About the project

It is no secret focusing on knowledge and traditional ways of teaching and learning still remains in a large number of European schools. However, it has been clear today's changing world requires new competences and approaches.

Challenge as a Modern Pedagogical Tool has aimed to develop learners' and teachers' competences and modernize education in a wider scale by integrating challenges and modern approaches into education. Before the start of this project, different challenges had become very popular among people of all ages and we experienced that challenges in education had a great potential.

The project consisted of different challenges both for students and teachers. Participants could choose from a variety of challenges as well as challenge others with new challenges. Challenges for students were based on curriculum, however, they were open so that they were effective as well as motivating for everyone. Learners worked on challenges based on creativity, use of modern technologies and problem solving on their own and in school or international teams. Videos in English about achieving challenges were shared on-line and commented by other pupils. There were special challenges for international teams during learning activities.

Teachers were challenged to integrate modern approaches and ICT into their education. The project team created an on-line handbook called European Teachers in Action.

We believe today's education must be focused on 21st century skills and competences in order to prepare our pupils for their lives and employability. To achieve this, teachers have to learn new approaches and bring them to their education. We have set up a team of European teachers with different ICT skills and experience, background and school equipment that are enthusiastic about modernizing current ways of teaching. Teachers have learned, formed, experienced and shared modern approaches and are able to adapt them on their own in fhe future. It is very important that five different European schools have been involved as it was one of the main preconditions to make our project efficient and available to as many people and inspire and influence a wider audience throughout Europe.

Modernizing our teaching has had an important impact on teachers, but first of all it has been a crucial opportunity for students to develop new competences and discover Europe with European friends.