4. Transfer innovative ideas to education organizations

The very aim of the Smart textiles for STEM training project is to develop transfer of innovation strategies from research providers towards textile enterprises & VET schools. The main strategy is to link students with textile professions and with companies via existing industrial smart textiles products that are being produced in their respective regions.

The students within technical education acquire basic disciplines, such as mathematics, physics, technical drawing, chemistry, biology, mechanics, but the horizon of the end applications and usefulness of such basic disciplines is often not touchable. In correlation with these facts, the Skills4Smartex project is centred on improving knowledge, skills and employability of VET students in the STEM related fields, by providing the adequate examples from industry and the adequate training instruments to students to understand multidisciplinary working.

 The state of the art in the textile sector, together with the Industry success stories on Smart Textiles products allow VET Schools, their teachers and students to analyse a with range of examples from industry that can be inspiring for the work within a STEM practice in the classroom. Visiting the companies and getting the chance to develop real word prototypes will foster the development of skills and can be an attractive way to shorten the distance between students, VET Schools and the job profiles needed in the industry in each textile region involved in the project.

 It is expected that thanks to project dissemination the results can be further transferred to other textile regions in Europe.