European policies in education focus, among others, on basic skills such as literacy, numeracy, science. These are identified as the foundation for further learning and a gateway to employment and social inclusion. The results of the PISA survey, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, showed that almost one out of five 15-year-olds in the EU has insufficient reading and writing skills. This is a serious threat in a social and economic environment dominated by the written word, both online and in print, where individuals can contribute and participate actively only if they are able to appropriately read and write. School education plays a strategic role to provide students with the necessary reading and writing skills to foster the awareness of the challanges and potentials offered by new technologies. Within this context the project identifies the following needs and related objectives to be achieved: - improvement of secondary school students' achievements in literacy and digital skills making reference to the cultural heritage surrounding the students that will have to be presented to other European students through the reference to traditional tales and stories that are linked to it. - promotion of a multidisciplinary approaches in education based on references to be made to historical, cultural, gegraphical and artistic issues in the presentation of the local cultural heritage of the students. - promotion of a learner-centred pedagogical approaches where each single student involved in the project - supported by their teachers and the project experts - will find his/her own way to present sample of the local cultural heritage to other European students involved. - integration of ICT in the learning process as the presentation of the samples of the local cultural heritage will be made through the development of an online interactive map as well as an App. - exploitation of new forms of flexible learning based on an appropriate use of ICT as the project's deliverables will be available online and on mobile. It will therefore be possible for the students involved to learn about the European cultural heritage of the regions involved, presented referring to traditional tales and stories by other students, via their computer and via their mobile telephones. - creation of a transnational network of secondary schools that will be directly involved in the project activities as associated partners. The schools will actively be involved in the research activity and the production of the deliverables to be compared at transnational level. The schools will be encouraged to continue the activity also beyond the Parsifal project, in the framework of eTwinning projects that will possibly start as it already happened in the framework of previous European projects with schools in which the partnership was and is involved. In order to achieve the above mentioned aims the following outputs will be delivered: 1) On-line Repository of legends and traditional tales related to the cultural heritage of the regions involved in the project. The repository will be available both in English and in the national language of the country. The repository will present the legends and tales through different media (videos, photos, texts). The repository will be searchable according to different criteria such as country (i.e the partner countries), topic (e.g. art, history, tradition etc); artistic subject (e.g. palace, sculpture, painting, object etc). The Repository will contain, for every traditional tale and legend linked to the local cultural heritage a: - collection of videos, images and hypertexts; - collection of cultural and historical references; - a transnational comparative analysis aimed at identifying the common European roots of the different geographical areas involved. 2) On-line Interactive map – also available in mobile as an App – where it will be possible for the student to identify the hot spots where there are places/objects with a cultural relevance that are presented through the legends and traditional tales related to them according to the media and approaches described above (i.e. photos/videos/hypertexts, relevant references, transnational analysis). 3) Essays on European legends, myths and traditional tales related to the cultural heritage. The traditional tales and legends presented in the on-line repository and the related interactive map will be analyzed and compared at transnational level in order to identify the common European roots. This will also develop a sense of belonging to a United Europe. The results of the transnational comparative analysis will be presented in the related Essays.
CONTEXT European policies in education focus, among others, on basic skills such as literacy, numeracy, science. The results of the PISA survey, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, showed that almost one out of five 15-year-olds in the EU has insufficient reading and writing skills. This is a serious threat in a social and economic environment dominated by the written word, both online and in print, where individuals can contribute and participate actively only if they are able to appropriately read and write. School education plays a strategic role to provide students with the necessary reading and writing skills to foster the awareness of the challenges and potentials offered by new technologies. OBJECTIVES The objective of the Parsifal project is to use ICT to allow students to improve literacy through an aware knowledge of the cultural heritage surrounding them, at the same time carrying out a comparative analysis with the cultural heritage of other European areas. The specific objectives were: - Improvement of secondary school students' achievements in literacy and digital skills making reference to the cultural heritage - Promotion of a multidisciplinary approaches in education based on references to be made to historical, cultural, geographical and artistic issues - Promotion of a learner-centred pedagogical approaches - Integration of ICT in the learning process TARGET GROUPS Secondary School teachers - Almost 50 teachers directly involved in the creation of the 3 Intellectual Outputs - Almost 100 teachers involved in the evaluation of Intellectual Output contents - More than 100 teachers and policy makers participating in Multipliers events Secondary School students The project impacted on the achievements in literacy and digital skills of a number of around 850 secondary school students (considering an average of 20 students per teacher) of the 13 schools involved in the project. IMPACT The project foresees long term impact on: Secondary School teachers - Increasing their skills and competences to plan and adopt innovative methods for motivating students to study and get to historical and heritage aspects at European level - Improve their capacities to make full use of ICT teaching materials increasing at the same time their literacy skills - Providing them with didactic contents developed through a strong cooperation pattern with academic and technical experts to ensure that the available materials are scientifically and didactically reliable and usable in their real everyday life teaching activities Secondary school students by: - Enhancing their pro-active attitude towards their learning process on cultural heritage using their means of communication, i.e. Web and Mobiles/Tablets - Reinforce their literacy as well as digital skills - Stimulate their willingness to learn through a comparative analysis with the cultural heritage of other European areas RESULTS In order to guarantee the long-term impact on the aforementioned categories, the Parsifal project developed three Intellectual Outputs that students, teachers and end users in general can access and use for free from the project portal. The three Intellectual Outputs are: IO1 – On-line Repository of legends and traditional tales The repository aims at providing secondary school teachers with a consistent set of learning materials for the students in order to allow them to improve their literacy skills making reference to local legends and traditional tales. The legends identified are divided per country: Bulgarian legends: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/bulgaria.php Italian legends: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/italy.php Lithuanian legends: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/lithuania.php Polish legends: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/poland.php Romanian legends: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/poland.php IO2 - Essays on European legends, myths and traditional tales related to the cultural heritage The Essays (https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/essays.php) consist in a transnational analysis of the legends available in the repository in order to identify, describe, analyse and discuss similarities and differences between legends. IO3 - On-line Interactive map of the areas of cultural relevance and the related Legends/tales The interactive map aims at identifying the hot spots where there are places/objects with a cultural relevance that are presented through the legends and traditional tales related to them according to the media and approaches though photos/videos/hypertexts, relevant references, transnational analysis. The Map was developed as web and mobile app and it is available at the following links: Web App: https://parsifal.pixel-online.org/travel-ui.php iOS: https://apps.apple.com/it/app/parsifal/id1532377200 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pixelonline.parsifal