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Working Culture 2.0
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

During 2009-2011, South Savo Vocational College coordinated a Comenius project called Working Culture. In this project some students made video clips at work places, and those clips aroused great interest. This is why we came up with the idea of using the well-appreciated Comenius project in the background and develop a new project named Working Culture 2, this time focusing in film-making in order to make the differences in working cultures in European countries more visible for both the makers and the audiences of the final output of the project, but also in order to obtain many other goals: increased quality of teaching in ICT, media and languages; increased cooperation between teachers in different departments; increased quality and relevance of cultural training; increased enthusiasm in creating educational open source material among the teaching staff of our schools. There are five colleges in five different European countries taking part in this project. The coordinator of the project is South Savo Vocational College in Finland and the other partners are Terézvárosi Kereskedelmi és Közgazdasági Szakközépiskola és Szakiskola in Hungary, Agrupamento de Escolas de Esgueira in Portugal, IIS EINSTEIN-NEBBIA in Italy and Max Eyth Schule, Alsfeld in Germany. All partners are vocational colleges with good relations with working life. All the project partners have worked together in previous international projects, if not in the first WoCu, then in other projects. In each partner college a group of both teachers and students will take part in the project work. We will also encourage students with speacial needs to take part. Teachers of different subjects will be involved: ICT, media, marketing/customer service, entrepreneurship, languages. In this way we foster the provision and the assessment of key-competences, including basic skills and transversal skills particularly entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills, and increase labour market relevance in learning. The rationale of the project is to make students work together to study and compare the working cultures in their countries. In their countries, the students will make video clips at commercial enterprises of chosen, relevant situations. At transnational meetings, the students will work in multinational teams and compare the video clips they have shot in their own countries. From the video clips a common output, i.e. a film, will be gradually compiled. The purpose of the film is to show whether there are cultural differences for example when approaching a customer or addressing a superior. The film will be uploaded to Youtube or equivalent as an OER. When our students travel abroad to make their work placement there or to study or work in EU, they need to be aware of the possible differences in working cultures. Further teaching material can be made based on the film. The main output of the project is the film telling about cultural differences in working situations in five European countries. The film consists of chosen, culturally relevant situations taking place at work places. These situations can be for example serving a customer, greeting a colleague, addressing a superior, attending a mini-meeting. The individual scenes will be shot by students in each of the participating countries. Teachers will be involved in arranging together with the students these learning events or workshops at work places where the video clips are shot. Before each IPM, one or two of the mutually agreed scenes will be shot, edited and translated into English. During the IPM these scenes are then put together, and the cultural differences are pinpointed and highlighted. These parts of the final output/film will be uploaded into Youtube. The film will be used as an OER teaching material. It can be exploited and developed into further teaching material. The film can be used in cultural preparation at schools, during language, IT, customer service, entrepreneurship and media lessons as well as in disseminating the project. Since this project is not only about outputs but also new methods of learning and teaching, using new technologies and ways to communicate with partner colleges in different countries, it is relevant to say that after the project funding is over, our institutions are more ready to use these methods and ways of learning and teaching in everyday life, not just with the special projects. The more teachers and students we can involve to the project activities, the more possible users of the outputs of the project and the new methods and technologies we will have in our colleges. Since all these issues - new learning methods, using ICT in teaching, increasing international cooperation - are written in the project partners' strategies and development plans, the things developed in this project will be maintained by our institutions.
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