Uniting Future Online Erasmus Project

Project Title

Uniting Future Online

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: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Integration of refugees

Project Summary

The idea of of the online magazine UNITING FUTURE ONLINE (UFO, www.unitingfuture.com) was to deal with challenges in education, with problems due to immigration and the connected EU values.

During meetings, innovations such as cooperative open learning, individualized teaching and self-responsible learning were partly put into practice by all the participants and as a consequence it enabled discussions and exchanges of best practice examples both for students and teachers also in the innovative way in our online magazine.

Students at each partner school formed editorial staffs and were responsible for the articles. The main topics of the online magazine were: spirit of Europe, solidarity, integration and inclusion of migrants, uniting future, diversity and democracy.

Five partners from Ybbs/Austria (technical college HTL Ybbs), Zagreb/Croatia (Vladimir Prelog Science School)high school), Venlo/the Netherlands (Valuascollege), Maribor/Slovenia (Zavod Antona Martina Slomska) and Vänersborg/Sweden (Fridagymnasiet), dealt with one specialised topic each, Five short term exchanges, hosted by the partner schools, contained common learning in workshops, practising foreign language skills and investigation of issues for further writing.

There were also activities like writing articles for the magazine, web design and layout, participation in online discussions, reporting and doing research on topics, workshops on journalistic skills, dealing with contents on the internet, source criticism and local excursions in connection to the theme. These activities took place during the exchanges but also steadily at the partner schools. Among other things, students wrote articles and reports about their daily lives and school lives, in order to make the magazine more appealing to their age group.

Schools benefited from increased quality of teaching activities (writing, speaking in a foreign language) because of the more practical way of writing for a realistic situation and real audience.
Due to contact with other schools, teaching institutions experienced alternative teaching concepts (COOL, individualized learning…).
Students acquired skills in web design and layout; apart from that, they gained experience in taking photographs and in dealing with online contents.
Contributors developed journalistic skills and learned to develop their own opinion and to speak their mind They developped an understanding for journalistic work, the importance of facts for reporting and democratic ideas.

Long term benefits of this project range from future use of the website for EU project to sustainable change of attitudes of participating students concerning the matters covered. In some schools, debating clubs turned into an ongoing instrument.
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EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 68680 Eur

Project Coordinator

Höhere Lehranstalt für Informationstechnologie der Stadtgemeinde Ybbs a. .d. Donau & Country: AT

Project Partners

• Vladimir Prelog Science School
• Valuascollege
• Zavod Antona Martina Slomska
• Fridagymnasiet