We are a group of 7 schools with a high level of complementarity in terms of perspective on education and teaching experience to be shared: public and private institutions, laic schools or having a major religious component, with the early school leaving problem or without it, Western and Eastern partners, from Orthodox and Catholic countries (all having a high level of religiousness, according to sociological researches), big and small schools, schools from huge cities and rural schools etc. TARGET GROUP: students 13-17 years old, teachers. GENERAL OBJECTIVE To promote the social inclusion in an adequate environment for fostering the social, civic and intercultural competences using History. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES O1: the practice of critical thinking techniques and the development of 5 key-competences (language competences, digital skills, social and civic competences, cultural awareness and learning to learn); O2: an improved understanding of the cultural values and heritages from our countries (how the national cultural identity composes the European identity); O3: the development of democratic competences (tolerance and openness to cultural diversity etc.); O4: a conscious acquisition of the social inclusion principles; O5: the development of an environment which stimulate school attendance and learning; The project is both innovative and complementary in the same time, but in different ways! The project is innovative because its development follows the objectives and the needs identified by the new Institutional Development Plans adopted by the two Romanian schools after the contest for headmasters, in line with the needs and competences identified by “the Europe 2020 Strategy” and “the ET 2020 Framework”. The theme of the project is new and none of our schools have been involved or have heard about a similar project before. It is innovative because we have developed this project starting from a blank sheet of paper, in consonance with our common needs. In the same time with all of these, this project is complementary to the project which we will finish this year, ”The place where we live!”. With the present project we intend to step to the next level: the way in which the ”big” History shapes our societies, our culture and our Europe. COMPETENCES: - the knowledge about other European cultures and the History of the continent for the target group; - a tolerant attitude on various components of diversity for the participants, with direct consequences in their daily relationship in the school environment (having the proper level of transferability in order to work in the more common cases of bullying, discrimination based on social or ethnic origin etc.); - a sense of proudness for being European citizen for he participants; - improvement of the key competences for the direct participants to the project, as they are described at the beginning of this application; - a strong improvement of the competences for learning History/Civics for the direct and indirect participating students; - a rise in their formal evaluation results at the classrooms; - new didactic tools & methods acquired by the direct and indirect participating teachers with a high degree of transferability to their day to day work; - reduction of the level of the absenteeism for both direct and indirect participants due to the attraction represented by the involvement in the project, by the attractiveness of the innovative educational activities of it and by the use of the teachers’ acquired competences in their daily activity; - the improvement of the public image of our schools, contributing to a higher success of their educational offers on the education market; FINAL PRODUCTS: "Tracing the European Spirit – eBook & DVD; DVD ”Tracing our heritage’s spirit!”; The European travel memories’ suitcase” ”The Methodological Guide”; We have projected an integrated set of activities in order to meet our needs and to attain the objectives of the project. They are planned to be developed during the entire life-time of the project in order to cover all the participants. The activities will be finalised through the realisation of the final products. Types of activities: - Internet, library & in situ research for documentation; - documentation, selection of materials, critical analysis; - learning/training events involving external experts; - translating; - using ICT tools for editing and showing presentations and products; - blogging; - social media use; - cooperation through Internet tools; - producing evaluation tools and evaluation analysis; - sharing best practices in teaching; - eTwinning online common local activities; IMPACT -the improvement of the competences (linguistic, digital, learning to learn etc.) targeted by the project; - a greater understanding and responsiveness to social, linguistic and cultural diversity; - a sense of belonging and identity at local/national/European level; - a better knowledge of the national heritage.
Our project had the purpose to offer a non-formal and innovative way of approaching History: by tracing Europe’s original spirit throughout History, highlighting how this spirit has been enriched. We may consider it as a virtual trip back in time, where the stop in each country were connected to its contribution in shaping the present day Europe. By this, we were able to understand how much we owe one to each other. Learning about different heritages had an important contribution to the social and civic competences as European citizens and the cultural awareness for multiple levels (local, national, European). This project main ideas has been developed during the project ”The place where we live!”, representing a major component of the sustainability of the previous one and a natural continuation of it at a higher level. Our group of 7 schools had a high level of complementarity in terms of perspective on education and teaching experience to be shared: public and private institutions, laic schools or having a major religious component, with the early school leaving problem or without it, Western and Eastern partners, from Orthodox and Catholic countries (all having a high level of religiousness, according to sociological researches), big and small schools, schools from huge cities and rural schools etc. TARGET GROUP: students 13-17 years old (10 participants in LTTA/school), teachers of History, Geography, Languages, Religion, counselling etc. (4 participants in training activities/school). GENERAL OBJECTIVE To promote the social inclusion in an adequate environment for fostering the social, civic and intercultural competences using History. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES O1: the practice of critical thinking techniques and the development of 5 key-competences (language competences, digital skills, social and civic competences, cultural awareness and learning to learn); O2: an improved understanding of the cultural values and heritages from our countries (how the national cultural identity composes the European identity); O3: the development of democratic competences (tolerance and openness to cultural diversity etc.); O4: a conscious acquisition of the social inclusion principles; O5: the development of an environment which stimulate school attendance and learning; The project is both innovative and complementary in the same time, but in different ways! We had two types of results: competences and final products. A. Competences and other non-tangible results: - the knowledge about other European cultures and the History of the continent for the target group; - a tolerant attitude on various components of diversity for the participants, with direct consequences on their daily relationship in the school environment; - a sense of proudness for being European citizen for the participants; - improved key competences for the direct participants; - a strong improvement of the competences for learning History/Civics for the direct and indirect participating students; - reduction of the level of the absenteeism for both direct and indirect participants due to the attraction represented by the involvement in the project, by the attractiveness of the innovative educational activities of it and by the use of the teachers’ acquired competences in their daily activity; Final Products: "Tracing the European Spirit – eBook (presenting the particularities of major Historical moments in each of our countries) & DVD; DVD ”Tracing our heritage’s spirit!” (showing the traditions form our countries); The European travel memories’ suitcase” (letters form the students as an expression of their feedback after LTTA); ”The Methodological Guide” (a very interesting teaching tool), Online tools (website, Twinspace, Youtube channel, Facebook page); etc. We organised an integrated set of activities in order to meet our needs and to attain the objectives of the project. They were developed during the entire life-time of the project in order to cover all the participants. The activities were concluded through the realisation of the final products. Types of activities: - Internet, library & in situ research for documentation; - documentation, selection of materials, critical analysis; - learning/training events involving external experts (8 LTTAs (6 for learning and 2 for training) and 4 project meetings); - translating; - documentary visits; - using ICT tools for editing and showing presentations and products; - social media use; - cooperation through Internet tools; - producing evaluation tools and evaluation analysis; - sharing best practices in teaching; IMPACT -the improvement of the competences (linguistic, digital, learning to learn etc.) targeted by the project; - a greater understanding and responsiveness to social, linguistic and cultural diversity; - a sense of belonging and identity at local/national/European level; - a better knowledge of the national heritage.