European Digital Citizenship through Castles Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Digital Citizenship through Castles

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Disabilities – special needs; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Citizenship is part of the fundamental rights with which every person is endowed. The Lisbon Treaty also attaches great importance to culture. In the preamble of the Treaty on European Union, explicit reference is made to the desire to draw inspiration “from Europe’s cultural, religious and humanistic heritage”. With our project we thought it was a priority to develop the sense of belonging to the EU linking it to the knowledge of the common European cultural heritage. This need is combined with the need to distract pupils from digital dependencies, teaching them a correct and conscious use of digital resources. A healthy outdoor lifestyle contributes to the health and well-being of all school communities. Hence the need to design a common path to achieve greater community awareness and a European identity, by the four schools involved, who have been working on the project for a year. The four schools are located in the following countries: Romania, Turkey, Italy and Spain. Among the national priorities, it is our intention to strengthen five of the eight key competences of citizenship, strengthen the teachers’ profile and promote a comprehensive and cross-curricular approach to competences. Teachers and pupils in the four countries will be able to share and develop new teaching methodologies, through the study of common cultural heritage, create inclusion and spread a more correct and conscious use of digital resources and at the same time a correct lifestyle. A multilingual multimedia tourist guide/book will be created, thanks to digital tools, innovative methodologies, such as the Flipped classroom and the eTwinning platform with the history of at least four castles per country and numerous recipes and songs from the four countries involved. The main objectives in the project are:
– Improve the value of culture and education for the growth of European citizens;
– Use of new digital teaching methods such as Flipped Classroom and digital platforms;
– Encourage active European citizenship and the use of the vehicular language;
– Improve the inclusion of Special need pupils;
– Increase the use of new technologies and creative approaches to produce, process and share results on a wider level for a conscious and correct use of the Internet;
– Disseminate a greater knowledge of European history;
– Increase a healthier and more conscious lifestyle
About special needs student, the e-Twinning platform also promotes inclusion and this allows pupils with learning difficulties to use new digital methodologies and feel more involved in the proposed activities. Pupils will be helped by involving them in group work, helping them with support teachers. They will be able to work on collecting information on the history of castles
It is our intention to involve 6/7 grade pupils and teachers of History, Geography, Citizenship, Technology, Science, Sport and Art in the project. We intend to carry out significant activities that will lead to the development of European citizenship, multilingualism and multiculturalism, understanding the history of castles as European history in the search for a common identity.
The staff involved in this process will be teachers and pupils, but may also include the headmaster and some staff members of the school administration. We decided that the best evaluating method is a quality assessment which implies that, at agreed deadlines, each country should evaluate the consistency of the planned objectives.
All partners are committed to realize coherent and realistic yearly dissemination plans and to carry them out. The general dissemination of the project is oriented towards the target groups but also towards the indirect beneficiaries. Several dissemination events will be organised by the schools involved. Sustainability of dissemination and exploitation activities under the project results from the nature of its main deliverable: resourceful and innovative teaching techniques, motivating and captivating activities for pupils, informative websites. The partnership will produce different materials that can be used in the future as new methodologies, examples of best practice and cultural knowledge, examples of European communication and collaboration between schools/ teachers/ pupils.
The participants’ increased knowledge about partner countries, cultural heritage, they will improve communication, digital,language and social skills all of these will be used in the future thus proving project’s sustainability in time. All the significant material produced inside the project, will be published on the website, the E-twinning space and the Erasmus+ platform. This applies also to tables and reports of interviews, questionnaires, the report of significant case studies, the evaluation reports.Many other teachers and schools will be able to benefit and be inspired by our project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 101186 Eur

Project Coordinator

Scoala Gimnaziala”D. D. Patrascanu” & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Scuola secondaria di I Grado Ciro Scianna
• Hasköy Ortaokulu
• IE Mare de Déu del Portal