Intercultural encounters in a united Europe - supported by modern digital media Making our students aware of the value of a united Europe is an important task, especially at the present time. It is our intention to raise their awareness of collaboration. The exchange with the partner school is intended to illustrate our numerous shared cultural values. A central aim of our project is to allow students to experience themselves as EU citizens on the journeys abroad. Realizing that the EU has a lot to do with oneself can best be accomplished by visiting EU institutions and by talking to the persons working there. The objectives of the project are * to promote knowledge about the EU institutions and democratic decision-making and to be aware that the EU is a project to maintain peace, * to study the cultural, natural and social heritage of the participating regions and * to improve digital skills of teachers and pupils, by doing so fostering the acquisition of digital and language competences. To reach these objectives we carry out several activities. They consist of acitvities at the participating schools and at short-term exchanges of students and their accompanying teachers. The activities at schools include working on the project topics in lessons in history, geography, economics, informatics, languages about the cultural, social and natural heritage of the participating regions, expert talks and research of teachers on suitable IT tools to create surveys, quizzes, presentations about the areas. The students also get information on internet security. In lessons like "project management" the students organize the activities for the visits of the partner school. The schools also promote the use of etwinning and they establish websites to disseminate the results of the cooperation. The short-term exchanges of the students comprise a visit to Brussels, focusing on the EU institutions and the democratic decision-making process and to places of cultural and natural importance in the participating regions. They will be invited to the lessons of the visited school, doing exkursions together to regional enterprises, which are best practise examples for sustainable and social entrepreneurship. There is also the chance to meet a political representative or visit a democratic institution. The students present their work in a digital form to their collegues back home. All short-term exchanges include a dissemination activity with the wider puplic (radio, newspaper, social media), in which pupils present their schools and their regions. The results of our cooperation are websites where all information about the visits are published, reports in newspapers, videos and contributions on the local radio. We will evaluate all visits and will inform about the results. We provide articles describing activities at the participating schools, students articles about their stays and reports about the short-term exchange of pupils focusing on Brussels and on the region visited. These results are published on the Result Platform at the end of the project. To organise our work we use an etwinning TwinSpace, all forms of communication also including video conferences.
Intercultural encounters in a united Europe - supported by modern digital media Making our students aware of the value of a united Europe was and is an important task, especially at the present time. It is our intention to raise their awareness of collaboration. The exchange with the partner school was intended to illustrate our numerous shared cultural values. A central aim of our project is and was to allow students to experience themselves as EU citizens on the journeys abroad. This goal was achieved through the joint trip to the EU capital Brussels, the mutual visits to the partner schools in Kirchdorf and Trutnov and through numerous mutual communications via modern media. The understanding of democracy, the values of a common Europe and the strengthening of one's own European identity were created through visits to the EU institutes and discussions with the people working there. Evidence of the need for active participation in democratic processes not only at the local, regional and national level, but also at the international and global level was thereby able to emerge. The goals achieved were: * to promote knowledge about the EU institutions and democratic decision-making and to be aware that the EU is a project to maintain peace, * to study the cultural, natural and social heritage of the participating regions and * to improve digital skills of teachers and pupils, by doing so fostering the acquisition of digital and language competences. These goals were achieved in advance through the interdisciplinary treatment of the topics in the classroom. The social and natural heritage of the participating schools and countries visited were explored. Schools used eTwinning and Teams. A website was set up to make the results public. The short-term exchanges included a joint trip to Brussels (with a focus on the EU institutions and European legislation) and trips to the partner school. We got to know representatives of politics and democratic institutions. The students presented their work in digital form at school. The results of the cooperation in the project and the short-term exchanges can be found on the self-created website as well as in newspaper reports and on the school homepage.