Wednesday, October 5, 2011

our project

The project is proposed for students form to 14th to 18th years old.
The mission of this project is to improve the multicultural understanding, the respect for diversity, and the consciousness of the necessity of sustainable development which include biodiversity and environmental protection. Working with students from other countries gives an opportunity to give some meaning to learn a foreign language.

The goals of this project are to inspire students and teachers to contribute to our global, pluralistic society, and to teach tolerance by recognizing, honoring, and affirming the talents, cultures and individuality of all. The goals are also to raise the point that even if we are from different countries, we do share common needs and objectives. So the differences can bring culturally and educationally valuable elements to each school.

The project shows a concrete and dynamic way in which the power of the modern technology can foster understanding between students from different countries. It offers students (and teachers as well) in every country a unique comparative, cross-cultural approach for gradually constructing knowledge of other values, attitudes, and beliefs, in an ever-widening approach to understanding the foreign culture.

The programme aims to create and develop a partnership among European schools, via educational procedures which lead to the production and exchange of audiovisual messages and the creation of "video museums ". Themes to be explored would be items for preservation expressing students’ own view of their environment, their personal and collective culture.
The project will invite young participants to choose, record and present “items” (Video-Exhibits) which they believe should be preserved from their natural, man-made or social environment.


Motivations
The cultural motivations of the project are:
1.to connect students who come from different cultural backgrounds.
2.to discover that very different countries (language, cultural traditions, religions, ways of thinking) in the history have not only fought with each other, but have also lived together for centuries and have mutually influenced themselves, such as in gastronomy, architecture, culture and language.
3.to mark up how the knowledge of the proper historical and cultural reality is a basic requirement in order to discover and accept the others. Only if we know who we are, we can accept the others as well. A reinterpretation of one’s culture and one’s history in relationship with the cultures of the others, it's a way to accept the others. My culture and my history becomes also a bridge among cultures.

The scientific motivations of the project are:
1. to discover and present the biodiversity of each region,
2. to search examples of actions in favor of environmental protection or sustainable development.

The didactical motivations are:
1. to motivate the students to use new technologies to implement the communication between different parts of Europe,
2. to give pupils the opportunity to interact and reinforce the language skills in real communication situation ,
3. to stimulate through the creation of films which will show the expressive abilities of the students,
4. to stimulate the pupils to be autonomous and proactive.


The concrete objectives of this project are:
-to improve the English language,
-to discover one’s culture and environment and to be able to present it,
-to use new communication tools, by using e-twinning platform and creating a video,
-to create a video that will participate in the construction of a video museum,
-to allow pupils to express themselves as citizens and to be able to criticize what they see.

Depending on the school, different subjects will be studied:
• about cultural heritage in the field of gastronomy, architecture, ceremonies, history, art, etc.
• about landscape preservation, biodiversity, rare species specific to a region, environment preservation.



Our European cooperation should ensure:

1/ For students: to improve the usage of the ICT skills and to practice English language (tool and language of communication); to cause an opening towards the other partners' students, their traditions ; to promote team work; to become aware of European values. In addition, the students will be motivated to move and discover the other European countries.

2/ For teachers : to practice the English language, use and improve their ICT skills. They will develop their ability of working together, of exchanging teaching methods and of gathering the best aspects of each educational systems. They will show the students an example of European cooperation.