Digital and critical thinking in intercultural background Erasmus Project

Project Title

Digital and critical thinking in intercultural background

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

Context
The project aims to develop students’ digital competence and to broaden possibilities of reflection on the active citizenship in an intercultural world.
The main aim is to improve the skill of critical thinking to achieve in pupils a positive approach to diversity (not just a cultural one).

“Liceo E.Medi”, the coordinator school, has been dealing for years four cultural exchanges (two with Germany and two with Spain).
The school has gained experience and expertise – actually, it is still improving it, particularly in the following two fields:

– Citizenship and Constitution: the school is at the head of the learning net ““Cittadinanza, Costituzione e Legalità” (see: www.scuolaveronese.it) that counts 40 schools of Verona;

-Digital school: the school is at the head of a three-year-plan of teaching activities linked to “Piano Nazionale Scuola Digitale (PNSD) del MIUR” (L.107 del 13 luglio 2015) – see www.liceomedivr.gov.it. Examples of such teaching actions are the contrast to cyberbullism and the promotion of “peer teaching”.

Moreover, in its document “PTOF” it is written:
Goal A: to bring out linguistic competences;
Goal C: to strengthen laboratorial methodology and approaches through the critical use of technological and digital devices (see www.liceomedivr.gov.it)

Participants
For each year, about 170/180 students will take part in the project (total amount: 350 students), aged between 12-17 years of different nationalities: Italian, Spanish and German. Their own teachers will take care of them, especially during the transnational activities.
The number of schools involved in the project are four.

Objectives
Through a responsible use of digital technologies we are going to reach the following goals:
– to develop true and reliable relationships towards the “other”, to the “different” one;
– to reach metacognition: think about oneself and then in relation to others;
– to experience different modalities of responsible citizenships;
– to strengthen the cultural comparisons and the value of diversity and divergent thinking.

Description of activities
The activities turn around the periods of transnational learning (six per year).
The students will experience distant teaching and learning sharing virtual platforms, like Google Drive, and work with digital programs and softwares that will make peer to peer and peer teaching possible.
The use of new technologies will lead the reflection on the topic globalisation and economy on world wide scale.
Pupils will realise how our reality has a deep polyhedric nature.
Every year they will be six groups travelling covering three partnerships (Verona-Würzburg, Verona Dinkelsbühl and Verona- Madrid).
The proposal offers to students a direct experience of daily life in full immersion; students will be hosted by local families in coherence to an intercultural approach.

Methodology
Methodology will be an interactive one: students will make experience of a critical use of digital technologies and they will create digital products to be shared among all the partners.
Transnational learning between groups of students will allow a meaningful “peer to peer” experience.
Before, during and after the transnational periods digital technologies will be one mean of communication and teaching-learning activities.
Teachers will use “the digital” to lead pupils into a comparative and critical thinking that underlines the value and the peculiarities of every single culture.

Results, impact and longer term benefits.
The results of the project will consist of:
– an improvement of the use of digital technologies (some digital products are expected, such as Padlet, videos, photo books, ppt files);
– a high degree of competence in terms of critical thinking that overcomes dangerous prejudices and stereotypes and that could safeguard the wellness of each member in a group;
– a higher degree of empathy and sympathy;
– a better understanding of our own cultures.

The partnerships of “Liceo E.Medi” are a part of its educational offer (see PTOF) for the 2° and 3° classes specialised in foreign languages.
The school intends to carry on this tradition and to broaden it to the different specialisations, especially to the “Cambridge International” one.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 83385,41 Eur

Project Coordinator

Liceo Statale Enrico Medi & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Gymnasium Dinkelsbühl
• IES Sevilla la Nueva
• Röntgen-Gymnasium Würzburg