The NEXT STEP consortium will make available a series of community building tools to facilitate cooperation and networking of the participating schools. The Support Environment will provide tools for community building and support, and will encourage cooperation between teachers, students, artists, local communities, industry and researchers. It will be a comprehensive open learning network where teachers can access their colleagues’ course materials, share their own, and collaborate on affecting their everyday practice. It will use Web 2.0 features to create an online experience that engages users in sharing their best teaching practices and local projects. The consortium will take example form the Open Schools for Open Societies services (portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/osos) and thus offer numerous tools for the communities involved in the project. Apart from community building and support tools numerous content (school-based projects and activities) creation and content delivery tools will be available for students and teachers. The aim is to help them become creators of educational activities which will reflect on the real educational needs of their classrooms as well as they are providing solutions to their local communities. The focus is not only on the integration of external resources into syllabi, but also on subsequent adoption of the modernization of the school organization, school cooperation with external players as well as the teachers’ professional development.
