Care or Scare – Challenges of Modern Technologies Erasmus Project

Project Title

Care or Scare – Challenges of Modern Technologies

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Seven schools from seven different countries took part in this three-years project. They comprised both schools preparing for a general Abitur-like qualification (Italy, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Turkey and Germany) and schools with a technological focus (Spain and Romania). The schools are located in big cities like Palermo, Timisoara or small towns such as Vezirköprü, Carlet, Hückelhoven or Culemborg. Hückelhoven is the only school that starts with pupils around the age of 10, all other schools start at 13 or 14. The biggest school is the KWC in Culemborg with more than 2000 pupils whereas in Turkey and the Czech Republic the number of students is below 500. The school in the Czech Republic is the only privately owned school – the owner happens to be the principal.
Most of the participating schools already used to work together in previous Comenius projects and bilaterals. The project topic was born because of the awareness of tremendous challenges through the rapid changes of technologies. Therefore we intended to explore and also accompany critically this process – chances and challenges of modern technologies.
All participating schools were capable of putting in their strengths and competences: e.g. Romania – the school’s cooperation with the university, especially with regard to modern energy sources, The Netherlands – the country’s concern with water and water management, Italy – (linked to issues raised at the LTT in Spain) the cooperation with the maritime station and work with disabled persons, Spain – the school’s technological projects Carusso, Cyrano and Aquaponic, Germany – the school’s geographical position near the border.
In our application we also referred to the „needs“ of the participating schools. In general all schools have been benefiting from the experiences to be had during the stays abroad. This has much to do with different ways of school organization (the existence of certain school subjects, organization in fixed classes/forms or rather flexible courses, the existence of certain project groups, the availability of supporting non-teaching staff).
It was one of the main objectives to organize a process to learn from one another – to bridge the gap between “needs” and “haves”. Thematically the main objectives were to provide insights, explore various aspects of modern technologies, to understand the social processes sparked off by technological progress. The other areas of objectives concern the improvement of English, the improvement of rhetorical skills/research and presentation techniques as well as the fight of stereotypes. In all four areas the project was supposed to give participants, especially students a push. Of course all of them are part of a life-long learning process.
At the end of three years we are convinced that we achieved what we wanted to reach. The evidence is based on the evaluation carried out and also on the innumerable contacts between project teams and students/colleagues/non-teaching staff.
We organized, on average, one LTT with a special topic-related focus in each semester. Work was undertaken at every school before to prepare the LTT. It must be admitted that the international side of the preparatory work ahead of the LTT was not satisfactory before the third project year after coordination teams introduced a new, more flexible system. During the LTTs there was mixture of presenting the work prepared before and its continuation/completion/enlargement. Added to this were always field trips to external partners, such as research institutes, enterprises or local bodies.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 135105 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium der Stadt Hückelhoven & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Stichting voor Christelijk VO Culemborg e.o.
• Colegiul Tehnic Emanuil Ungureanu
• Prvni soukrome jazykove gymnazium Hradec Kralove spol. s r.o.
• Liceo Scientifico Statale Albert Einstein Palermo
• Köprülüler Anadolu Lisesi
• IES 9 D’OCTUBRE