EUREKA! Past, Present and Future! Erasmus Project

Project Title

EUREKA! Past, Present and Future!

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: Research and innovation; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Eureka – Past, Present and Future had two key priorities: fighting levels of youth unemployment and ensuring that young people complete their schooling, leaving their educational establishment qualified, skilled, optimistic and enthusiastic about their role as a European citizen. This project fostered entrepreneurship, and the idea that anyone has the capability of being an inventor. It inspired young people, built on their sense of initiative and showed them that through team work, hard work and good leadership, they can be the next generation of inventors. It also provided a detailed training manual for primary school teachers on “The Design Process” and the practicalities of running such a project in a school situation. The key overall objectives of this project were: • To increase participants’ sense of initiative and entrepreneurship • To increase competence in foreign languages • To increase the level of participants’ digital competence • To provide the opportunity to research, design,create, manufacture and present an invention• To foster greater understanding to linguistic and cultural diversity • To foster a more positive attitude towards the European Project. The schools involved in this project were from five countries;Perth-Scotland, Brasov-Romania,Paris-France, Verbania-Italy and Thessaloniki-Greece. The pupils who were mostly involved in this project were of upper primary age, teachers, governors, parents, and local universities, in addition local manufacturing, marketing, media and business organisations such as the Chambers of Commerce were involved. The following activities took place during the lifetime of the project:- Project and pupil blogs, project Logo design,-Erasmus Corner at each school, existing inventors and inventions research, a multi media E-book of this research. Games based on this research.Trip to Thessaloniki to present research. Pupils from all partner schools replicated some of the inventions which they had researched. This was presented by all partner schools in Paris. This creation of models of inventions was filmed and photographed and a “virtual museum of inventions” was created. Design workshops with specialists were held. A dissemination document for Year One was produced. Competitions at each school, inviting pupils to think of an invention and to present their ideas were held at each school. The winning team from each country presented their ideas at the partnership meeting in Romania. Prototypes of the inventions were created. The initial ideas were presented by pupils in Brasov. A large, public exhibition of all partners’ final inventions was held in Perth, Scotland, involving staff, pupils, parents, governors, local Councillors, local businesses, local schools and the press. A film was produced summarising the winning invention ideas. The manual on Product Design was prepared, written and disseminated. A dissemination document for Year Two was produced. The impact of this project on teaching staff, pupils, and parents was hugely beneficial both in terms of being able to work on a meaningful cross-curricular project in school and trans-nationally. It has increased both staff and pupils sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and enabled them to learn and practise a variety of foreign languages. The skills learned from this project will stay with the pupils as they go into the world of work thus increasing their employability and confidence. As pupils have been working closely together with and visiting partner schools, this has created a better understanding of different social and cultural diversity and many friendships have been established. Digital competence has naturally improved as pupils and staff communicated via digital means as well as face-to-face. They have been using digital technology throughout the whole of this project as a means of presenting ideas, summarising completed work and creating inventions. To disseminate the results and activities of the project further afield we have used:- local, regional and national press – TV and radio publicity -assemblies to which local business and council members have been present – educational websites such as Etwinning, TES resources and Local educational conferences. Each school organised young entrepreneurship seminars, exhibitions and hands-on workshops, aimed at primary teachers and pupils, with a view to showing the stages of the realization of our project specifically, turning the students’ innovative ideas into real products. An impact survey was conducted and 80% of participants would like to be involved in such a project again.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 126686,65 Eur

Project Coordinator

Craigclowan Preparatory School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• ARISTOTELIO COLLEGE
• Istituto Comprensivo Rina Monti Stella
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA NR.14
• ECOLE SAINT-VICTOR