1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
2. PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGY
The objectives of the project are:- to make students conscious of the importance and of the uniqueness of their cultural heritage- to develop the students’ awareness of belonging to a common European community, of having a European identity shared with their partners.- to develop the participants’ language skills in English by working together with their partners on a topic of mutual interest using English as language of communication- to improve the students’ and teachers’ ICT skills, social and communicative skills, while carrying out the activities planned -to promote the intercultural education and bring out the cultural identity. - to motivate staff and students to actively become part of international teams, collaborating toward common goals and working for the success of the team; -To know those interesting things in every traditional culture, show to the other the local and traditional customs and put together many of traditional European values.-To facilitate the groups of pupils from different countries to meet and know each other so help pupils from different countries and cultures to bring closer each other and offer a good practice for an intercultural education. One of the most important problems of each of the partners involved is that the young generation is slowly losing contact with the popular traditions of the village. Even if there still is a physical proximity to the traditional world, for the youngsters their ancestors’ beliefs seem to be a “second-hand” culture, which has lost significance next to modern culture. Popular customs and holidays are disappearing little by little, being forgotten by those who have lost contact with the world that our forbearers knew of. What this project proposes is to make students get back to this primordial world and if not invigorate, at least register these customs, beliefs and traditions, to make them realize that this inheritance is part of their identity and it should be kept alive and cherished. In order to achieve this, the students are going to conduct research work, go to the older villagers and some parts of major towns and discuss the vanishing customs, write reports, and then adopt, organize and illustrate them. Their findings will be translated into English and shared with the European partners. This way students will be encouraged to appreciate the uniqueness of every traditional culture and to discover possible similarities with other European cultures.
3. RESULTS AND OUTCOMES
- August 2010: Gathering materials for the leaflets, presentations and web site, taking photos
- November 2010: Leaflets created by each partner presenting the project meeting in Turkey
- January 2011: National calendars illustrated with pictures or drawings and having marked the
traditional popular holidays National brochure acting as an index of the calendar where all the traditional popular
holidays are explained, described and illustrated
- January 2011: The meeting in Spain The logo of the project There is launched the joint web site
- April 2011: Leaflets created by each partner presenting the project meeting in Portugal
- June 2011: European traditional calendar, having marked all the traditional popular holidays of
the partners European brochure, acting as an index of the European calendar, where all
the traditional holidays of the partners are explained, described
- June 2011: and illustrated Leaflets created by each partner presenting the project meeting in France
- October 2011: National cookery book, created by each partner, containing traditional recipes
for dishes cooked on various holidays, illustrated with pictures presenting the project
meeting in Hungary
- November 2011: European cookery book, containing recipes from all the partners Leaflets created
by each partner
- February 2012: National story books, created by each partner, containing popular legends in the native
language and in English, illustrated with pictures and drawings. project meeting in
Italy
- March 2012: Leaflets created by each partner presenting the project meeting in Germany
- May 2012: European story book, containing one legend from each partner, in English and in all the
languages of the participants Leaflets created by each partner presenting The final project
meeting in United Kingdom
- Perionically: “School Magazine” produced in every school participating in the project.There are folders, bill posters and informative materials made in every school involved the project.
- Continuously: Increasing the knowledge of the foreign languages
- Continuously: Initiate a new type of communication between pupils from different countries of Europe.Build a bridge between people and settle a frame work for a better cooperation.
4. EUROPEAN ADDED VALUE
This project will build and enhance the necessary confidence in our cultural teaching skills and tendency towards openness to other cultures and to broadening our horizons. The activities will, thus, all contribute to the enhancement and quality of the innovations, the topics and fields that are under discussion. Referring to this, a major contribution to the project’s success will be made if one important aim is achieved: through our project, we wish to help changing attitudes and mentalities, to prevent or fight against the discrimination and xenophobia that results from racial, cultural, ethnic or religious differences, socioeconomic disadvantage or stereotypes. This is by all means an extremely important aspect of any type of European collaboration and we need to do our best to tackle this subject. In our activities our students will come from a variety of backgrounds, then discuss the importance of such issues and we will make no difference between them when we distribute the tasks or deal with any aspect of our collaboration. The intercultural dialogue lies within the exchange of working materials between partnering schools. Our project is expected to promote intercultural dialogue as an instrument to assist our students, who all live in the European Union. Then to acquire knowledge and aptitudes to enable them to deal with a more open and more complex environment, thus growing up to be ideal European citizens that are open-minded and considerate of all people around them. In addition, studying the culture, traditions and specification of other countries will be regarded as paramount in fighting and rejecting intolerance or discrimination; the young Europeans need to be more aware of the diversity in nationality and respect dissimilarities in skin color, religion and beliefs. Therefore, we must help everyone involved realize that achieving the goal of common European citizenship is a daunting task, but it can be fulfilled if Europeans gradually stop taking into consideration the cultural and ethnic discrepancies and start perceiving diversity as a valuable European asset. After having been implemented, students will be hopefully conducive to being informed, confident and adaptable young Europeans. As a result, we will be able to promote, respect and understand cultural and linguistic diversity much more.
5. IMPACT
The impact of the project activities on students and on teachers is expected to be highly beneficial. There will be a notable improvement in their language skills, as well as their ITC skills, not to mention their organizational and social skills, also there will be an improvement in their motivation and a raise of their self esteem. The teachers will be involved in an educational experience which will be useful in their future teaching performance by: guiding the students, coordinating them, communicating and collaborating with their peers from other European countries. By intercultural exchange, they will acquire a broader European vision of their identity and teachers will gain more experience in the educational field. This collaboration is expected to help all parts involved in the development of their critical thinking skills, stimulate their creativity, and educate them in cooperating in teamwork for achieving a common goal while improving their communicative and technological skills, and promoting a cross-cultural understanding. In addition to this, pupils and teachers will become more tolerant, confident and cooperating people. .We also expect improvement at the institution level, hoping to stimulate the collaboration among teachers, to influence the policy of the leading board regarding the study of foreign languages and in what concerns international projects in general. Moreover, we envision a change in parents’ attitude towards school, anticipating a wider appreciation of our efforts and an intensification of the collaboration with other schools from the area and with other local institutions, for example the museum, the library, the town municipality, etc.
6. DISTRIBUTION OF TASKS
Each partner will have an active involvement in the development of the project. We will have common and different tasks.Each school will:- create a media presentation of the project team and of the school for the first project meeting- propose a logo for the entire project (during the first meeting a common logo will be chosen)- do research work and create presentation materials- pictures, drawings, descriptions- on the topic of customs, traditions, holidays of the village world (during the last meeting of the first year, the students will carry out a common calendar and a brochure functioning as an index for the calendar, where all the holidays will be explained)- organize a show or an exhibition during the project meeting happening in the school- collect traditional recipes, translate and organize them (to be gathered in an international cookery book)- pick out legends, translate them into English, and organise them in a national story book (during the second project meeting of the second year the European team will chose one legend from each country, connected by common elements, to be part of a European story book)- emphasize the activities of folk dances, songs, theatre, masks, costumes, and legends - after each project meeting, the project team will create a presentation leaflet to share the experience to the other teachers, students, community- offer materials for the web site;- Parents get involved in creating a 5 minute folklore presentation (dance-music etc) in an play or other exhibition. - facilitate and mediate meetings between students of different nationalities or between members of staff.- Host students from partner countries. - Evaluate the project development;The common tasks will be carried out by a European team, made up by members from each country, students as well as teachers, who will collaborate to achieve their goals.Clear tasks allotted to each team and to each member of the team will ensure the active involvement of all partners in common partnership activities.
7. COOPERATION AND COMMUNICATION
In order to have an effective collaboration, the communication between the teams will be created through the following information and communication technology materials:- The Think quest platform- Letters- The forum on the project web site will be the platform for all participating teachers to learn more about partner countries, discuss activities or any other relevant theme - Periodic e-mail and continuous communication through e-groups that can discuss any other matters- Telephone calls and faxes - Video conferences will be given preference where and when available, as well as other opportunities such as: Yahoo messenger, msn, skype, meebo- Periodical project meetings to help ourselves focus on our projects aims. Each partner is to fill in a questionnaire before each of these project meetings (besides a multitude of questionnaires throughout the two years of activities). Their purpose is to find out what we are going to draw our attention to when we meet. It is not only the teachers who are to fulfil these tasks, but also the students. Therefore, the mobility activities carried out will definitely play an essential part in the excellent development of the project. Besides having a project team in each school, there will be a European team, made up by the national coordinators. It will be their job to ensure a cohesive collaboration among the members of the teams, to avoid misunderstandings and to solve any possible problems which might interfere both at the national level and at the European one. As a result, a constant collaboration will be ensured by communicating and working together at all times. A sustained exchange of ideas via e-mail, fax, the internet forum, phone conversations and video conferences will make sure that the activities will be planned and carried out very well. The coordinator will set up deadlines for the fulfilment of the tasks and encourage the partners to meet them, at the same time offering them a model. Effectiveness of activities and achievement of aims are essential, but they will be realized if we constantly cooperating and solving any problem we might encounter. “Coming together is the beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success” Henry Ford said. We definitely think we are a strong team, since our productive collaboration will be intertwined with our enriching diversity, motivation for success and desire to innovate and stimulate creativity is our aim.
8. PARTICIPANTS' INVOLVEMENT
Our project aims to put forward, implement and develop European standards among all the institutions and the numerous people involved in the project. We want to achieve the objectives of this project because it will strengthen the European dimension of intercultural understanding by actively educating and collaborating together. The project is mainly for the pupils not for the staff. The pupils participate actively, appreciating the results and the quality of all the activities. The success of the project must be calculated firstly, through the eyes of the pupils. The pupils will be involved in every stage of the project such as planning, implementation and evaluation. They will participate in the carrying out of the working plan of the project, both at the European level and at the institutional one. During the project they will; - do research work, - study individually and in teams (assisted and guided by the teachers), - carry out the intermediate and final products of the project (working in local or in European teams). As far as the evaluation is concerned, the students will take part in the realization of the evaluation plan, established at the beginning of the project. Also, we plan to have in each school a team responsible for the evaluation, made up of one teacher and one student. The pupils will:- collect the data for evaluation,- fill in questionnaires of self evaluation and will realize the project diary;- pupils will make polls and share questionnaires;- gather suggestions and proposals about the project from pupils, teachers, parents, community deputy, etc;- will participate to round-table talks, tutorials, and workshops.
9. INTEGRATION INTO ONGOING ACTIVITIES
A part of the activities will be integrated into the curriculum, and another part will be extracurricular activities. Thus, the adaptation of the legends and the essays on traditional holidays will be developed during the Literature classes, they will be translated into English during the English classes. The illustrations will be created during the Art classes, and the Power Point presentations and the typing and the editing of the booklets will be done during the Computer Science classes. Everyone of these learning activities are completely suitable to the requirements of the curriculum, and can be integrated into an ordinary class. Still, the research work, the gathering of data, of recipes and of legends, the realization of photographs will be done after classes, as extracurricular activities. An important and positive aspect is that it has been decided that the products created throughout the project will be used as additional material in optional classes.
The project will be integrated in the schools’ activities through the following: - Administrative staff in each school will use suggestions and Management techniques to solve various school management problems. This will be shared by experiences gained from staff and other partners by;- new materials that will be used in the optional courses in those areas of interest; - new evaluation ways will be devised and proposed, later applied by different countries;- facilitating and mediating meetings between students, seminars and discussions between members of staff during the semester, during teachers’ councils;- and organization of parents’ meetings with staff and students alike.
10. EVALUATION
During the first project meeting, an evaluation team will be elected, made up of members from each school implied in the project. The team will draw up an evaluation plan, which will be respected by each partner. We will also establish the domains which will be evaluated, the instruments we will use and the descriptors we will apply in analyzing the data collected. There will be an initial evaluation, which will assume potential conflicts, followed by a formative evaluation, designed to discover any possible anomaly in the development of the project and to offer solutions for adjustment regarding the results, the collaboration, the communication, the coordination, the activities, and the implication. At the end of the first year of project there will be a project meeting where the evaluation of the project will be discussed and measures of adjustment will be considered. The final analysis will concentrate on the long-term effect of the project, of its impact on students participating in the project, on the teachers and on the institution in general. The instruments we will use in evaluating the project there will be a questionnaire, an observation sheet , an interview, measurement of the participation level, a project diary, a documents analysis, group discussions with students and teachers, and reports.
11. DISSEMINATION AND THE USE OF RESULTS
The dissemination of the results, experience and end products are a real modality of communicating with all institutions and partners involved in this project. In order to achieve an effective evaluation, each school will draw up a dissemination plan. We will also produce a common plan of dissemination. The plan will comprise the following possibilities:- Local and central newspapers, radio, TV- Media coverage of the project, especially the workshops (local newspapers, radio and TV stations- Presentations during the methodical meetings- Presentations during the parents’ meetings- Local, national, international presentations (participation to seminaries, symposiums)- Information panels, posters, permanent exhibitions at the school levels- After each project meeting, the project team will create a presentation leaflet to share the experience with the other teachers, students, and community- Comenius Corners will be made in every school to let the others learn every step of the project at the very moment and to see all the partner countries in details- Creation of a web page of the project and the setting up of a project web site – an extremely useful tool in terms of effective cooperation between the countries and regarding the transparency of the project in the wider community; - Access the site and use the forum of discussion, they will be able to use the proposed activities; - Publishing articles in the school papers, tackling the activities, purpose and objectives of the project; - Posters, panels at the schools lobby detailing the project;- Discussions, councils and meetings at the school/school halls/county levels; - All the tales will be shared with their plays in DVD forms with the local people, local governmental institutions and with the authors of that region in a seminar in the final meeting of the project.- Duplication and distribution of the products resulting from activities in other schools or interested institutions- Publishing articles in local press, giving interviews on the activities, project’s themes, topics and relevance, sending brochures to other institutions and associations;-Giving a copy of the final products - collections of materials with examples of creative cultural understanding materials in the process of educating all participating countries (by way of videos, DVDs, leaflets, photos, reports, lesson plans as good practices, presentations, etc) and to all the partners.