AIMS and OBJECTIVES
The objective of the partnership is to enhance the awareness of similarities and differences among cultures of the participating countries in the minds of students, teachers and the community and to create an intercultural dialogue.
The goals of the project are:
Students
• To find out about the stereotypes which the students and teachers have of the partner countries and to determine whether these stereotypes are confirmed or denied
• To create an awareness of other countries/regions in the project including their languages, customs and locations
• To acquire an intercultural dimension and the consciousness of being a European citizen
• To raise their level of motivation in class activities
• To increase their commitment as they are going to contact people and organisations outside the schools
• To develop their communication skills by sending and receiving concrete and virtual items to and from partner schools
• To enhance their language skills both in English and in their national/regional languages
Teachers and head teachers:
• To increase their experience by having meetings and planning activities with colleagues from other countries. Moreover they will have access to a wider range of materials shared with the other partner schools which will give them the opportunity to analysing different cultural realities
• To raise the level of their professional development regarding their abilities in English and Creative Work. Moreover it will increase their capabilities in working with IT as a subject for learning and communication.
Institutions, local communities, wider educational community:
• To diffuse the project not only within the schools, but also to museums, local organisations and institutions including the local town hall authorities.
The approach will be to find cultural objects such as cd’s, videos, drawings, recipes, pictures etc. Only limited by fantasy! This will be done through the use of the expertise of their families, cultural and political institutions. We will make special use of the services which most museums provide for schools.
These items are sent in a Cultural Box to the partner schools, which all will receive boxes from the others. These boxes will be presented in a Web-box, in which we will invite other countries to fill in.
The aim of that is to create a common attention on similarities and differences among the European countries
As the project language is English, students are encouraged to learn that language.
Additionally we plan to provide a bunch of basic phrases in the national languages of the countries involved in the partnership.
The work with the cultural boxes during the communication will be both in the mother tongue and in English. The students will have to communicate both with their own local and national community and with their project partners. During this work all persons involved will enhance their competences regarding cultural awareness and expression. The work will demand a high sense of creativity by the students in creating/producing the box and finding out about the content. Due to the development of the students` competences, as mentioned above, we hope education and hereby make up for socio- economic disadvantages to reduce the rate of dropouts from further