21 Schools from 14 european countries worked together in this project to show each other what everyone should know about their country: enjoy!
The students of all participant schools (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slowakia, Slowenia, Spain, Turkey) present those aspects that, in their opinion, all should know about their own country. They work on a common Website http://project14-15.weebly.com/ The students of all involved schools are free to choose the aspects of their countries they want the others to know, and the ICT tools to present them. For this reason, this is a cross-curricular project, with many subjects included (Geography, History, Music, Art, Economics, German, English....) as both the facts the students want to introduce and the way of presentation have to be chosen by the students themselves (Video, photos, art, potcast...). The project also wants to be a significant contribution to the idea of Inclusion/inclusive education: every student of every schooltype is welcome and every participant contributes in his own way.
In our peculiar situation (Italian school), the project is included in an experimental pathway of teaching Geography without the use of a textbook. This is the project I chose for my younger students, as it is quite simple and enjoyable at different levels, plus it exactly matches the national curricula requirements for this age. As for the project as a whole, we set these objectives with our partners: students should get competences in 1) researching about their own country in different subjects (famous/special landscapes, famous music, historical persons...) - 2) finding ways to present their results/ideas to other students in other countries in an understandable and attractive way, using German or English as foreign language and different ICT-tools - 3) using and working with different ICT-tools like video, potcasting, audio, photo editing, photostory, (...) and building and creating a Wiki - 4) communicating with others by twinspace-tools (chat, mail...) and for example skype, using their knowledges in foreign languages. - 5) giving feedback to the contributions of their partners, working further with results of their partners they found on the common Wiki.
21 schools are involved in the project, and we can estimate an average of 1000 students being involved monthly with the project (either working on the website or exploring it). Plus, their families, their schools and their local communities are involved and regularly take part in the dissemination events. So a huge number of people contributes to the success of the project - either by being an actor (students, teachers) or part of the audience (families, municipalities...).
It's a simple project but with lots of opportunities for pupils and teachers. Basically, the students are let free to explore their countries and tell the others what they think it's worth knowing. A great way to overcome prejudices: you introduce yourself, you answer to your partners' questions, and viceversa - you know the others by their introductions and by asking them about themselves. Other schools could learn than you can innovate, presenting subjects for real, not only through books, at zero cost. Then, once they're engaged, students will turn to books (or most likely to the web) to know more. But they will already have some basis of critical thinking. Moreover, as stated before, other schools in the world can use for free the teaching material available in our website. It is particularly interesting as all af the materials are produced by kids in order to speak to other kids: for this reason, they are probably the best way to introduce a subiect in a way that's both appealing to the students and easy to understand for them. All of this, at zero cost!