The project Local Event – European Impact: Local History in European Context consists of schools realizing secondary education. The participants of the project met on e-Twinning, Facebook and during the international Sound in the Silence project focused on teaching History through Art in Warsaw in 2018. The main focus of this project is to promote the fact that seemingly different fate of European countries through their historical experience is linked in common European context. There are five project participants (Slovakia as the coordinator, Romania, Spain, Italy and Finland) and each participant will be engaged in researching the chosen event which is important for the national history of given country and has a significant European impact as well. Our schools come from various cultural and historical as well as geographic backgrounds which will be explored and we believe that this diversity will emphasis the principle of "united in diversity". By the means of this project, we would like to promote and strengthen European values, make our students understand the importance of freedoms the European Union preserves, foster their civic engagement and improve the critical thinking as well as media literacy. We believe that being aware of various cultures and historical backgrounds linked to our of national identity and create one "Europe story" will enhance our students' will to promote democratic principles in their lives, ergo societies where they live. We would also like to create a collection of materials, proposed by teachers collaborating with students, on the topics that are not prominently covered in our national curricula and despite the fact, they deserve to be carried out properly. Besides this, we also aim to develop students' English speaking skills, as they will be immersed in the English languages through bilingual teaching and constant contact with partner students via internet and regular multilateral visits, using a variety of web tools such as e-Twinning, Google Docs or YouTube as well as social media Facebook or Instagram. In the course of the two-year project, our students will be engaged in the interactive, non-formal lessons focused on the chosen topics, they will have to carry out their own research through conducting interviews with professionals or eye witnesses and they will also work as modern journalists in their school news rooms which will help them understand the importance of this job, particularly during important events (as they will have to cover the situation they research). Besides that, they will also learn how to discuss and provide relevant argument to improve their critical thinking through various panel discussions being held during their project lessons as well as multilateral meeting with their project partners. This project will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on many of our students' lives. Many of them come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and this project will give them the rare opportunity to visit and learn about other countries, spend time in foreign families and make friends from other countries. They will also see the importance of studying English, since they will need to practice it in many new situations they have not before. Moreover, we hope that this project will raise the awareness of each school and students in it to face and understand the importance of preserving democratic principles and historical heritage in their lives and countries as well as being aware of European context with respect to the common European values. By the means of that, they will understand the impact this have had in their personal lives and make them actively participate in their own societies to maintain these principles and overcome indifference of the young today and thus this project and its idea will have a great impact on the way European citizens lead their lives - with respect to differences, since they all are part of our own European heritage.
The project entitled Locall event - European impact: local history in a European context aimed at exploring significant historical events processed by secondary schools involved in the project from different European countries, namely Slovakia, Finland, Italy, Romania and Spain. Participants worked in teams to select, research and process a historical event in a given country that was regional in nature but also pan-European in scope and impact. The first and also subsequent project activities in getting to know the partners and learning about the countries and historical events took place exclusively in the online space on the ZOOM and Microsoft Teams platforms, due to the pandemic situation in 2020 and 2021. Participants learned about the cultural and historical context of each country through interactive presentations. Participants continued to get to know each other on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, where communication between the partner countries and promotion of the theme and the progress of the project took place at the same time. The aims of the project were to make connections between the historical events of individual countries, which apparently have little in common, but nevertheless together form a unified cultural-historical European story. The didactic aim of the project was to observe, compare and draw inspiration from the other countries involved in the course of history teaching in each country, their methodology or the use of teaching materials. The aim of the project was also to focus on events that are often not given sufficient time and content in national curricula. At the same time, the common denominator of each event was the creation of a common European narrative through the struggle for justice, civil liberties and fundamental human rights. Other objectives were thus to strengthen the perception of European values or civic awareness and the involvement of young people in civic activities, to understand the necessity of protecting human rights, which are guaranteed and protected by the European Community, or to improve critical thinking and media literacy. The implemented activities were based on the need and awareness of the contribution of the so-called micro-history to the teaching of history, i.e. the everyday life of people experiencing a given event or period in history, and through the creation of this image, pupils could better grasp and understand historical facts. The pupils were therefore in charge of searching for information in archives, municipal chronicles and last but not least collecting information, experiences and reliving of given events by the witnesses of history themselves, i.e. people who lived through the historical events in time and space in the past. The situation was made particularly difficult by the ongoing pandemic, but despite this, the pupils contacted the memorials mainly by telephone, online means or in person, observing all the necessary pandemic regulations. In addition to their own family members, experts from the Institute of the Memory of the Nation dedicated to the topic, the pupils organised a meeting in Bratislava with the then Minister of the Environment, Ján Budaj, who was one of the leading figures of the Velvet Revolution in Slovakia, a topic that was addressed by the Slovak participants involved in the project. The pupils met with the project coordinators in each country once a week via the online platform Microsoft Teams and reported on the results of their activities. At the same time, they were under pedagogical supervision, which monitored the pupils' activities, the progress of the project topic as well as the development of their knowledge and skills in the processing of the topic. Among the significant results of the project is first of all the addition of knowledge about project topics that are marginalized in the state educational program, such as the topic of the Velvet Revolution, which is taught chronologically at the end of the last years of primary and secondary school in the subject of history, but often the topics are not taught due to the shortness of time and the overcrowding of the topics. The development of pupils' skills, such as media literacy and analytical and critical thinking, has been a noticeable goal and impact in pupils' subsequent activities. Their development occurred through the selection of information, the evaluation of memories of memoirs and information about topics they found on the Internet or in books. Last but not least, the pupils improved their language and communication skills and learned about the culture and customs of the different countries involved in the project. The significant long-term impact of the project includes a higher level of civic engagement of pupils due to their awareness of the risks of the abuse of civil society, disrespect for basic human rights and freedoms by learning lessons from the past.