1. Description of the realised programme of C2.
Between the 28th and the 30th of September 2021, pupils and teachers from all the partner schools involved in the Erasmus+ project “Entrepreneurship matters” attended the second short-term exchange of groups of pupils (C2), which was hosted by the coordinating school Gymnasium Ödenburger Straße (Austria).
Four teachers from Greece and Portugal came to Vienna and took part at a physical exchange. Students and teachers from all over Europe could follow them during a virtual exchange with lots of interaction.
Already on 27th of September we had a nice opening ceremony for the four teachers that managed to come to Austria meeting each other the first time at a beautiful Viennese Coffeehouse. The partners were introduced in the business of Viennese Coffeehouses and the plans for the following days.
Erasmus exchange in Vienna: Day 1
The program of this exchange was extremely interesting and varied.
On day 1 of the exchange, our guests experienced an AR tour with Archaeo-Now. Viennese sights were explored via augmented reality; when observing the city via mobile phone camera, virtual objects and buildings appeared on the screen, taking the city tour experience to a higher level.
Miriam Weberstorfer, as founder of the company, also told us an insight about the challenges of entrepreneurship and the beautiful aspects of working with such new and creative methods of tourism.
Our students and those from the partner countries were able to share in this unique experience and join us on our AR tour.
Erasmus exchange in Vienna: Day 2
Day 2 of our exchange took us to Areeka. Innovative teaching materials, e.g. for biology and geography, were presented. If you focused on certain objects with your mobile phone camera, augmented reality appeared, e.g. a pumping heart or moving animals.
By tapping on the screen, one interacted with the objects. Such methods can increase the motivation to learn. Students from all over Europe (Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania) were able to join us for this workshop and try out AR technology in classrooms across the continent.
Suggestions for future partnerships with this local IT-company were made. All our partner countries could profit from that in the future. Knowledge and Know-How was exchanged between IT-teachers from our partner countries and the local company.
Erasmus exchange in Vienna: Day 3
Day 3 of our exchange was all about Viennese tourism and coffee house culture. Mrs. Hummel from the venerable Café Hummel welcomed us and explained to the approximately 200 participating students and their teachers how to run a successful business in today’s world. In addition to the focus on tourism, this also made the field of entrepreneurship more tangible for the audience.
The teachers coming to Vienna were so nice to interact with their students in the partner countries and to explain them how they experienced Viennese Coffeehouse tradition and cordiality of Viennese people.
All of us could learn something about the current developments in tourism and gastronomy sectors in Austria.
The day was rounded off by a workshop in the chocolate museum; here, too, we were shown the business aspects of an Austrian company (Confiserie Heindl).
During all the three days, the four teachers coming to Vienna were brought to typical Viennese Coffeehouses where they could experience the unique atmosphere of this typical Austrian business. They learned to reflect, what makes it such an USP (unique selling product). Coming back to their schools they will explain directly to their students about their nice experiences.
2. Acquired competences and skills.
During this partly physical and partly virtual mobility, the students acquired many useful competences, such as:
- getting a better idea of what entrepreneurship is all about and strengthening their creative and critical thinking skills.
- Technical competences and IT skills were central during this exchange. VR and AR were the two main technical inputs students could learn about.
- Personal competences were augmented because students were motivated to ask questions in front of a big audience in a foreign language.
- The students should know which skills they need to work in tourism or gastronomy.
- AR demands a high level of cognitive skills. The imagination of young people is expanded.
- Working with AR and VR enables young people to gain improved job opportunities in a wide range of IT fields.
- Many cultures worked on this project. Intercultural competence was strengthened. Young people participated in the Austrian culture and now know how Austrian companies have to run a business.
- The students were shown possible future perspectives. Competences around lifelong learning were built up.
- Students were able to promote interactive structures of classrooms.
- Pupils will strengthen their knowledge in VR and AR by building their own VR and AR models.
- Young people were encouraged to work on their development skills. The ability to develop contents with IT-background is highly needed in our modern society.
- Students from our partner countries may profit a lot because many of them plan to study in Austria or Germany. They learned to know something about our educational system.
- Critical thinking, information literacy, collaboration and communication in a foreign language, ethical and sustainable thinking, self-awareness and self-efficacy, motivation and mobilizing resources are main competences that summarize our short but efficient exchange.
3. Project documentation.
3.1. All the obligatory project paperwork was done: attendance lists, program copies, certificates.
3.2. The coordinators of the six partner schools agreed upon that each host coordinator should be in charge of the minutes of the six approved physical mobilities (C1-C6); mostly because of the details about landmarks, involved stakeholders‘s names, etc.
3.3. The coordinator of the project will initiate the C2 event on Mobility Tool so that all the partner teams could create their groups on this platform in the due time.
4. Project perspectives.
Because of the short visit, and the intense program of C2, the partners will use the new knowledge to integrate it to our project. All the partner school have now the possibility to explain better to their students, what AR and VR is all about. During the next weeks some work that builds up on our C2 exchange will be done:
4.1. Students will get in contact in small groups
4.2. They will share their experiences of C2 and the know learned knowledge about AR and VR
4.3. Pupils must interact and make a plan how they can realize AR models of typical sights of their home-countries in order to promote local niche tourism with those new methods
4.4. Teachers will work on motivating the students with good inputs
4.5. Working on the design of the project website is a current issue we have to focus on.
4.6. More online meetings will be necessary to plan well the next exchanges (C3 to C6).
5. Tasks to be done after the end of C2 include:
5.1. The foreign participants in the second school exchange have to share their impressions about this educational visit with peers from all the partner schools in the eTwinning forum. Their memories will serve as a comparative analysis between their expectations and final outcomes. Negative responses, if any, will be taken into consideration for a better planning of the following physical mobilities.
5.2. They have to forward the gathered information from the targeted tourist destinations in Austria to their peers for further online processing. Teachers and students made already good suggestions how virtual and augmented realities can attract more tourists. We can take the knowledge learned about AR and VR to integrate it to our future exchanges. Adaptions are welcome in order to enlarge our knowledge and to build up on the competences we all (students and teachers) learned concerning the new technologies.
5.3. Through the virtual exchanges on eTwinning, pupils will go on exchanging about the whole project. Also, platforms like Discord can be used in addition to get in better interaction.
5.4. Materials from the two workshops, together with the videos and pictures from the entire exchange, will be disseminated on various channels for greater impact.
5.6. All the partner teams have to disseminate the second short-term exchange of groups of pupils via all available channels, school homepages, local newspapers, social media and other channels.
6. Conclusion.
All in all, the second exchange of the six partner schools did achieve its main goal – to strengthen a fruitful future cooperation via lessons learned and good practices shared. All the activities were carried out according to the updated action plan and the program of C2. Even under difficult circumstances around Covid, we managed to get a good output with beautiful workshops that motivated students to interact and to work on their AR models in future.
Partners of different countries were impressed by the new methods and motivation increased to work together on the goals for this project and even in future Erasmus-periods.
The coordinators of the partner schools are determined to apply the best of their professional skills and competences in order to achieve the project final goals and objectives.
Michael Kitl
Local coordinator in Vienna