local2global products - the project

As a result of the contact seminar in Cyprus (Stepping into new generation of Erasmus + School Exchange and eTwinning Partnerships 7.11. – 9.11.2018) the participating schools found that their specialities add up to a topic that brings our students together and encourages them to learn from each other. In the global economy of our times many local producers are facing financial hardship. Local support is often not enough. In order to sustain, they need to expand their market share. We aim to help them create product awareness to find new prospective customers. Our students begin from their origins and traditions. We encourage our students to work together on European solutions (such as business plans for food producing / selling businesses, recipes, cooking books, a glossary and a dictionary).

Project aims, corresponding activities & results

With our project we want our students to see the cultural background of each participating school and become more aware of their European identities. Students put their ideas and results on a professional project-dedicated website. The results we are collecting are business plans, recipes and a glossary/dictionary. The structural side-conditions are as follows: The participating students (14-18 years) will engage in online and face to face seminars, as well as interactive group activities. By using eTwinning as a connecting platform and the dedicated project website, we want our students to learn how to work in (transnational) peer groups throughout the whole project.

Using our own professional website we guarantee that the project will be seen everywhere and get awareness for our project, schools and the Erasmus+ program. The trainings and sessions we are going to implement with our students will be arranged as COOL (cooperative open learning) lessons: discovering & learning lessons, practical learning activities (online), student-centered learning, and of course interdisciplinary teaching and training activities (e.g. developing an online recipe collection which combines project specific content with IT-topics). The following instruments are utilized for project and quality management (aside from regular online meetings via Zoom, which were heavily used during the Covid-pandemic): By using milestones throughout our project we ensure that we will not lose focus of our main goals. With surveys and online forms we will improve our visits, preparations and round-ups to be perfect until we meet at HAK Voitsberg again and use the school as the final milestone where every part will be put together in a presentation where the participating students and teachers will have the possibility to show all their achievements and will be proud of their project.

Different instruments will be utilized for promoting the project and its context: We are going to use the e-twinning platform in order to exchange our work, videos and discussions. The components will allow our students to remarkably improve the knowledge of English as a common language and the common origins of different European cultures. Moreover our project will be published through local media outlets, school websites, and school fairs (e.g. Erasmus-Days) will be organised in order to share our work with the community. Another aim is connecting our school and make the pupils start from differences and achieve a common awareness and understanding of our European roots and products through cultural habits.

Long term benefits of the project

Long term benefits of our project include: students and parents lose anxieties regarding “the unknown”, and become more open minded in relation to their European identity. We also think that other students that are not working on the project will become curious about the program, and that will spur their desire to participate in future Erasmus+ exchange programs or business-cultural exchange programs.