Visions of European Cities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Visions of European Cities

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Rural development and urbanisation; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

The challenges faced by a socially sustainable Europe require an analysis of urban and rural communities. Europe is one of the most urbanized continents, with obvious population inflation in the periphery and centers of these metropolitan zones. Though these areas are the nuclei for human innovation and interaction, they are also hotbeds of social tension, racism, unemployment, and poverty. Beyond these social issues, residents of these urban communities must deal with ecological difficulties, such as air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, waste accumulation, sealed soil surfaces, and the extinction of bees. All of these issues will only increase exponentially due to the future population growth of these communities. But effective community development can only be achieved by the integration of several approaches. The participating schools in Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden all face different realities and will contribute the ability to innovate using different perspectives. As our overall objective was to foster social consciousness and responsibility in our students, we directed their focus to the impact of immigration on their own community development. They were encouraged to analyze migratory challenges, and hopefully innovate some conflict resolutions. We tried to motivate the next generation to build a strong foundation for the European Union. It is necessary for them to envision how developing European cities will function globally. Thus we made an effort to give them the tools to build it sustainably and inclusively.
In order to help students with this process, we had been looking to design innovative ICT technologies, as well as Open Educational Resources, to help students, as well as teachers, communicate during the project. Our hope that the development of a smart-phone application will give project members the ability not only to communicate with each other, but also to share their results on a local, regional, and international level were fulfilled. Furthermore, once projects have been designed and implemented, the applications can be used to establish a reward system for students who successfully implement the newly acquired sustainability knowledge in their daily lives. Our Spanish partner took over the leadership role in technology and made a great effort to teach the partners the application of MIT App-Inventor and H5P as well as other digital tools.
The project began with students researching and developing sustainability projects within their areas. They focused on several topics, such as integration of immigrants through Second Language instruction, urban gardening, sustainable food production, bee keeping, slow fashion, and sustainable mobility. Afterwards, we will encourage students to engage with their results by conducting their own projects, and recording and sharing research via their apps. Finally, the completed projects will be presented to the partner schools in various bilateral science fairs and workshops. Beyond these events, we plan to publish online. Interactive videos and presentations, an augmented reality digital book, an EU domain website, and a Moodle website will allow other schools to easily access materials from our projects.
The process will be very transparent for our partnering schools. We plan to keep the communication very regular and to consciously play to each institution’s strengths. Our Spanish school, for instance, has an innovative technological department, which will allow their students to become engineers using open hardware, sensors, augmented reality, computer vision, and voice recognition. The Italian school, with its focus on intercultural communication, will promote geographical unity among the European schools.
Several teachers who would take active roles in this project were interested in adopting the CLIL methodology. This Erasmus+ project allows educators to properly implement this methodology. Each school used English as the project’s primary language, which eased the dissemination of the products internationally. The German school already hosts bilingual education programs and has several years of experience with English. This school had taken more of a leadership role language-wise as English acquisition is very crucial to this project. Students had the great opportunity to participate in a Model United Nations conference annually with the Swedish partner school, and English is the language used for that event. In general, we believe in global communication, and its ability to breed understanding and compassion. The Italian partner started a cooperation with a science center, CRS4, about monitoring smart-cities. They allowed the partners to experience this scientific approach.
Erasmus+ gave our students and teachers the opportunity to exchange cultural experiences and knowledge, while also improving their second​ language skills, it enhanced the identification with Europe and strengthened European citizenship.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 104534 Eur

Project Coordinator

Sophie-Charlotte Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Institut Pompeu Fabra
• Liceo Classico Scientifico Euclide
• Falu Frigymnasium
• Agrupamento de Escolas D. Filipa de Lencastre