Skills 4.0 – How to become a future professional? Erasmus Project

Project Title

Skills 4.0 – How to become a future professional?

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: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Working life changes constantly and requires people to adapt. At school we try to keep up with the issue: How to prepare pupils for the digitalized working life? How to get them motivated in solving global problems and making innovations in technologies? How to provide pupils with the future working life skills, when the jobs they are going to do, possibly don’t exist yet? To match the demands of the future that among others Industry 4.0 has brought, we aim to bring pupils’ skills to the next level. We want to promote critical thinking, creativity, flexibility and open-mindedness. We aim to teach language, multicultural, social and ICT-skills, which carry forward and can help to achieve other skills.

International cooperation is common in many fields. It requires language skills and cultural sensitiveness which pupils can adopt in contact with foreign people. In our eTwinning project “Skills 4.0 – How to become a future professional?” we want to share ideas and create international connections between pupils and teachers from Finland, Estonia, Spain and Italy.

With the Erasmus+ funding we upgrade our project. To find out the required skills, we visit organisations and companies with new innovations or solutions and invite different professionals to visit the schools. We visit museums to let the pupils imagine the future through history. We create a multidisciplinary module with concrete plans for teaching future working life skills available for anyone in our online magazine. In each partner school we organize an LTT for pupils, during which we concentrate on one field with its signature skills and future prospects. Also, local culture and traditions become familiar. Our aim is that pupils lose their prejudices and learn multicultural skills in touch with foreign pupils. We are all Europeans and the project brings us closer together and closer to the shared European labor markets.

As our main objective is to develop our schools, we challenge teachers not only to teach their subject but to make pupils aware of their skills and strengths and to teach new skills for the future working life. Our aim is that pupils are ready to continue studies to get an occupation. Awareness of the skills makes pupils brave enough to break the gender barrier when choosing their line of studies. International exchange gives us a chance to learn from each other, as the level of gender equality differs from one country to the other.

With the project funding we organize training for teachers to share knowledge, skills and ideas and to compare the educational systems. As outcome of the training we want to introduce ICT-agents activity, project oriented learning and bilingual teaching in our schools. In addition, we will upgrade our robotics and ICT teaching. With “Good Practices Among Equals” we aim to increase tolerance and social skills. With positive CV we can help pupils to recognize their strengths. We aim to achieve positive changes that remain in the school practices.

During the two project years, 2200 pupils take part in the project. 400 of them have fewer opportunities. All of our pupils attend sub projects. 15 pupils from each school take part in the mobilities and 15 families in each country get to know a foreign pupil by hosting one during the local LTT. We aim to bring many different teachers to training abroad to keep the motivation level high. Teachers carry out sub projects in their own lessons or as cross curricular studies. The pedagogical staff helps pupils to develop skills. Some parents, former pupils and different professionals come to the schools to tell about the future aspects of and skills needed in their jobs. We visit local organisations and companies and invite local media to our activities. Teachers locally and regionally get to know new ideas as we disseminate the results in their schools and in teacher associations. Any teacher globally may use our multidiciplinary module to teach future skills.

We expect, that future professions demand a wide range of skills, which will be practiced in the project activities. Social skills, team work and cooperation will be practiced in group building activities and in small groups. ICTs will be used as tools. Pupils create and maintain contacts with pupils abroad through eTwinning and social media and learn networking through LinkedIn. Language skills and communication will be adopted in touch with partner schools. Pupils get to know new innovations and try to find out future ideas and solutions in order to learn initiative, creativity and entrepreneurship. Pupils learn to think critically and in larger perspective when working on world-wide topics.

Our aim is that the new practices remain in the school culture. We want our pupils to become aware of their skills and to strengthen them in the long run. Also, we aim to continue with the annual parents’ visits with introduction of occupations. The schools aim to continue with penpalships and video conferences.

Project Website

https://futureskillserasmus.wordpress.com/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 103301 Eur

Project Coordinator

Mäntynummen yhtenäiskoulu & Country: FI

Project Partners

• IES DOLORES IBARRURI BHI
• Istituto Tecnico Economico Raetia
• Tallinna Õismäe Gümnaasium