During the Erasmus+ conference in Bad Godesberg (2019), we became aware of the diverse opportunities for primary schools participating in Erasmus+. Due to the bilingual concept of our school, we have been looking for a suitable project for a long time, which represents both the international orientation of our school and a realization in regular primary school teaching. Our project idea is based on the children's book “Flat Stanley” by Jeff Brown. Due to a tragic accident, the title character "Stanley" is flattened and has ever since been using the advantages of his shape: he travels in an envelope and experiences unique adventures. The plan is that each school participating in the project will send a foldable, life-size Flat Stanley to all other schools. The "flat exchange students" spend a year abroad. The "exchange students" are integrated into the school life of all participating schools. They take part in lessons, experience school festivals and report on their experiences to the children in their home country on a regular basis. The students of all schools write reports regularly, create videos and document the everyday life of their schools in a variety of ways. In this way, a multimedia travel diary of all “Flat Stanleys” will be created step by step in our TwinSpace. The story outline enables an extensive and flexible cultural exchange and at the same time it offers the children an identification figure through the main character "Flat Stanley". The highlights of our project are the planned student mobilities, which should enable both, children and teachers, to have real international encounters and experiences. At this point, special attention is paid to those pupils who are disadvantaged due to socio-economic deficits and who would normally not be able to travel to other countries. As part of the planned student mobility, students and teachers visit the partner schools and experience everyday life at other European schools. Thematic focal points from the education plans of all countries will be given special consideration during the planned stays abroad (e.g. healthy diet, learning about Europe, sustainability and environmental protection). Our project idea therefore enables us to link different areas of focus of our school work: bilingual learning (linguistic / foreign language aspect), media learning (meaningful integration of new media in the classroom) and the implementation of thematic content from the educational plans of the respective countries in terms of interdisciplinary learning. All project activities aim for the promotion of intercultural competence. In the course of the project, participating students from all partner schools should develop intercultural understanding, openness, tolerance and a sensitivity to common values in the EU by getting to know the everyday life of students of the same age group in other countries, making comparisons and gaining their own experiences abroad. Intercultural competence is an essential key qualification for today's job market, so we want to place our everyday learning and work through our project idea in an international framework. By participating in Erasmus+, we would like to make a contribution to social cohesion within Europe, accentuate common values and contribute to the preservation of social, cultural and historical heritage. Our selected partner schools are located in Austria, Italy and Portugal (Madeira). All schools are very interested in a professional and methodical exchange and intend to further develop their knowledge and their schools through exchanges with other teachers at European level. As the main dissemination tool of the project, a public area is to be set up in our twin space. The purpose of this is to inform all partners, interest groups and the general public about the progress of the project and to present increases in competence and multimedia learning results. Those results include, among other things, self-designed Christmas cards, verbal, written, musical and artistic explanations of cultural customs of the individual country or the exchange of country-specific recipes to enable culture being experienced in a multi-sensual way. By media documentation we want to ensure a long-term use of the project results.
Our primary project goal was to convey the social and educational value of European cultural heritage to those involved in the project. In the intercultural exchange of the participating partner schools, particular emphasis was placed on understanding the context of the European Union, the common values of the EU, the principles of unity and diversity and its social, cultural and historical heritage. This was done as part of the realization in regular elementary school lessons, in which we placed our everyday life, learning and work in an international context with our project idea. Our project was based on the children's book "Flat Stanley" by Jeff Brown: A tragic accident left the title character "Stanley" flat and he has been taking advantage of his stature ever since. He travels in an envelope and experiences unique adventures. Each school participating in the project made and mailed a foldable, life-size Flat Stanley to all other schools. There, the "flat exchange students" not only spent a school year abroad, as originally planned. Due to the pandemic, one year turned into three years. The “exchange students” were integrated into the school life of all participating schools. The students of all schools regularly wrote reports, created videos and thus documented the everyday life of their schools in a variety of ways. This was repeatedly reported to the children in their home country. This way, step by step, a multimedia travel diary of all "Flat Stanleys" was created on our padlet "Stanley's journey". The framework story enabled an extensive and flexible cultural exchange and at the same time “Flat Stanley” offered the children a character they can identify with. The highlights of our project were the four student mobilities, which enabled both children and teachers to have real international encounters and experiences. The travelers experienced firsthand the daily life at other European schools and real interaction with the people involved in the project. At this point, special attention was paid to students who are disadvantaged due to socio-economic deficits and who usually have no opportunity to travel to other countries. During the respective stays abroad, four thematic focal points from the educational plans of all countries were implemented within the framework of project weeks, supplemented by digital workshops, bilingual lessons and learning about Europe, in particular getting to know cultural highlights typical of the country: Madeira – „Exchange of media, culture and didactics“, Germany – „We are one and protect our planet“, Italy – „Healthy life style week“, Brussels – „Interaction in the heart of Europe“. Our project idea has always enabled us to link a wide variety of focal points in our school work: bilingual learning (language/foreign language aspect), media learning (useful integration of new media into the classroom) and the implementation of thematic content from the educational plans of the respective countries in the sense of interdisciplinary learning. The promotion of intercultural competence was superior to all project activities. In the course of the project, the participating students from all partner schools developed intercultural understanding, openness, tolerance and a sensitivity for common values in the EU by getting to know the everyday life of students of the same age in other countries, making comparisons and gaining their own experiences abroad. From our point of view, through our project participation in Erasmus+ we made a contribution to social cohesion within Europe and to the preservation of social, cultural and historical heritage. All schools involved were very interested in a professional and methodological exchange and intend to continue their education and further development through exchanges with other teachers at the European level. Our multimedia results can be found on the publicly accessible dissemination platform: ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/. This includes our multimedia travel diary "Stanley`s journey" as well as two documentations of all workshops and activities that took place during the student mobility, created in the spirit of "best practice". These ideas can now be used and taught and tested by students and teachers. The media documentation of our project results ensures a long-term use of these.