Behind the Walls

After a first Erasmus+ project, the schools involved worked out a new partnership “Behind the Walls”, a blended exchange project between Austria, Belgium, Finland, Poland and Spain. Every country...

As is to be read in our application, these were the main goals of our project: 1. Raise the awareness and attractiveness of cultural heritage 2. Promote active participation to cultural heritage 3. Develop a European identity and make people active European citizens 4. Create DGBL-materials for local Cultural Heritage Providers We tried to achieve these goals by implementing recurring activities during our LTT and TPM ( see next rubric: Implementation) but also through eTwinning projects. These virtual projects were double: * directly linked to the project ( e.g. https://school-education.ec.europa.eu/en/etwinning/projects/behind-walls-cultural-heritage-treasure-or-burden; https://school-education.ec.europa.eu/en/etwinning/projects/behind-walls-looking-back-going-forward) * new projects created outside the project among teachers involved in the project but related to their own curriculum and with schools outside the project. They also convinced other teachers not involved in the project to use eTwinning ( e.g. https://school-education.ec.europa.eu/en/etwinning/projects/vikings-myths-stories-and-facts,

To achieve our goals, we organized 1/ Preparatory meetings with existing and new partners. Swot analyses were made, impact + Tools completed to conceive a decent application corresponding to the expertises and needs of different partners and stakeholder implicated. 2/ Blended Mobilities for staff and students. eTwinning provided a secured platform to prepare students ( content + emotionally) for real life exchanges (Learning and training activities). In every school those LLT activities and participants were actively prepared during workshops and preparatory meetings with teachers - coaches. Participants (learners and staff) also became ambassadors for Europe at school as they informed peers about Erasmus + and their projects, e.g. during Erasmus Days. They were also rewarded by Europasses. 3/ Joint Staff Trainings ( Learning and Training Activities) to train the trainers. As 1 of the goals was that every partner school would share its expertise with all other partners that afterwards had to implement it in their proper working, several JST were designed to do so. Programs and outcomes can be found on https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-yxK7yZ7N4GzO5-eKpVIQw_ay8DeKU-m?usp=sharing 3/ Transnational Project Meetings completed online exchanges via mail, whatsapp, eTwinning and a common Drive. Programs can be found on: … The major issue during these Meetings was to share experiences, follow up if goals had been reached, develop and adapt working materials (such as surveys), strengths and weaknesses of the project were compared and where possible, improved . The used platforms were also updated. Unfortunately, one of the difficulties during the project was the availability of the platforms: The Beneficiary Module took too much time to be operational, eTwinning platform changed during the project. The result of our first working year can only be consulted in an archive. Our collaboration with Cultural Gems ( a platform created and promoted by the European stopped after 2 years of collaboration. The DGBL approach revealed itself to be very subject to commercial decisions of their providers. 4/ European citizenship: visits to https://visiting.europarl.europa.eu/en/visitor-offer/brussels/parlamentarium?gad_source=5&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_OPq6K2BiAMVyxeiAx0SoSeLEAAYAiAAEgLFhfD_BwE#xtor=SEC-157-GOO-[Brand_Parlamentarium_Brussels]-[Ongoing_2022_Brussels_EN]-S-[parlamentarium] and https://historia.europa.eu/en Concrete programs, pictures and outcomes were stored on: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/10YYCqkSeYJmnpNusL__VATc42OpKM5Cu

The concrete results are available on the E+Project Result Platform (Projects - Erasmus+ (europa.eu) We summarize: * various learning materials have been developed for our different stakeholders: local cultural heritage partners, towns, teachers, … Those materials are mostly digital and game based. They are available on the websites of the cultural heritage providers and towns or public and free of access on the tools we used (e.g. Action Bound, Deck.toys, genial.ly). We drew the attention to those learning materials through multiplier events hosted by our partners ( e.g. cultural gems) and our Belgian national Agency and eTwinning. * we promoted (hidden) cultural heritage and made it more accessible by publishing on https://cultural-gems.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ * eTwinning projects were established, more teachers got familiar with the platform and now elaborate new projects on eTwinning on other subjects with other partner schools. * a future collaboration (blended) on Cultural Heritage is coming up for next school year combining CH and language teaching with https://www.atheneegembloux.be/joomla/ based on Twinspace (etwinning.net. All of the expertises we were aiming to develop in every partner school are combined in this project: eTwinning, mission based learning, debating, storytelling and DGBL. * In Lienz the curriculum changed as a new course is integrated where youngsters get informed about Europe and how it works and where they reflect on European values. Stories are explained and created, debates and mission based learning is the methodology used. The students involved become school ambassadors for Europe.