This project will aim to use Art, Media and Communication and Information technologies to raise awareness of national and European themes particularly addressing the issues of active citizenship, creativity and community participation in this special European year of Culture. Students involved in this project will be aged 15-18 and through various activities they will compare the relevance of cultural heritage to their communities and discover particular national traits to investigate and share differences and similarities, both social and cultural. Classroom curricular activities will be based around topics examining particular social and cultural expressions in different European countries. Students will research about the perception of those expressions by teenagers in their area and look into where and how they get present in their local community and area, and how they are linked to their identity. Students will also investigate their cultural heritage and traditions, look into their particular traits and compare them to those of others to look for similarities. This work will be completed using many different types of shared media -mainly digital presentations and tools-, and disseminated in all partner schools and the wider community. ICT will be used to display and share the research as well as having a focus on media presentations. As we aim at getting the bigger number of students as possible involved, the preparatory phase of each activity preceding student exchanges will be carefully structured, so that they actually cooperate in the process exchanging materials and interacting at this preparatory phase, so that they be shown at each participating school and these exhibitions may be the base for work for whole classes - groups in their lessons. Interaction will take place at all phases of the project, not just during exchanges. The other element of the project will be students visiting partner schools and working collaboratively on a range of activities. They will take part in actual teaching-learning events in each visit, creatively working together to produce crafts and works of artistic expressionin some cases, performing in others or even learning the practical aspects of organising events. They will feedback and present the outcomes that they have learnt. The key point is sharing these tasks and reaching conclusions together examining differences and, above all, finding similarities; appreciating the others' traits and cultures and highlighting all that joins us and brings us together. Students will work (mainly) with the Art, History, Civics, IT, Media, Music and English lessons in schools.
This project aimed at using Art, Media and Communication and Information technologies to raise awareness of national and European themes particularly addressing the issues of active citizenship, creativity and community participation around the special European year of Culture. Students involved in this project have been 15-18 years oldand through various activities they compared the relevance of cultural heritage to their communities and discovered particular national traits to investigate and share differences and similarities, both social and cultural and appreciate those of others. This work was mainly carried out in the Art, History, Civics, IT, Media, Music and English lessons at participating schools. Classroom curricular activities were based around topics examining particular social and cultural expressions in different European countries. Students researched about the perception of those expressions by teenagers in their area and looked into where and how they get present in their local community and area, and how they are linked to their identity. Students also investigated their cultural heritage and traditions, looked into their particular traits and compared them to those of others to look for similarities. This work was completed by using several different types of shared media -mainly digital presentations and tools-, and disseminated in all partner schools and the wider community. ICT were used to display and share the research as well as having a focus on these media presentations. As we aimed at getting the highest number of students as possible involved, the preparatory phases of each activity preceding student exchanges were carefully structured, so that they actually cooperated in the process exchanging materials and interacting at these preparatory phases, showing what was being done (before and between) exchanges at each participating school. These exhibitions, in fact, were the base for work of whole classes/groups in their lessons. We especially tried interaction to take place at all phases of the project, not just during exchanges. We had estimated (in our application) some 1000 students to get involved in project-related activities and we definitely have gone beyond that number. The other element in the project was the groups of students visiting partner schools (all four schools have hosted an exchange) and physically working collaboratively on a range of activities. In this case we have also made the best out of the resources availabe and done some 25% more mobilities than initially planned. The students in the exchanges took part in actual teaching-learning events in each visit, creatively working together (in international groups) to produce crafts and works of artistic expression in some cases, performing in others, teaching and learning from each other, learning the practical aspects of organising events and even cooking together. All workshops were led by teachers in the partipating schools and/or local artists and crafts people. Students provided feedback and presented the outcomes that they had learnt or produced in social evenings with the families. The key point was sharing these tasks and reaching conclusions together examining differences and, above all, finding similarities; appreciating the others' traits and cultures and highlighting all that joins us and brings us together. We feel necessary that this general aim has been accomplished and we have to point out the feedback received from students families.