In almost all of our schools' goals and projects, we would like to incorporate the views and experiences from other European countries. In order to sharpen our school profile of a "media-oriented and European school", we have set the following goals for this project in particular: A) Further development of media competencies at teacher and student level. B) Intensification of the cooperation with our partner school in Palermo in order to make the exchange of work among the students more productive. C) Improvement of the Italian language skills of our teachers A), B) and C) Establishing contacts with other schools in different European countries
As a certified European school with a bilingual German-Italian branch, we always feel the need to intensify the connection with Italian schools and also to enter into new cooperations with other European countries in order to learn from and with each other. A) With the introduction of the "Digital Media Competence Framework" of North Rhine-Westphalia, Thomas-Schule was faced with the challenge of integrating the required competencies into its own school work plans. Experience reports from Swedish interns and colleagues have shown that media development in many schools in Sweden is already more advanced than in our country. Therefore, we wanted to get ideas for the development and implementation of a media concept at a Swedish elementary school. B) A visit to our partner school was intended to give the participating teachers an insight into the teaching methods, working materials and curricula and to promote cooperation between the two schools. C) As a German-Italian school, all teachers come into contact with the Italian language on a daily basis: many children and especially their parents speak only Italian.