HEROES focuses the pedagogical issues linked to the relevance of Cultural Heritage Education, combining some of the main concepts included in the Faro Convention (EC 27.X.2005) with the priorities established by Erasmus+ about the social and educational value of EU cultural heritage as contribution to social cohesion, economic growth and job creation. The EU Faro Convention underlines the need to promote the knowledge of cultural heritage as common resource for the peaceful co-existence within cultural diversity, encouraging the integration of these aspects in lifelong education and VET, both within and outside the educational system. So, the project aims to strengthen synergies between Educational System and Cultural Heritage Education, improve the quality of education and support effective and innovative pedagogies, fostering permeability between different education and training pathways.Within HEROES, partners will develop an original educative Model focused on Cultural Heritage Education (I.O1), providing teaching staff for innovative competences to apply it in classroom or in other educative settings.The HEROES Model will include specific Guidelines and an operational Educational Peer Method, to introduce teachers and cultural educators to innovative pedagogical strategies combining Cultural Heritage education with non-formal learning. These strategies could be effectively added to the traditional formal ones, being an effective resource to sustain students’ motivation and participation to school life other than providing teacher/educators with renewed competences for managing adolescents’ most delicate educative and growing transition stages. The methodological choice to base the Model on the Peer Approach can contribute also in improving relationships quality between students and teachers and- most widely – learners and educational system, making it more inclusive and so limit different potential disaffection dynamics such as ESL.The concept of Cultural Heritage focused by the project makes the treated issues adequate to be effectively included both in the curricular and extra-curricular activities on this theme in every kind of school. Moreover, the Model’s specific features make it suitable and effective also for educative professionals working in the Didactic Depts. of museums or in other public/private institutions devoted to promotion and protection of cultural heritage with educational assignments.The adopted concept of Heritage should be considered in its extended meaning: not only artistic, museums and monumental patrimony, but widened to all the other significant life elements constituting the cultural, historical, identity and social heritage of territories and populations.The HEROES Model will arise from the mutual exchange of partners’ pedagogical experiences to be combined, improved and enriched through Peer Education, flowing in a new and original NON-formal learning path. Its implementation will be preceded by an initial phase of mapping and comparison of methodologies and good practices already in use in partner countries and by the involved partners to treat cultural matters and approach students to cultural heritage issues. The need to broaden/deepen the research on EU educational methods and to provide teaching staff with innovative tools to tackle the educational challenges of contemporary society also allow to identify some sectoral and possible teaching staff’s training needs in this area.The whole Model will be evaluated and validated through a set of Internal Workshops for teaching staff and cultural educators-to deepen and discuss its practical and theoretical contents- and a field test.The test will be realized in each country by teachers/educators in their activities and its topic moment will be the final LTA, where a selected group of students coming from each partner country will be hosted in the others, where they will be involved in a set of peer educational European experiences, giving to the Model its wider applying.So, HEROES target groups are:•Secondary Schools teachers, regardless their specific curriculum, according to the trans-sectoral priorities and issues to be treated• Cultural educators such as educative professionals and operators working in the Didactic Depts of museums or in other public/private institutions devoted to promotion and protection of cultural heritage•Secondary Schools students 14-18 years old, regardless their educational curriculum, underlining the innate value of inclusivity of Cultural Heritage Education.Partners will also set an Online Platform (IO2) acting as a multifunctional and interactive project’s frame. It will be structured as an easy and agile online environment, hosting all the educational contents and pedagogical instruments, developed within the project and uploaded as OER for their wider widespread, circulation and use among all the cultural and educational institutions interested in and among their professionals

The goal of our project is to understand the relevance of European collaboration for using renewable energies and avoid natural catastrophes.The project should motivate adolescents to be aware of their responsibility for protecting nature and become active European citizens by travelling to other countries and being curious about their solutions concerning the use of renewable energies and avoiding nature catastrophes. By learning more about the details of science and technology the adolescents will have more concrete knowledge to see the difference between news and fake news.During the project they will learn more digital skills by communicating, monitoring and evaluating (eTwinning) the activities. Furthermore, they learn to feel comfortable when being in a different country and while welcoming people from other cultures because of their acquired intercultural skills. Europe needs tolerant,open minded, empathic and active young people who experience the enrichment of learning new languages, getting to more knowledge about energy ressources and climate change to take the advantages of a united Europe in the battle against climate change. With our project we try to make school exchanges more popular so that students who leave school built out the listed competences and have a positive attitude towards the European Union and environmental protection.Experiencing exchange between the partnerschools leads us to strenghten the competences of teachers and students.Different schoolsystems and education methods will bring the teachers more experiences and new ideas in teaching and more quality of our education.We also include teachers with no language subjects to create an interdisciplinary concept and an internationalization of our schools. Students will be creative during the process by finding new solutions.They will have intercultural experiences which give them life long contact to other Europeans and prepare them for the European and international working market.The topic is important to recognize and realize our responsibility to care about the planet, to use renewables ressources more effectively and adapted in daily life. New ideas from the partnerschools, teachers, students and experts from universities will be innovative and helpful.The students learn about the problems of climate change and the catastrophes taking place in the different countries and search innovative solutions to avoid them.We'll also avoid emigration because of destroyed parts of countries by avoiding catastrophes.Our school is a certified »Schule ohne Rassismus« which was initiated by the SMV/students.Recently our students are interested, engaged and motivated to find answers for the relevant questions of our days.Their engagement in Fridays for future shows their high sensitivity for topics about sustainability and ecology.We integrated the SMV in the preparation of our project.Our project is also open for refugees or handicaped students. Repeating fire problems in Portugal and Spain are not resolved, increasing of floods in Germany and other european countries caused a lot of damage because of lacking drainage systems.Usage of renewable energies and subventions are not adapted to the environmental status quo.With our project we'll amplify the awareness of our students and teachers and increase the knowledge about connections between the climate change,the use of energies and the danger of catastrophes.Creative solutions for the challenges in Europe will be found by adaquate and reasonable WATCHING of THE PROBLEM FROM OUTSIDE, a perspective change, a profit from already existing solutions and informations in other European countries.The national perspective only on a problem is in our days not enough because there always will be a blind spot.With our project we have the chance to collect the ideas of all the participants to widen our national view and turn it in a European one.The collaboration within our project will rise the understanding of the subject in other countries and gives also a chance to influence the regional politics by active involvement.The intense contact with other young Europeans during the mobilities is the base for friendships and lifelong collaboration in Europe and a positive attitude towards nature and environment.

We have now almost completed two Erasmus+ project, one as a co-partner and our own as leadpartner. We have learned a lot about project management, and will be in a even better position to carry out a new project. We also know four of our five co-partners from this project, and we have developed tools, awareness and friendships that will give us a different starting point. The topic of the project is developed in cooperation with the other partners, and is a result of thoughts and ideas we would like to pursue further in a new project.Europe faces major challenges in the years to come, economically, technologically and politically. The need to create social inclusion is therefor increasing. The project is about empowering the new generations to active citizenship to have an impact on their own future. The student meetings will explore different aspects of active citizenship and to give the students impulses to increased participation and engagement in society. Based on our experiences from «Social inclusion», our methodology will be focused on interactive and creative activities, rather than in-put such as lectures and guiding. This will help to overcome the language barriers that we experienced in our last project. It is also in line with the new educational direction that aims towards competences rather that facts. Transnational dialog will be an important part of the meetings, and always lead to a concreate product that will be shared and published. In some of the meetings this is a film, podcast or a poster. In general we will us different kinds of games, such as role-play and dramatization to increase their ability to take others perspectives and practice skills and competences in role. As mentioned, discussions and dialog will also be an important methodology in the project, and these will be prepared, facilitated and guided by the school. These methods will also be easier to measure when it comes two students learning, because they are possible to observe.Before each meeting, the student will get a task that they will prepare before they go. This task will be related to the topic and give the student the possibility to start to explore and reflect on the topic before the actual meeting. This will be shared at the meeting, and will be the starting point for dialog and discussions. In the meeting in Florence, about critical thinking, the students will participate in activities in the school paper. In Poland the students will explore different communities and reflect on what makes a community healthy and sustainable, and make a film that dramatize some of these features. In the meeting in Valladolid the students will perform a dramatization about active citizen, healthy life models and positive mind. Students will also create short movies, podcast or posters about the topic in transnational groups in a workshop.In Riga, the students will participate in creative workshops and use an innovative step-by-step methodology that allows young people to work together in groups to highlight current issues in Latvia and Europe.In the meeting in Moss, each country will share a presentation about the limits of the freedom of expression that will be used as an introduction to a guided discussion about the freedom of expression. The students will also participate in a role-play about the parliament and how to promote new laws, and make a short film in transnational groups about the democratic values. All together there will be 125 students and between 12 and 30 teachers / staff depending if the participating school choose to send the same teachers to the meetings, or if they recruit a small group of teachers that go to different meetings. The students involved are between 16 and 18, and students with less opportunities are prioritized. We hope to contribute to empower the involved students to participate in society. This will benefit the students both in the short and the long run. We hope to give them competences and self-esteem that makes them believe in the future and that they can have an impact. We also hope to spread awareness and methodology that promote active citizenship to our local schools. Through this transnational cooperation we also hope for friendship, empathy and understanding across borders. This will be an important benefit for the students who are and will be global citizens and will deal with global issues. It is also an important benefit for society that the future generation is able to take other nations and persons perspectives in politics.

"Migration puts the European communities on trial. The large number of refugees and asylum seekers who arrived in 2015 gives rise to challenges that must be solved. At the same time, there is considerable migration internally within the EU, especially from the new member states of eastern Europe. Getting migrants and refugees socially integrated into society is crucial. Social inclusion and integration is a two-way process. The goal is that the participants in the project will be influenced to be more open and inclusive in their perception of society. We have chosen to name our project “Social Inclusion – Courage to Care” because the objective of the project is to help create a European identity and multiculturalism where there is room for refugees and migrants. How can we develop a European set of values – based on human rights, equality and cross-cultural tolerance. The aim is to develop teaching plans that can be used over the lifetime of the project. We also hope that the participants in the project will be influenced to be more open and inclusive in their perception of society. If we succeed in making the participating youths become solution-oriented, we will have created learning for life and lifelong learning. We recognise a rise in political and social changes in Europe which has opened opportunities for extremist views and brings a threat to our common European values especially that of building healthy democracies. Threats including the rise of the far right, radicalism, racism, exclusion, and religious intolerance offer challenges to young people in Europe which this project aims to tackle. Localised in 6 different geographical and cultural contexts, the 6 schools have realised over the last years the fundamental benefit of European cooperation of the students, teachers and the schools themselves. The experience of working together on a specific project not only in virtual space but also meeting each other and to be in different environments and cultures in Europe has proven an essential step in creating European awareness and fostering a sense of European identity and citizenship amongst students and teachers which could not have been achieved otherwise. The topics have been chosen as they are linked to the EU commission’s priorities and issues facing inhabitants today, they allow a multi-disciplinary approach and are linked to the school's curriculum. Each topic is strongly connected with one of the of the participating schools, its surroundings and its environment. The student visits in each country, will be concentrated around these: 1. ”Free Speech and Media Wisdom.” (Netherlands) 2. ""Migration and the increasing of populisme in todays Italy."" (Italy) 3. “Refugees in Europe.” (Spain) 4. “Social Inclusion.” (Latvia) 5. “Courage to face one's fears and aspirations.” (Finland) 6. “Political extremism, radicalism and exclusion.” (Norway) To learn and research in an innovative way, mostly outside the classroom and on locations that are relevant for the different topics during the Student Meetings. These locations are typical and relevant for the place/country each participating school is located. We will produce a website and a YouTube channel to disseminate our work and findings which highlights the strengths of being part of a united European Union. This will be enhanced by videos made by participants during transnational meetings. This will hopefully encourage an open minded approach to globalization, cultural identity and combating extremism. The participating teachers will gain experience through collaborating and exchanging experience with other teachers. They will be inspired to develop their own teaching practices. We will actively work to spread this to all the high schools in our county. Erasmus+ cooperation will provide new approaches, which in turn will give the participating teachers a greater understanding of professional knowledge and education. Students will improve their international cooperation skills and give them greater understanding of language and culture. All the objectives of the Project are closely linked to all the priorities we have selected. We will develop an online survey for all participants. The survey will measure participants' perception of democracy, human rights, social inclusion, racism and religious intolerance. This survey will be repeated at the end to see what impact the project has had. Over two years over 300 students and their teachers from different countries will be actively involved in the project, and cooperate with their partners, virtually and during student visits, conducting comparative research and practice related to 6 topics. Many students inside and outside the schools will be part of the project and benefit from its results. Directly the project will include 285 mobilities, indirectly we expect to involve over 2000 individuals in our school communities and wider communities including online communities."

Cultural heritage (CH) is of great value to European society from environmental, social and economic point of view. Its sustainable management constitutes a strategic choice for the 21st century (DECISION (EU) 2017/864). Moreover, CH played a specific role in achieving the Europe 2020 strategy goals for a ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ (2014/C 183/08).Towards this vision, the European Union designated the year 2018 as the ‘European Year of Cultural Heritage’ with the purpose to encourage the sharing and appreciation of Europe's cultural heritage as a shared resource, to raise awareness of common history and values, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space. Various actions were put in place across Europe aiming at promoting Europe’s cultural diversity (#EuropeForCulture). Against this background, the CultApp partnership was inspired by the idea to contribute to raising awareness of Europe’s CH among young people from iVET institutions. In doing so, the partnership relied on powerful potentials of Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool allowing to experience cultural assets in a joyful and entertaining way. Through the combination of two topics, CH and AR, partnership strived to promote different set of 21st century’s skills of young learners, such as aesthetic, digital and civic competence, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. The overall vision of the CultApp project was reflected in the project motto “Cultapp brings culture into the 21st century and in all our pockets”. In addition, CultApp aimed at creating supporting tools and strategies for iVET stakeholders (teachers, learners, managerial staff) towards integrating innovative AR-based teaching and learning practices in their educational activities, in particular, in incorporating CH-related topics in iVET curricula. The project’s objectives were implemented by the CultApp partnership consisting of 7 institutions with different profiles from Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. 2 of them represented iVET sector (ITT MP from IT, Agora Niekée from NL), 1 – HEI sector (FHM, DE), 1 NGO with focus on providing educational support to children with special needs (NART, BG), 1 association specializing on the development and management of human resources (Effebi, IT), 1 training & consulting institution (PAIZ Konsulting, PL), and 1 SME focusing on the design and development of digital educational solutions (CCS Education, EL). CultApp partners performed a number of tasks which led to attaining the project objectives and resulted into the development and pilot testing of 3 intellectual outputs, which were:IO1: Augmented Reality meets Cultural Heritage - Compendium of practices and applications: the Compendium showcased 12 applications of Augmented Reality on art and cultural objects in DE, IT, BG, EL, NL, PL by describing their technological features, educational value, effects and impact produced, and provided several inspirations for adopting these practices to a wider community of stakeholders, if teachers & learners, cultural workers, public municipalities, tourism service suppliers and promoters. IO2: Open Online Teacher Training Programme “Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage Education”. This Moodle-based course addressed Art, History or Media Design teachers who wanted to try AR tools to inspire their learners for CH. The course helped teachers understand the pedagogical value of AR, use AR for teaching CH-related subjects, and empowered them to design and implement simple AR projects.IO3: Augmented Learning Project work. During this project, selected teachers and learners from CultApp countries IT, DE, and NL virtually worked together on the development of AR scenes which presented stories about the past, the presence and a possible future of the selected cultural assets in the cities Florence, Bielefeld, and Roermond. The final output of the AL project is represented through 3 deliverables:-17 AR markers to be discovered with a mobile device with the installed AR Blippar;-1 publication reflecting pedagogical and organizational stages of the AL project;-1 AL platform containing visual and textual materials produced by learners during the AL project. Impact of the project:-increased transversal skills of learners, such as curiosity, creativity, digital and intercultural competence, collaboration and communication;-improved pedagogical and digital skills of teachers;-reinforced collaboration between EU iVET institutions;-increased awareness of common EU cultural and historical values.Potential long-term benefits of the projects are:- creation of challenging learner-centered educational environments at iVET institutions,- paths for modernizing iVET curricula towards incorporating CH-related topics through AR;- pedagogical AR projects in different subjects,- innovative cooperation models between iVET institutions, tourism suppliers, public municipalities.