EuroVisions – Sounds and Colours of Our Europe The project aims for a creative outcome depicting the students' image of Europe. Presenting and reflecting national pieces of art of European importance gives the students (and participating staff) a deeper insight into a nation’s contributions to European cultural heritage, since participants become acquainted with a nation's self-perception and with the perceptions of other nations. Following this look into the past the students are to think about nowadays situation and to make up their mind about today's image of Europe, about their personal image of Europe. As it is our aim to appeal to the students' emotional as well as to their cognitive competences, the outcome of this project is to be a piece of art. To achieve this, students work on three different creative approaches, a different approach for each school year: in the first year music and dances, in the second year arts, in the third year photography. This project provides quite an exceptional background: 4 of the 6 participating schools have been working together on Comenius projects since 1996. The 5th partner joined in 2001, the 6th partner joined in 2014 and was recommended by a neighbouring school that sadly had to leave the project due to staff shortage. During all these years the relationships between the participating has come to be family-like and is thus a perfect best-practice example of European cooperation also for the participating students. Traditionally, the group (consisting of coordinating staff from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Poland) meets in autumn for a staff meeting, participating in content-wise and method-wise workshops for the project. Additionally, IT workshops, such as eTwinning etc. are organised. At the beginning of a school year, the students start being in touch via eTwinning. The students' conference (with 70-80 students) follows in spring. It consists of three elements: firstly, a programme introducing the region and focussing on topic-related sights (concerts, exhibitions, educational institutes,...), secondly, workshops held by local experts ensuring excellent teaching of skills and focussing on the method in question (music and dances, arts, photography) to strengthen the students' respective skills. During the workshops the students will produce individual pieces of art but will also contribute to a teamwork product (such as a composition to be played and sung, a choreography, a piece of art consisting of smaller individual pieces, a collection of photographies, a collage) and the presentation of those results with a festive presentation night or a festive exhibition opening. The learning effect for the pupils as European citizens touches several competences: they gather knowledge of cultural, social, economical political aspects of different European countries, become acquainted with different ways of thinking, different perceptions of Europe and question their personal points of view. Thus, they can develop future perspectives based on values shared and create their own VISIONS of Europa. Furthermore, they grow in confidence, their communicative abilities are improved both in their mother tongue and especially in the project language English. Working in internationally mixed groups in particular enlarges their social skills. It enhances the acceptance and understanding for different origins and cultures. They make friendships across borders and gain a higher understanding for other nations by being personally involved and thus, develop a European identity (OUR Europe). Additionally, they will increase their organisational and IT skills in order to reach the aim of their project work. The students' achievements will be pointed out in the "Europass". On an institutional level, the participating staff and the schools get the chance to improve their teaching methods, IT-skills, organisational skills and to develop intercultural competence which helps to improve international cooperation. In international groups each teacher gets the chance to learn new teaching methods in classroom visits, workshops and discussions. For headmasters this project provides the possibility to get an insight into foreign school management and to discuss best-practice and cross-border examples which will then lead to general improvements. The long-term benefits are very difficult to be measured because they mostly are immaterial results: The long-lasting friendship of the schools and the participating staff will be even more strengthened. This friendship is a role model for the students and a good-practice example of European cooperation. The enhancement of the different skills will not only promote the personal development of the participants but also enable them to get the best possible education. The experience from former projects showed that participants most likely spend part of their further education in different EU countries - they become active EU citizens.
EuroVisions – Sounds and Colours of Our Europe The project aimed for a creative outcome depicting the students' image of Europe. Presenting and reflecting national pieces of art of European importance gives the students(and participating staff)a deeper insight into a nation’s contributions to European cultural heritage, since participants become acquainted with a nation's self-perception and with the perceptions of other nations. Following this look into the past the students were to think about nowadays situation and to make up their mind about today's image of Europe, about their personal image of Europe. As it was our aim to appeal to the students' emotional as well as to their cognitive competences, the outcome of this project is to be a piece of art. To achieve this, students worked on three different creative approaches, a different approach for each school year: in the first year music and dances, in the second year arts, in the third year photography. This well-planned project was challenged with the catastrophic situation of Covid-19: School closures, cancelled meetings, travel restrictions, home schooling with a variety of setting regarding technical equipment and pre-setting such as platforms, teaching hourse etc. Traditionally, the group (consisting of coordinating staff from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Poland) met in autumn for a staff meeting, participating in content-wise and method-wise workshops for the project. Additionally, IT workshops, such as eTwinning etc. were organised. The first meeting has successfully taken place in Aurich. At the beginning of each school year, the students started being in touch via eTwinning. The anual students' conferences (with 70-80 students) were supposed to follow in spring - none could be held on-site, one was organised virtually by the Czech school in 2022. One had to be cancelled right at the beginning of the pandemics hitting the project hard, the second was substituted by online meetings during the school year. Even though the pandemics influenced the level of reaching the competences we were aiming at, still the objectives were met: the students gathered knowledge of cultural, social, economical political aspects of different European countries, became acquainted with different ways of thinking, different perceptions of Europe and questioned their personal points of view. Thus, they developed future perspectives based on values shared and create their own VISIONS of Europa - especially in uncertain times of the pandemics. Furthermore, their communicative abilities were improved both in their mother tongue and especially in the project language English. Working in internationally mixed groups in particular enlarged their social skills, still this aim would have been reached on a far higher level, when meeting on-site. Thus, the work in international groups enhances the acceptance and understanding for different origins and cultures. Even online, they made friendships across borders and gained a higher understanding for other nations by being personally involved and thus, develop a European identity (OUR Europe). Additionally, they increased their organisational and due to the online format on a high level increased their IT skills in order to reach the aim of their project work. On an institutional level, the participating staff and the schools got the chance to improve their teaching methods (especially concerning online teaching), IT-skills, organisational skills and to develop intercultural competence which helps to improve international cooperation. The long-term benefits were very difficult to be measured because they mostly were immaterial results: The long-lasting friendship of the schools and the participating staff have been even more strengthened in the pandemic situation, especially with Italy as one partner being so very hard at the beginning making us worry a lot. This friendship will continue to be a role model for the students and a good-practice example of European cooperation.