A virtual Travel Agency : “Fly me to the Moon” Erasmus Project

Project Title

A virtual Travel Agency : “Fly me to the Moon”

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 : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

“Travel Agency : Fly me to the Moon” is a 2 year long school exchange partnership, involving 3 vocational schools : the LP Henri Brulle in Libourne (France), the College Ion Ghica in Braila (Romania) and the IES La Marisma in Huelva (Spain). These VET schools have a lot in common, sharing the same needs and trades (Administration / management, Marketing). They all are located in rural or surburban areas, and deal with socially disadvantaged students. Pupils suffer from a real lack of self confidence, ambition and mobility. In order to tackle early school leaving and disadvantage, and to improve their language skills, each school has decided to promote internationalisation through this Erasmus project.
Therefore, this partnership aims at restoring students’ ambition and limit early school leaving by developing an european cooperation which will emphasize entrepreneurship, and use ICT and innovative technologies.
The project is about designing and building a website of a virtual travel agency, divided into 3 national components, with everything available in the 4 different communication languages.
There are 24 students involved in each country, selected by their will to be part of this challenging project. They are from different trades : Marketing – Sales – Administration for the French ones, Marketing – Administration – Gastronomy for the Romanians, and Administration – ICT – Gardening for the Spanish learners. Pupils are all 16 – 17 years old.

Project implementation :
In september 2019, the project is announced in the 3 VET schools. A first short-term joint staff training event takes place in the organizing French school in october 2019, where colleagues will be taught how to use Augmented and Virtual Reality. They will also learn and use tools to build the website and the virtual agency. Teachers will share ideas on how to use them in their field for the project.
From october 2019 to December 2019, students will introduce themselves, then introduce their school, trade and environment.
Each school selects a group of 9 (or 6) students and 3 staff members for the mobilities.

In December 2019, the first joint mobility will take place in France. The students will also be taught the use of the web tools and VR, and the virtual travel agency will officially be launched. A brainstorming will be used to propose the name and logo of the agency / website.
From december 2019 to March 2020, after voting for the name and logo, small groups of transnational students will work together on the Twinspace to build the Romanian part of the website. This part will be based on tourism and gastronomy, and augmented reality will be used to show the different meals and tourist information.

In between mobilities, all the preparation will be made by groups of 3/4 students from the 3 different countries who will cooperate on Twinspace to deal with specific topics related to the next host country visited.
Each country does the translation of all data created by the groups in their native language, and the host students use all this work to build their national travelling offers and bundles.
Mobilities will act as a final where all efforts will yield to an oral presentation by the local team concerning their national travelling options. Language will be non native, and real touristic visits will happen according to the ones presented.
In order to avoid the exercise to get boring, topics and type of data produced will change for each country :
– For Romania, tourist services and offers are combined with gastronomy discovery formulaes, using A.R (mobility in March 2020)
– For spain, VR, chatbots or virtual assistants and natural sightseeing made on video (mobility in October 2020)
– For France, local sightseeing and a trip to the ESA moonbase, with augmented reality and a model of the moonbase made out of recycled materials will be used in the role playing situation (March 2021).

The outcomes of this project are the building of the agency’s website, using different type of data, innovative technologies, and different topics depending on the location.
We are also betting on good cooperation between pupils using Twinspace, knowing they will work internationally, then with presentations and professional role playing games during mobilities.
We are also expecting lower absenteeism and better graduation rate, and later improved higher learning rate and professional insertion.
Individually, the participants should benefit from improved language competences, better self-esteem, and an experience in tackling their encountered difficulties. They will develop professional skills through original and fun ways, experience entrepreneurship and open up to other european cultures, meanwhile reenforcing the feeling of european belonging.

This project is made to build strong partnerships, meant to be continued through other Erasmus + projects, like this one or dealing with VET mobilities for students and staff.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 95720 Eur

Project Coordinator

LP Henri BRULLE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Colegiul Economic “Ion Ghica” Braila
• Instituto de Educación Secundaria La Marisma