EU Erasmus+ Project Populism in Modern Europe. A treat to democracy or a part of it?The aims of the project are to analyze the increase of populism in Europe. Since after the end of World War 2 populism has been passive as a means of spreading opinions in Europe. This has radically changed since the 1980s. We have seen a constant development of populistic groups in our society and today populist has reached a high level of influence and power in all of Europe. This includes both left and right-wing populism. Today we see actual examples of populism in politics but there is also a widespread usage of the term when wanting to discriminate against political opponents or creating negative public opinions.The aim of the project is to analyze the role of populism in a democratic society and create awareness of its positive and negative aspects but also to enhance knowledge of what populism really is.In order to do so we want to study the causes and background of populism and create strategies to prepare students to become aware of democratic values in The European community and the world.The following points are been studied in the project:•What is populism and how can we understand it?• Historic background of populism•Populism and democracy – the correlation between them•Populism and effects on the European values and democratic institutions•Why and how populism is used in the political arena•Strategies to recognized and create consciously ability to accept or reject populist agendas•What types of people are most susceptible to populism and how the political groups use it•The role of schools in the creation and education of democratic citizens•implementation of democratic values in the educational system. The overall aim is via these points to make awareness among youngsters of the situation in their local, regional, and European society by deepening that knowledge when comparing and facing several different political and cultural aspects in everyday life. All in the spirit to increase the feeling and belonging of European citizenship. The whole project will be based on today’s leading scientist data, such as Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser among others. We are 5 European high schools in Sweden, Greece, North Macedonia, Italy, and France. The project will include more than 1200 youngsters and teachers at a secondary level in 5 EU countries, we will work using conferences, courses, and workshops to study and analyze the main objectives of our project. Politicians and EU representatives will be invíted to participate. Due to the subject nature, we will invite NGOs and the public, in general, to participate during our meetings.We planned to have a living and democratic discussion on our websites and eTwinning site, with our development reports and results.We will show our students and to the public in general, the threat that populism has in modern Europe.By making this project we hope to create students that are prepared to tackle the threats against democratic values in Europe.

Closing the Gap in ICTICT applications are mighty tools to improve teaching and training. E-learning, online courses, online management and onlinediagnostic contents are a great offer for teachers and learners. But: why don't we have a stronger use of ICT and e-learning toimprove our lessons and our teaching?One Reason is the gap in ICT knowledge between the teachers and between students. Also between teachers within oneorganization. The project works on strategies to close this gap and improve ICT teaching. If we close the gap in ICT learningknowledge we have more teachers who can work on ICT contents. This team is also able to fill this mighty ICT surrounding withcontent which is the main requirement for stronger ICT usage.In our project 9 vocational and grammar schools work together to establish an ICT platform for e-learning online courses, onlinemanagement and online diagnostic contents. The schools have different levels in ICT practice and different focus of multimediausage. In the project we have an exchange of knowledge and we extend our experience together so that everybody can benefitfrom each other.Our activities/methods:- design of questionnaires about the needs of the colleges and students to close the gap in ICT learning- implementing a tutorial system- creation of guidelines for ICT applications to train basic knowledge- building teams for common portfolios- presentation of the freeware we can use- executing the concept of peer to peer education- develop of e-learning units with the help of students (e.g. usage of i-pads)Our common internet platform and website is based on moodle. Project management, documentation, results, necessary ICT tools(which are not offered eTwinning) are available on this platform.The platform eTwinning will be an important network between the project partners. To prepare the meetings and to realize projectseTwinning will be used as our communication platform.In the three project years we work step by step from time management of lessons and student projects going over to the creation ofe-learning lessons and projects until online diagnostic material for students and teachers.Results: We have a project ICT platform and every school has its own platform with own administration. Each school has teams whodevelop ICT contents. We practice peer to peer education. We have methods to find out the student knowledge and problems tosupport the student individual and avoid the risk of early school leaving.We publish our experience to help other schools or institution to build up or to improve similar ICT systems.