Make it Open aims to develop a sustainable infrastructure of open schooling in Europe based on the approach of the maker movement. The project will introduce maker education, citizen science, and constructionism learning as transformative approaches to teach and learn STEAM in a more tangible, applicable, and appealing way. It is an approach that positions student self-efficacy, agency, and interest at the center, asking students to see themselves as people who can ask, develop, test, iterate and take part in shaping the world.
Make it Open will create open schooling hubs in 10 European countries where more than 150 schools will collaborate with families, private companies, and civil society organizations, using the maker movement approaches to solve real challenges in and with the community. A MOOC will be offered to teachers to encourage the uptake of the project’s results. It will also contribute to establishing an online community of open schooling educators.

Coordinator: Bloomfield Science Museum, Israel

SALL – Schools As Living Labs – project proposes the living lab methodology as a technique for the development of open schooling activities linked to science learning in Europe’s schools. This is demonstrated through activities prioritizing a focus on the theme of the food system and its links to the Food 2030 research and innovation policy of the European Union.
The SALL team members come from diverse worlds: schools, universities and research organisations, science centres, NGOs, and business. They join forces with the stakeholder community in order to co-create, implement and evaluate new ways for schools to partner with their local communities and become agents of community well-being through their involvement in co-creative research and innovation in real-life settings.

Coordinator: Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Greece

The Open Science Hub project engages schools and local stakeholders in using research and innovation as a tool to tackle local relevant challenges and contributing to sustainable community development. Importantly, OSHubs are being created in communities that traditionally do not engage with research and innovation due to various barriers – geographical location, socio-economic status, ethnic minority groups.
For that, OSHubs work as mediators in each local community – as school-driven Science Shops –, facilitating the bridge between the needs of the schools and their local context, and supporting them to become active agents for collaboration between families, universities, industry, local governments, civil and wider society, by engaging in real life projects that meet societal needs.

Coordinator: Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands

PHERECLOS builds upon the experience of Children’s Universities (CUs) in Europe and beyond. Due to their engagement with children and young people, they help to breakdown institutional boundaries between universities and the wider society. CU often sit between key organisations in the educational and social landscape, collaborating with both.

The project will establish “Local Education Clusters” (LECs), bringing together schools and further relevant actors in the educational ecosystem of 6 diverse pilot regions. These actors may be universities, governmental and non-governmental organisations, companies, charities, museums or other knowledge providers. The LECs will be incubators for enabling dialogue and for setting-up joint activities between these organisations at the overlapping edges of formal and non-formal education.

At the same time, the project aims to improve the quality of science engagement. PHERECLOS will implement a digital “OpenBadge” system which labels institutions as reliable and responsive actors allowing all LEC parties to become real agents of change in education. At the same time, this ecosystem will highlight individual achievements with respect to STEAM engagement.

PULCHRA aims to explore the open schooling concept through the theme “Cities as urban ecosystems” by facilitating participation of citizens of all ages in scientific discovery; by building a learning, exploring and activation network; by developing knowledgeable, innovative and participatory communities; and by exploring common issues related to the city as an urban ecosystem through specially designed City Challenges.
City Science Teams are being created in schools with the participation of stakeholders from the wider community. These City Science Teams will scientifically investigate local issues related to cities as urban ecosystems in collaboration with the local community, professionals and other key stakeholders. An online City Challenges Platform facilitates the exchange of information and ideas between participants and partners across the PULCHRA network, promoting the open-schooling participatory focus of the project

Coordinator: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

We all want more young people to aspire to a career in science, and to be able to think scientifically in their everyday life. Yet the traditional curriculum results in too many students thinking is that ‘science is not for me’. What can we do? According to recent research, these students lack ‘science capital’, especially those from disadvantaged groups. The solution is to add more opportunities into the curriculum for these students to see what scientists do, to talk science with their families, and to appreciate the impact of science on the world.
CONNECT will provide these missing opportunities in the form of add-ons to existing units. that tick many curriculum boxes and are easy for teachers to use:

• Real-world challenges
• Future-oriented support from a scientist
• Engaging family activities
• Fun tasks to apply science ideas
• Inclusive strategies for teaching skills
• Competence-based assessment

Coordinator: The Open University and EXUS, United Kingdom

SEAS – Science Education for Action and Engagement towards Sustainability – project aims to develop scientific literacies and agencies for solving complex and interdisciplinary sustainability challenges in their local communities. SEAS facilitates collaboration between schools and local communities facing sustainability challenges through open schooling designs and  establishes a flexible and open-ended toolkit of concepts, tools (CChallenge, SenseMaker, LORET, etc) and methods (ChangeLab, Social Design Experiments, etc) designed to support the establishment and development of open-schooling networks where teachers and students can work together with out-of-school partners. Six open-schooling networks have been established in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Italy, Norway and Sweden.

Coordinator: University of Oslo, Norway