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History a (very) bit different: A virtual intercul..
History a (very) bit different: A virtual intercultural tour across the castle lifestyle
Start date: Sep 1, 2015,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
How were your history lessons? Frontal? Boring? Quiet, just a textbook and you memorized everything by heart? Nowadays teaching methods have changed and most teachers today enable their students at least a small discussion about the topic or they use the projecting system to show the students pictures from the Internet. But is that enough?
4 different secondary schools from 4 countries (Slovakia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Turkey) discovered that they are having similar problems regarding History at their school and decided to do something about it! The objectives of the project are:
1. to introduce a different kind of learning, that includes also other subjects
2. to enhance ICT learning and to improve the ICT skills of all the participants
3. to improve language skills of all the participants
4. to improve teaching methods of the History teachers involved in this project
5. to improve communication skills of all participants
6. to make the participants aware of their own national heritage they can be proud of, but also to meet other cultures and their history and to accept them and overcome any prejudice against other cultures o vulnerable groups.
On one hand there are secondary school students, aged from 14 to 18. Two of the schools are general grammar schools, 2 are vocational schools (students from one school are from Technical grammar school, from the other school they are from professions somehow connected to History ). On the other hand there are the teachers, which won't function in this project as just accompanying persons, but they will also get to know other school systems, rules, teaching methods and in this way they will reflect their own job and improve their lessons. The students that will work tightly on the project will be 6-7 in each country and there will be in each country 2 History teachers, 1 ICT teacher and one English teacher (= Project manager) to help them. The project group (all countries together) will consists of 40 participants all together (plus 4 accoutants, 1 for each country).
What if you had the opportunity to give lessons to your peers and they would give lessons to you via Skype, if you were taught by foreign teachers, would have the opportunity to go to a certain country and learn right there, on spot, go to a castle, touch it, smell it, feel it, hear it... you would cook their food, wear their clothes/hairstyles, learn their folk songs, tales, dances, listen to their music, learn about the herbs they were using, get to know their legends and to perform them? Would you like to be guided through different workshops by the local museum? Wouldn't it be nice to be creative and to film a longer documentary about each country's castles/natural heritage and to help your History teacher,since it would serve as a teaching material for next generations... What about creating a commercial for the 3 castles you will visit in each country, which would serve as a promotional material for them? What about making a castle calendar, a 3D print of a castle or a flash mob?
Quality of the project will be ensured by 3 transnational project meetings in 3 different countries, at the beginning of the project, the middle and at the end of the project. Quality will also be ensured by regular weekly meetings of each schools' project team and via Skype/email communication between partners, project managers will also be present during all mobilities and also two polls will serve as quality control.
There are many results anticipated in this project, but the most important ones are broadened knowledge of History in a different, more creative way , improved ICT skills with the help of modern technology (and as a result short commercials for the castles and long video for each participating country about castles/national heritage), improved English knowledge (and picking basics of other participants' languages), improved teaching methods, improved communication skills of all participants and nevertheless we would like all participants to be proud of their own natural heritage, but also to respect other. We also expect that the kids will accept students from vulnerable groups.
There will be broad and long term impact not just on the participating schools, who will improve their teaching methods, improve communication at their school, tighten bond between students and teachers (make work easier) or even get more future students, the project will also have a great impact on the local community, since local museums will prepare special workshops for the needs of our project, which they will later include into their regular offer and spread the knowledge nationally/ internationally. This project will also have a broader effect in all participating countries, the long videos will be offered as teaching materials for free and participating History teachers will also prepare seminars about teaching methods (for free) for their colleagues national wide.