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Waterways - Gateways of cultural development
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

In the course of this project pupils from 4 European schools (Sweden, France, Germany, Italy) will research different aspects of water in the context of geography, art and culture, such as music, photography and literature. We intend to collect data, documents and other material relevant to the subject in order to enhance the students' understanding of the importance of water in both biological/scientific and cultural outcomes. To reach this aim, the material has to be classified according to a set of categories to be established by the teams. The teams will be composed by an equal number of pupils from each country so as to ensure cross-cultural learning, the use of the foreign languages and to enhance European contacts and thus transversal learning skills among the pupils and the staff. The project work will help to give new inspiration and motivation also to pupils who show signs of school fatigue and risk to leave school at to early a stage. This work will be pursued and documented both during the planned plenary meetings via personal contacts as well as in the intermediate periods via ICT, specifically via the use of eTwinning. This ensures that the material the pupils are working on is constantly accessible for all participants. The following end products are envisaged: - Establishing of a water quality map of the European regions concerned. - Production of a multilingual synoptical dictionary which provides an insight into how varied and rich the languages of the participating countries are when it comes to describing phenomena connected with water. - Pupils interested in photography will be able to pursue their inspirations to produce an art book or a calendar depicting the various forms in which water is perceived. - As water has always inspired composers and poets to write pieces of music or texts another team will research and put together a collection of artworks which again will show how differently the participating cultures experience this phenomenon. Consequently, it might even give the impulse to compose a piece of music or texts on that topic themselves. In this project the following schools with groups of about 14-16 members each will take part: - Baltic Sea School Ystad, a school situated in an area surrounded by water in forms of the Baltic Sea, lakes, rivers and rapids. It is a school with close ties to the nature surrounding the institution. There are pupils ranging from preschool to ninth graders (aged 6 to 16 years). For this school, it is the first time that they are in touch with partners from different European countries and cooperate in an ERASMUS+ project and thus the pupils and their school will experience the enlargement of horizons. - The school in La Chapelle en Serval in France is situated in the metropolitan area of the French capital Paris although again offering natural landscapes being partly transformed by French garden culture and in doing so making use of waterways. This will add an aspect that can't be shown by the other particpants. In the Chantilly gardens, which are in the vicinitiy of the school, water has been diverted so as to feed the fountains in the gardens created by Le Nôtre (like Versailles); the original machinery for that - the only surviving in France - will be visited and documented in the course of the project. - Egbert-Gymnasium, a Benedictine School in Muensterschwarzach, is directly situated on a very important European waterway /Rhine-Main- Danube) which ensures transport of goods across Europe and so contributes another new aspect to the project work. The good infrastructure of the Benedictine abbey (printing press) will be of use when it comes to producing the end results. - ITC Fano is a mediterranean school profiting from its situation on the Adriatic coast and so provides another form of man's confrontation with water. In contrast to the other schools, the pupils in Fano concentrate more on marketing and tourism which will certainly open another page in the project. Collaborative work in the course of the whole project as well as during the pupils' meetings will enable students to learn from each other and share their experiences of learning through different learning styles and approaches and enable creative and innovative approaches to be developed and shared. This will also support teachers in the delivery of project work that will lead to improved pedagogy and practice and and facilitate more creative approaches that will support learning for all students. Through focussed project activities with identified staff and students we will be able to monitor and evaluate project progress and impact and ensure that outcomes are met and sustainability for beyond the initial timescales.
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