energy business plan. The activities focused mainly on the Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Cultural Heritage. We discovered the traditions, culture, and environmental landscapes of our Countries with the constant investigation of environmental issues including Climate Change with active actions of sustainable tourism and economy,. The activities also contributed to developing communication skills, problem-solving abilities, decision making, teamwork skills, giving presentations and IT skills. Cross-cultural and cross-curricular learning was supported through all project activities. English Language learning has been constantly improved in dedicated activities that also promoted the use of digital tools in language learning.On each meeting, an IT workshop in a different field was held in order to improve the IT competences of all participants.The project started with the Staff Training in Malta about Sustainable Tourism to explore different methods to teach cultural heritage Lessons to be delivered to students were prepared and disseminated in schools.In Italy, the main objective was the Cultural and Environmental Heritage, the target was the students, the focus was on sustainable development of cultural and natural landscapes and actions of Citizen Science with study visits to the most important natural and cultural Unesco sites of the area, boat trip with a science lab. In the collaborative workshops, students drew eco-tourist Itineraries, the Campaign for Eco-friendly Behaviour, the Dictionary of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in all partner languages and learnt how to make an APP. The learning experience continued in Romania, where the students were involved in different environmental activities on the Mountain of Slanic Moldova and designed the ebook “ Back to Mother nature”. The second year of the project started with the meeting in The Netherlands whose main objective was to explore the application of new technology for the environment. by means of direct observation during the field trips with the outdoor learning methodology and the debate. The products were eco posters, ppts about Clean energies collected in the Mozilla Hub virtual tour. The intercultural knowledge was enriched during the international meetings with cultural trips and inclusive activities.The last two LTTA were organized online owing to the Covid emergency yet without changing the objectives and focus of activities.In the Spanish meeting, the Popular culture was deepened with presentations, videos, eTwinning activities, creative workshops and digital games. The products were The Youth for Sustainability Magazine and the ebook Poetry in Nature. In The final meeting, organized by Italy, important project-related presentations and evaluations were made. The APP with all products and the SUSTAIN E-learning platform are available on the project website www.erasmuspluska229secea.comTwo other staff training were organized by Spain and Italy with the objective to establish a permanent collaboration among our schools, to further disseminate the project’s results and ensure the prosecution of the project after its end. All partners will continue to share resources and teaching materials and disseminate them with their colleagues, with the purpose of introducing these new teaching methods into everyday practice ensuring thus the sustainability of the project."

"In today's world, in which children and young people are increasingly digitally networked, it seems more and more difficult for them to clearly define their own identities. Many young people lose themselves in the manifold opportunities that social networks offer them. The problems that arise from excessive media consumption by adolescents has not only been proven by numerous studies, such as the JIM study, but also by the experience of teachers. They are required to integrate media topics into their lessons and at the same time deal with the problems of their students that occur through involvement in social networks. As a result of this situation the idea of initiating an Inter-European project was born during a contact seminar in Düsseldorf in October 2019, between different schools of the following countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Macedonia and Ireland. The aim of the project is to enable young people to develop a healthy and stable (European) identity, despite or perhaps because of the massive influence of social networks. For this purpose, both the possible potential and the dangers of social networks are being examined and an appropriate way of dealing with them discussed. Pupils should be encouraged to critically question their media consumption, particularly the relevance and quality of social media. They should also learn about the usefulness for intercultural communication in order to better locate themselves in the European community structure as well as to better understand their own role in it. Through the cooperation between the different countries, cultural differences can be worked out and common ""trends"" discovered. These will, in turn, contribute to the development of an awareness of the individual identity, while, at the same time, equally broadening the (cultural) European horizon of the students. Twenty-five students aged between 13 and 15 years from each participating country will join in the Erasmus+ project entitled ""Finding Identity in Times of Social Media"". In addition to two staff meetings, which serve to assist in the planning, further training and organisation of the responsible teachers, a total of six student mobilities with different focal points are planned. Each host country is an expert in one of the following digitally relevant topics: fake and real news, cyberbullying, influencing, addiction, pressure to reach perfection and political commitment through and with social media. Five students from each school will travel to each country to participate in various workshops and the cultural exchange programme. Before, after and between the mobilities, pupils will be able to communicate with each other through eTwinning and work on the same tasks in their home country. The project is advertised at the home schools and the students apply for it by means of a letter of motivation or self-made videos. Furthermore, the project is designed in such a way that the pupils deal with the topic of identity and the influence of social media and publish the results with the help of these ""social media"". In this way, digital media are not only used to exchange information, but also to learn through and with them. All schools participating in the project have a department of ""Creative Arts"" or offer this as a learning focus. Therefore, the above-mentioned questions are to be processed and transferred artistically and aesthetically in the performing arts and expressed through other creative forms (""creative arts""). In the course of this project various skills and abilities will be acquired and deepened, ranging from technical execution (stage technology, dubbing of videos, recording of clips) to creative applications concerning the dramaturgical realisation (e.g. writing small scenes, stage design, language and movement). Throughout the entire duration of the project, the participants will develop a manual on the safe use of social media, in which they will collect the results of their work and findings, which will later be made available to other schools and educational institutions. The manual will contain questionnaires on the pupils' own use of media and their identity therein, an information sheet, and a quiz for about/on identifying real and fake news, information on influencing, behavioural tips, reflection sheets on the category and quantity of media use, educational videos, collages as well as technical manuals on video and film technology. In this way, pupils, teachers or parents who have not taken part in the project will also be able to analyse their media use and receive suggestions for safe dealings in and with social networks. In addition, the pupils will record their activities during the project in a booklet (""Project Booklet""), in which they can write articles about the individual activities and meetings, as well as which documents the joint inter-European work of the participants."

This project places the development of metacognitive learning at its heart.The project arises out of three demonstrable needs in all of the partner schools. They are:1. for students to develop the integrated social, technological, problem-solving, presentational and inter-personal skills that are essential for employment in the 21st century2. to integrate those skills into schools in a way that will complement and enhance the existing, curricula.3. to develop 'euro-literate' students who understand both the commonality of many of the challenges facing people across Europe and the specific expression of those challenges in the localities of the partner schools; they also need to have developed a deeper understanding of the rich and varied socio/cultural and historical context of the partner schools.The transnational mobilities become the crucible in which all of the skills the students develop are first put to the test.Between the four school involved in the project our profile almost represents as it were something like the normal curve of distribution for students across the whole of Europe. We have students who come from economically challenged backgrounds (the Heathfield catchment, for example, covers the poorest ward in the South West) – and those who don’t; we have a significant number of students with learning needs – and the reverse. Significantly, what they all have in common is the fact that they are all facing the challenges that Europe itself is facing – uncertainty and increasing global competition. In a way this project is an attempt to address some of these issues. Initially some 300 students will be involved directly in the project but eventually it will impact on all of the students in all of the schools.From our own research and from transnational research it is clear that there is a real need for the development of metacognitive skills if we are to create students who are lifelong learners and who are really equipped with the kind of skills so valued in the world of work. We would use the results from the project to alter the shape and design of our schools' curricula so that the impact of this project is felt by every student. We would also promote the changes in our curricula to other schools locally, nationally and transnationally.At the beginning of the project the students in each school form a controlling company. It is this company's responsibility to plan, prepare, deliver, quality control and assess the mobility to their country. In order to do this effectively the company will need to divide into groups with each group responsible for a specific area of the controlling company's operations. These groups will cover areas such as finance, marketing, IT, human resources, design and advertising and each group will then be answerable to the 'board' of the main company. Each group will receive expert advice from outside agencies that are working in their particular field. One of the students' first tasks will be to establish a network of contacts of people working in business (and other outside agencies) who can help them to achieve their objectives. Clearly the teachers would need to sign off and approve any planning so that all of the basic requirements of things such as health and safety are met. However, it is very important that, within these restricted parameters, the students are allowed to succeed and to fail - and to learn from those successes and failures.With the mobilities as the beating heart of the project, students would also be expected to develop a deep knowledge of their partner countries and of their own areas as well. The students will research thoroughly into each area that they are visiting to find out something about their history and current context - just as good businesses will do before they take a trip abroad. They will be assisted in this by each respective host country who will set a series of 'challenges' for each school to answer before they arrive. Each school will also need to call on a range of subjects to help them with this - from history and geography to languages, art and literature. No student should be rocking up to the Rijkmuseum with no idea who Rembrandt was.....Assessment: the review period during and after the mobilities will be a vital time in terms of the formative assessment of the ongoing project. As in any real-life situation not everything will go according to plan. Students will need to assess their own performance and the performance of their team having taken on board the results of the surveys, interviews and other forms of feedback. As it develops, all schools will need to see how the ideas and practices instantiated here can be integrated into the curriculum and hence into the students’ wider experience of school. We consider the development of these integrated employability skills to be essential and we would want to share our experiences with schools, with other educationalists and with outside agencies.