<< Background >>The partnership is applying for a grant for the project ANIWORX due to the necessity of connecting the educational sector with the creative industries to present students’ additional contemporary professions and options when planning/choosing their educational paths. The partnership consists of a balanced team of school partners and industry partners working directly in the animation film industry. The project should act as a best practice to bring such different stakeholders together.There are multiple needs the project addresses: An animation production consists of many different professions, and therefore covers a lot of different subjects. Commonly an animated film is associated with arts and creativity, but a large amount of work done is in the technical area and details about the activities conducted there are not known. The project wants to show students how all the topics they are learning school are applied in practice in an animated film production. A main goal of the project is to foster the popularity of the STEAM subject. Another need for students is to have another information source of possible career paths for planning their future. They will get detailed information of the skills, know-how and education which is needed to work in the industry. The materials resulting in the project will show teachers and students directly how theoretical topics are applied in practical examples. The European Commission’s has issued recommendations on “media literacy”. Following needs can be derived directly from there: spreading knowledge through information campaigns on how information and creative content are produced, edited, and distributed in the digital world; improve awareness of national and European audiovisual heritage and actively informing citizens of how the creative economy works. Also, the European Audiovisual Observatory found that only 20 % of the animation market of Europe consists of European productions. With the raising popularity and commercial interest on animated film – also with a focus on children’s programme – it is important to strengthen the European values in productions made in Europe. Another aspect is the application of the Digital Competence Framework, since participants – students as well as teachers – learn in the project the basic competences to produce their own animations and are enabled to utilize them for micro-learning and micro-teaching content.<< Objectives >>1. Insights into the animation industryThrough a strong partnership between industry and education, ANIWORKS creates the possibility for young people to work on topics about a medium that they really enjoy. They will learn that content from school curricula is an integral part of the daily work in the animation industry. In the specific professions, they can “look over people's shoulder”, but also see what they are learning for at school - especially natural sciences and STEAM subjects. These examples are selected by the interdisciplinary teams. Their implementation in the process of creating an animated film leads students to a fundamentally different perspective and deeper level of understanding. In particular it gives students the opportunity to test their talents in areas of which they previously had no information. They will discover the path in which their studies and careers aspirations can go.2. New innovativ Didactic with microteachingThe animations are a medium that speaks to everyone. It's fun to watch movies and animations also have a firm place in information technology. They are the medium of choice for “explaining the world”. Phenomena from technology, nature and philosophy, analyzes in daily reporting - every kind of illustration uses the products of the animation industry.In everyday educational life, animated films are standard today for illustrating complex topics. Microteaching as a short intervention to guide learning processes and to set impulses for independent learning has a high level of motivation in innovative lessons. ANIWORXS goes one step further! Students gain profound insights into the animation industry and the making of a film.The lessons refer to the essential technical, physical, biological, linguistic, artistic and digital basics of animation production.Ultimately, with the help of their teachers, the students use these skills to implement learning content in short animations themselves. They will be able to analyze the content down to its details and to link it with all its contexts. This creates the most complex and productive learning environment the human brain can find.Learning is no longer consumption, but active production. You learn to see and explain things in their complexity. Not only do they understand the lesson, but also how the medium works exactly.3. Connection of theoretical content with practiceIn order for lessons to come to life, it should be shown that theory is the basis of professional work. With this project, the students learn from concrete examples how practice depends on theory and fundamentals. The project partners choose examples from the curricula in interdisciplinary teams. They are prepared as teaching tasks for the individual subjects. Its content is theory, but the tasks are formulated in such a way that they correspond to work in animation. This creates a clear connection between the school requirements for the students and the applicability in the job. In addition, the students also acquire skills to be able to implement such small tasks in the animation area.<< Implementation >>The project ANIWORX consists of an interdisciplinary project team with three school partners and three industry partners. The activities leading to the project results are different approaches, they involve:- Design Thinking- Industry Research- Requirements Engineering- User Testing- Production of digital content (videos)- Production of a modern information platform- Career guidance- Curriculum research- Material development- Iterative testing of teaching and learning materials- Training scheme creating- Guidebook developmentThe methodology of the project team is to use modern approaches to create products that not only fit the needs of the target audience but excite them when using our outcomes.Within the project, there are four Transnational Project Meetings planned: - Project kick-off in Austria (11/2021)- 2nd meeting in France (06/2022)- 3rd meeting in Slovenia (02/2023)- Final meeting in Spain (09/2023)Also, in the 2nd project year a Learning, Teaching and Training Activity will take place in Vienna. Hosting organisation is the renowned HTL Spengergasse who will give students from school partners of Spain, France and Slovenia insights into their subjects and educational approaches. Students will learn more about animation and for teachers this activity acts as a platform to exchange about the progress made in the project. Both students and teachers will be able to identify in special workshops additional needs and topics the project results should cover. With a strong project team where every partner has a large network it will be able to disseminate the project directly to target audiences addressed.<< Results >>Within the project ANIWORX following results are produced: Result 1 - Information Portal - Website containing all other project results and more. The ANIWORX information portal is a hub for students, teachers and interested citizens to explore the scenes behind an animated film production. The goal of the website is to enable teachers and students browse through the departments of an animation film production and learn about the activities performed in there. Students and teachers will learn about the specific job profiles within the departments including the needs skillsets and educational possibilities in the project partner countries, as well as educational videos about the activities carried out in the departments and jobs.The platform consists of following parts: - Interactive journey through the departments - Information about the animation industry - Information about animation films/productions - Sections for 15 departments - Information about each department - Information about jobs/activities in each department The other results R2-R4 are also integrated natively in the information portal and are as following:Result 2 – Learning and Teaching MaterialsThe learning in teaching materials are building upon the industry information of the first project result, where topics have been identified to relate content of the regular curriculum to its application in an animated film production.There are lesson plans for about 50 topics showing students where and how the knowledge the are learning are applied in practice. Also, a collection of micro-learning exercises is provided for students, so they can sharpen their cognitive skills and create animations to explain and present certain topics.Result 3 – Discover Animation VideosThe educational videos are produced by industry professionals and not only give students and teachers a glimpse into their work, but they also communicate basic know-how about creating animations and its related topics, so students and teachers are enabled to create their own animations for micro-learning and micro-teaching.Result 4 – Teacher Training and GuidebooksThe fourth result of the project will be a teacher training scheme to train teachers who did not participate in the project in using the project materials. Every product of the other results is didactically embedded and for each category of materials a guidebook is created.All this will be accessible freely on the portal, so autodidacts are also enabled to study the contents themselves.The information platform with the other project results, which are deeply integrated in the site is a novelty since it combines insights of a creative industry, modern technologies, novel teaching and learning materials and an appealing topic – animation!