Technological and social challenges in the 21st century Erasmus Project

Project Title

Technological and social challenges in the 21st century

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: Research and innovation; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

Periods of project-work are fixed parts of the school year at the technical upper secondary school in Ballerup. During those phases (teams of) students – partly in cooperation with businesses and universities – work on finding answers to technical problems respectively academic questions. The idea of the Erasmus+ project was to interconnect the Danish periods of project-work with a German period of project-work at the FOS Scheyern (vocationally oriented upper secondary school) and on the one hand to focus on technical aspects of new technological developments, but on the other hand to consider economic, ethical and social impacts. As it is not possible to organize more than one period of project work in the 12th grade of FOS the more academic work was done in the so-called ”Fachreferat” (a compulsory presentation based on academic work). A group of students continued their project work on a more academic basis throughout the school year and stayed in contact with their Danish colleagues. This group presented the results of their work in Copenhagen.
The project aimed to point out the relevance of international cooperation especially regarding the given topics. Moreover it intended to increase the subject knowledge as well as technical and general English language competence of the participating students and teachers. Their problem-solving-strategies within an intercultural context improved as their insight into differences in geographical, social, political and legal circumstances as well as differences in mentality grew. All that is meaningful for the labor market. Last but not least the project sought to uplift the subject and methodological competence of the teachers involved by means of mutual observation and exchange of experiences.
Eight Bavarian students accompanied by two teachers travelled to Denmark for five working days in February/March to present their ”Fachreferat” dealing with technological and social challenges of the 21st century. Those presentations served as impulse to commonly develop further questions which the Danish students consecutively work on during their project-period. The solutions the Danish students came up with were then made known to the Bavarian 12-graders at a return visit of a Danish delegation (8 students and two teachers) in Bavaria in September/October. The talks and demonstrations of the Danish students were once again incentive for further academic queries of the following relay team. Presentations and discussions were held in English. The platform eTwinning was not used very much for the exchange of information, for communication and for the publication of results. Instead digital platforms the schools usually work with were used. Preparation for the mutual visits was carried out within each school. Likewise within each school students who wanted to participate needed to apply.
The aspired results were reached, first of all the final products of the projects and the ”Fachreferat”, which were evaluated by the supervising teachers, secondly an individual gain in competence of the students and teachers involved. This had a positive effect on their chances on the labor market respectively on the education system and thus was of use to future classes.
All students documented their progress in the Europass Curriculum Vitae and Language Passport. Within the “Bildungsregion” (educational region) Pfaffenhofen and Ingolstadt the results were spread to other schools and educational institutions by the various regional teams, in Denmark this happened within the TEC organization and its network.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 64815 Eur

Project Coordinator

Staatliche Fachoberschule Scheyern & Country: DE

Project Partners

• TEC, TECHNICAL EDUCATION COPENHAGENS/I