We are convinced that today’s issues, from environmental aspects, clean and affordable energy for everyone to integration and inclusion of all members of society cannot be solved from a single nation but only thanks to international cooperation, dialogue, agreements and actions. Erasmus + seems to be the perfect chance to educate students to it. This project gives the opportunity to foster the mission of our schools and at the same time enhances the use of English, the official language of the project, and of ICT.Our project aims are threefold and we will constantly work on three different levels: a personal level, school level and a European or even global level. We wish our students to be more open-minded towards the idea of exchange and communication with their European neighbours. In a more concrete way, we want to create not only awareness for ecological issues, but also acquire knowledge and competences how to deal with this topic.Each school will create workgroups of 20 to 25 students and a teaching team to accompany the students, aged 15 to 17, during the mobilities but mostly in their work while preparing a future meeting or the concrete project products. These will be a student's portfolio with personal data and all project results, an exposition with different documents from audio-visual material to concrete objects for the different energy forms which will be produced during the meetings. Finally, the participants will create teaching material which can be used directly as very recent and authentic material to teach the topic of energy concepts in Europe. Apart from the creation of these products, the participants will gain first-hand experience of the specific energy form in each country by visiting an energy plant during each meeting. The evaluation and preparation of meetings will be done at project events which are placed before and after each mobility. This planning also guarantees good monitoring of the project's evolution and in case of problems they can be solved in short term. By choosing this topic of energy concepts in Europe, we express the strong belief that this issue is one which only can be solved in a common policy and it is of European or even global interest. We were confirmed in our attitude by the Agenda 2013 which states this issue as one of the objectives to achieve by the global community. Therefore we expect that the results of the project which will be made available as well on a local as on an international level by the dissemination via the internet will encounter a broad interest and hopefully will find its way into other schools.

In the rapidly changing world, the roles of teachers and schools are also changing, and so are expectations about them: in a recent report, the OECD has noted that teachers are increasingly asked to work in multicultural classrooms, use ICT for teaching effectively, and engage in various evaluation and accountability processes. The report also shows that teachers need to help students reach a multitude of objectives. It is not enough that students learn only the content required for each subject; they should also acquire creativity, engage in communication and collaboration, train ICT, and know about life and career. All this requires professional development, which is one of the objectives we try to meet with our project. We intend to assess and compare the professional practices of six countries in the teaching of English and Sciences and come up with a synthesis that may help meet the new expectations. While we are trying our hand at methodology, our students are given an opportunity to learn those skills the OECD considers important. Our project is built around the common content we found in our national curricula on Sciences and English, and our students will work on a number of issues in an online environment calling for communication and collaboration across national boundaries. Guiding this process, we gain experiences of the same things from the teachers’ point of view: using ICT, assessing the workflow, being accountable and developing transversal skills.The choice of subjects is relatively clear: English is one of the most important mediums of international cooperation and natural sciences provide an insight into the ever more important issues of resources and energy. Therefore, we built a study module on the use of natural resources that relies on the bits and pieces that the existing core curricula in our countries have to offer. The comparison work we did revealed that we teach more or less the same things – only our timing and approaches may vary. And it's the variety that counts here: the balance between classroom work and fieldwork, or the balance between various points of interest, such as evolution and taxonomies. We were also lucky enough to find sufficient variety in our natural environments that allows us to discuss the use of resources from many angles. To foster proficiency, the teaching of English often needs an element of reality, where the language is used as a true medium of communication without the chance of resorting to one's mother tongue. Having English as the working language of the project enables everyone to hone their skills. We also intend to link the project to our formal teaching of English and have a few lessons online. Each national core curriculum is flexible enough to allow this. The reason for online lessons is clear: schools and examinations are going online, and we need to prepare for the transition. There is also significant experience of online methodology in some of our schools, which we would like to share.There are six of us altogether, chosen on the basis of the potential contributions we can make to the project:(1) Gymnazium Frýdlant nad Ostravice in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí, Czech Republic(2) ITS Deledda-Fabiani in Trieste, Italy(3) Lyseon lukio in Lappeenranta, Finland (4) Byskeskolan in Byske, Sweden(5) ISIS Giovanni XXIII in Salerno, Italy(6) Nyborg Friskole in Nyborg, DenmarkIn terms of content, the project is divided into four thematic units: (1) geology and abiotic natural resources(2) the interdependence of biotic and abiotic natural resources and human intervention(3) measuring the ecological consequences of extracting and using the resources(4) case study: mining and natureEach unit has its own objectives, links to the curriculum and intended outcomes that determine what kind of work will be done during the unit. Every unit starts with preparatory work at home leading to the work done at a transnational workshop with fieldwork contributing to the material outcomes and pedagogical discussion leading to new teaching methods. The locations for the meetings were chosen on the basis of the environmental features that allow the type of fieldwork carried out at each stage of the project.As outcomes, we hope to produce a selection of educational materials, such as a rock collection for geography courses, a digital herbarium for biology courses, a database on environmental change for biology courses, and a photo collection of seasonal change in our areas for biology and geography. On the way, we hope to discover new didactic practices for our schools. Finally, we intend to produce an overall presentation of the project including the expected impact: clear development in various transversal skills and cultural knowledge; rising level of interest in geology, ecology and botany, increased willingness to explore the options to study; acquisition of new and inspiring teaching methods and increased interest in our schools.