The project
The project „Multilingual learning through digitalised contemporary witness reports on the topic: Awakening and Upheaval – events which have changed the world” deals with the conducting and digitising of contemporary witness reports on selected political current events like climate change, mass tourism, and Brexit or on historical events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the post-war years after 1945 and fascism. It will result in the creation of a public learning platform consisting of audio-visual contemporary witness reports, additional didactic support material for teachers and learning material in different languages. The digitisation in all education sectors currently poses a big challenge to all schools, as the generating of digital teaching materials as well as its handling becomes increasingly important for learners and teachers. The current level of progress in the process of digitisation in different education sectors in the schools involved in the project varies considerably. Therefore, the schools expect from the project a didactical/methodological exchange on the possibilities, difficulties and dangers of the digitisation in order to advance the promotion of the digital-medial competence and the defining of concrete development steps in the process of the digitisation. In foreign language teaching and especially in history lessons, definitely the full potential of digitized teaching material has not yet been fully exploited. Additionally, the availability of education programmes about digitised teaching materials for history lessons is very limited. The project provides the schools with an innovative didactic approach, as the digitisation of personal stories and memories also means the transition into a cultural or rather into a “digital memory”. This project is supposed to outline and discuss ways, how to deal professionally in class with this change. Furthermore, it should help shaping media-related historical and political learning by using the abundance of digital contemporary witness reports which are available in the internet. The aim is to strengthen generic competences for being able to handle information resources and narrations from the internet independently and reflected. Similar chances can be found for many other subjects and can be implemented by means of the project, so that a promotion of specific subjects and interdisciplinary learning (foreign language skills and media competence) can be achieved through the project. Through the collaboration with other schools on a national and international level among cognitive also socio-emotional objectives will be pursued. During the project, the participants act largely independently and problem-oriented in international groups and learn communication and cooperation structures. Hereby they build an awareness for a productive collaboration which can have a positive effect for the European Community. The Otto-Hahn-School has successfully completed an Erasmus project in 2019, which has laid the foundation for this new project. The schools, which participated in the last project and which – among others – would like to take part in the new project as well, have already established certain structures (e.g. eTwinning, Twinspace, implementing of international project work in different subjects in the curriculums and guidelines of the schools). In the new project we will be able to draw on these existing structures and use them. The project is designed for 24 months. In the preparation time before the actual start of the project the different schools will deal with content and methodical issues. The project groups, the teacher teams and the individual learning groups (different classes) will establish the framework and specific topics for the project. Additionally, a pre-structuring, the creation of the needed materials and the search for suitable contemporary witnesses will take place. The participants will draw up a guideline which will define guide values and standards for conducting the interviews of the contemporary witnesses. Specific evaluations of the learning process and concrete evaluation sheets for a reflection of the project will be prepared and can be used at the beginning of the project. A learning platform will be prepared and also an eTwinning platform will be set up. With the beginning of the project the digitised contemporary witness reports will be produced and used in lessons of different subjects and different school types. Work materials and didactic support materials for teachers will be created and completed and refined during the project meetings (mobilities/activities). The international teacher team will present these materials to their respective colleagues and all interested people of the school community (parents, pedagogical staff members, students). Also, they will evaluate the materials so that they can be integrated into the existing curriculums.