INSIGNARE’s VET schools took part in several Schools Exchange Partnerships
INSIGNARE is a Portuguese non-profit association that owns two VET secondary schools, which are partners in several School Exchanges Partnerships, supported by the Erasmus+ program. With these partnerships, Insignare aims to allow their students to become better European citizens, while developing their language skills and improving their knowledge in several relevant topics for their personal and professional growth.
“Just be Humans! Say No Say To Any Forms of Discrimination and Violence”
From 16th to 22nd of February, in Benevento, Italy, with their colleagues from Italy, Hungary and Poland, among other activities, six Portuguese students from Ourém Vocational School and Fátima Hospitality Vocational School attended a presentation by Giovanni Bancale, Senior Manager of the European Commission, on “European integration and its institutions”, demonstrating the ways how it supports Citizens of the Union in multiple sectors.
They also attended a seminar and worked in internationally mixed groups on bullying, its causes and consequences in a personal and professional perspective, because only by knowing this problem in depth will they be able to avoid and combat it.
“APPLE – Active Performant Personalized Lifelong Education”
From 16th to 22nd of February, in Xianthi (Greece), four students from Ourém Vocational School, together with their counterparts from Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Turkey, had the second meeting of this partnership, after the one held in Nazilli, Turkey, last November. During both meetings, students worked really hard in internationally mixed groups, on several topics: the perfect European school; Employability, not only locally, but also European Union wide; soft skills needed for the 21st century; Learning to Learn. They were able to visit, in both countries, several landmarks of European History and how different cultures can live in harmony.
“Maker Education”
From 23rd to 29th of February, in Skopje (North Macedonia), four students from Ourém Vocational School, along with colleagues from a local school, as well as Italian, Polish, Romanian and Turkish schools, participated in several activities, namely presentation of microcontrollers, Internet of Things presentations, Arduino and sensors workshops – systems for detecting temperature, humidity, vibration and gases in the air, including one presentation of the gas detection system that accentuates the IoT component of the system. Teachers were also involved, focusing on innovation in the teaching field, as well as educational softwares, like Kahoot!, Quizizz and Edmodo. This was the second meeting of the project – the first one was in Piatra-Neamt (Romania), last November, where students from those countries focused on Robotics and Animation activities, like Robotics workshops, where students developed basic practical applications in the field of robotics, or learning the first steps in Raspberry PI. All teams visited several cultural monuments, as well as companies related to the topics.
“Enhancing the 21st Century Skills of students”
After the first meeting, held last December in Poznan (Poland), the second one took place in Eskişehir (Turkey), from 9th to 15th of February. During each of those events, six students from Fátima Hospitality Vocational School joined a similar number of students coming from Bulgaria, Italy, Poland and Turkey and participated in several pedagogic activities, related to personal and social skills: they learnt to know themselves better, to engage following an intercultural approach and to communicate in an international team. Students also discussed how to intervene in society in a more active way.
Professional skills were also developed: from attending job fairs to Europass CVs design; job interviews simulations; visit to public and private companies, where managers explained them what modern organisations look for when hiring newly graduates. In both countries time was also invested to visit several cultural monuments.
“Labour market at school”
Fátima Hospitality Vocational School welcomed four schools, from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Turkey, from February 2nd to 8th, for a week of activities related to Entrepreneurism. Started by attending an Economy lesson, where they learnt about local and national economic figures, compared to those in their own countries, they took part in workshops of how to create a company, focusing on Financial, Human Resources and Marketing dimensions, by an expert from local Business Association. They also interviewed an IT entrepreneur, who explained the pros and cons of starting a company, and how to be successful.
In international groups, students were given time to develop a business idea that could be put into practice in all European Union countries. On the last day, they presented to the Business Association expert, who provided reliable feedback, so they could learn how they could improve. There was also time to show all teams some sightseeing of Portugal.
More information about the above mentioned projects can be asked to Mr. Sérgio Fernandes (gci@insignare.pt)
