In March 2020 we still were able to have the second successful project meeting hosted by our partner school in Barcelona. But just a few days later, the spreading of the CoVid-19-virus developed drastically there (as well as all over the continent), so the number of cancelled flights to our home destinations was also rising. In conclusion, we had to consider quarantine after returning back home.

In the following months, our school partnership was dominated by the CoViD-19 pandemic. The high numbers of incidences throughout Europe were leading to many lockdowns in schools and home schooling.

The web-based conferences established as an alternative to the planned meetings did not work out the way we had been expected to because the periods of lock down in the different partner countries again and again made it impossible for students to get back to working on the product.

Apart from that, schools had to cope with the most relevant problems concerning their regular curricula and organisation of lessons. All that led to the fact that developing the project more and more was shifting into the background of the daily work in school. Due to high infection risks travelling activities were completely stopped by school administration and so the planned project meetings could not be realized.

Repeated travel warnings and the presence of new mutations of the virus made the planning of further project meetings impossible until autumn 2021. In the aftermath of having developed and been able to provide enough vaccine we saw that more and more activities were again possible. In conclusion we were quite confident to be able to develop and proceed in project work and to work out the different project activities as outlined in the application.

Meanwhile, the responsible National Agency has also agreed to an extension of project duration until August 2022. Due to summer vacation and the period of exams before, we are expected to complete and finish our project results by the end of May 2022. Since a further extension of the project duration was rejected, we only had six months left for project work after resuming project activities in November 2021.

Nevertheless, we were very happy and hopeful to be able to meet again in November 2021 in Trondheim (Norway), where we had discussed, evaluated and agreed on the further structure and procedure after a twenty-month break. Despite all the delays and difficulties, we are very proud today that we were able to produce and present a fully functional "Penny Press Machine" by the time our project was completed.

Foto by Daniel Roberts at Pixabay