"""Ecological, what else? Sustainable schools on the fast lane in Europe"" is the titel of a two year multilatereal schoolpartnership between Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia and Turkey. Based on the ENSI - program we start the development of a sustainable school living space. With pupils from the six partner countries being at the focus of the project, teachers will help to develop concrete measures to transform each partner school into an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable place for all participants. The mutual goal is the implementation of these measures by all partner schools with the possible option of finally being a certified „ÖKOLOG-School“. This multilateral school partnership enables us to analyse the different attitudes and implementations with regard to protecting the environment in the participating countries and to develop towards a sustainable society. Which standards are there with respect to environmental protection and sustainability in South-, Central- and Eastern Europe? How much water and energy do the individual schools consume? How can pupils and teachers save these resources? How can waste be separated or rather avoided completely? Which offers are there with regard to ecologically sustainable meals and sports in the partner schools? How can this be improved? Which ideas can be taken over from the partner countries and how can we put them to good use? There will not only be theoretical considerations on how to change the living space “school”, but these measures should be realised and evaluated. One major goal of the project is to present visible results of an ecological and sustainable change of the living space school, which can be experienced by all stake holders. Learning by doing will be predominant as the interaction and communication between pupils and teachers from 6 different countries of the EU. We do not only want to deal with „sustainability“ as a topic, but sustainability is an important aspect of our cooperation and the intended results of the partnership. The cooperation, founded in previous projects, can be reused for this new project. The know-how in the fields of ICT and ecology can be passed on the new partners. The EU and European cooperation will be visible and alive – a very valuable asset when working with pupils from 6 different countries. Young people especially need and demand concrete possibilities to take action, concrete results and concrete experiences to understand the slogan “We work for a sustainable Europe ”. All topics will be dealt with in pupil orientated workshops, designed and held by the pupils themselves thus fostering their creativity and their self-esteem. “The individual matters – your opinion is important to us” – this is the motto of the workshops, regardless whether it is a workshop covering ecology, cooking, sports or the designing of a website, an e-diary or a questionnaire for project evaluation. The own activity and entrepreneural competence of pupils should be supported in order to improve their chances for a future career.In order to achieve these goals there will be workshops which are focused on the pupils, enabling them to contribute ideas and put them to good use. Fostering their social AND their language competence aims at preparing the pupils as much as possible for their future career.The six partner countries have determined that the pupils will be accommodated by host families of the partner country, thus getting to know the culture of the country and its people better. In addition, they can improve their foreign language skills in English and German. A further important aim of the project is the mobility of many pupils who have never left their home countries before. As many pupils as possible should be given the chance for a mobility, especially those who, owing to financial difficulties, have never had a chance to go abroad. This will have a long lasting positive effect on their European awareness. “We are Europe” will then no longer be just a slogan but will have become reality for many pupils from six different European countries."

<< Objectives >>Develop understanding about scientific concepts, develop their overall awareness about alternative sources of energy and how their usage can be enhanced, improve skills through interdisciplinary projects in the STEM field, improve collaboration, communication skills of students and teachers, develop soft skills: critical and analytical thinking, creativity, enable teachers to share school models and practices in the areas of STEM, ICT, coding, robotics that can be transferred into their schools<< Implementation >>C1 Traditional and alternative sources of energy – consumption and impact on the environment hosted in Austria C2 Water energy and STE(A)M hosted in Spain C3 Wind Energy and STE(A)M hosted in Italy<< Results >>Presentations about renewable energy sources and statistics and trends from the 5 partner countries; - Posters for campaigns encouraging European citizens to use solar energy more; - presentations about alternative building systems; - models of buildings using alternative types of insulating materials; - simulations of power plants; - STEM projects – anemometers, wind vanes, solar cookers etc. - research data and conclusions; - simulations/models of sustainable cities.

The mutual problem or theme that this partnership, among five European countries, is based on is the glue that has put together all teams from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria and Greece: How can we better integrate foreign students, in particular refugees, in schools and how to make them be integrated with local students in a way that they can be motivated for learning and can achieve basic key competencies? This is a central question nowadays in the European countries that are receiving more and more foreign and refugees, and integration is being an important issue, so we can promote tolerance, peace and avoid violence, scholars drop out and prevent failure.We must help our students to learn and thus promoting cognitive and personal development, in a sense that meaningful learning could stand through collaborative work, problem based learning and service learning strategies. At the same time the stimulation of cultural values are very important to improve our institutions social environment, and in that way we believe that the use of motion pictures can be a central deployment tool for change and bring innovative practices to learning and teaching process.Through this project we will prepare teaching strategies that include motivating, meaningful, collaborative and applicable to real world activities, such the problem of refugees that we are facing nowadays, taking into account the personal characteristics of each student. We will be guiding students in the construction of knowledge regulating learning, promoting and evaluating their progress as responsible citizens in Europe.Over the next three years, a group of teachers and students from partner institutions will take apart in a intervention project where they will be trained and they will train others also using motion pictures in collaborative work, problem based learning and service learning. Therefore, motion pictures are in the central of this project to improve our students’s self-confidence and basic skills. According to observation of OECD reports about basic skills, current articles of the academicians and the negotiation of the chosen partners’ observation and analysis of their students, lack of basic skills and self-confidence affect pupils highly in means of success in education so in life. Therefore we also framed our project on improving basic skills, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, responsiveness to social, linguistic and cultural diversity; improved levels of skills for employability as also defined important priorities of EU Erasmus+ programme.To battle with the weakness of basic skills, as the partners of this project we decided to develop our students’ basic skills, self-confidence and provide them opportunities for international interaction, participation in multiple events and self-expression. Since the motion pictures is an art that includes many features of art, we aimed to improve basic skills of our students with the effect of this project. The students will improve their artistic skills by performing interviews and histories as well as their literacy and writing skills by writing the scripts. Moreover, they will develop their ICT skills by recording and editing videos as well as their language skills by using English both in writing scripts and performing. The students and teenagers including the disadvantage ones will be our main actors and they will be in the centre of all stages when the teachers will be supervisors in the project. As main products of the project we present a website with the motion pictures created and a final short film about refugees, offering a free b-learning course and a free e-book with studied cases of activities where motion pictures can be used along with collaborative work and problem based learning strategies in acquisition of basic curricula competencies, and as integration strategy of foreign students.