Europe 2.0 – Ellwangen and Medina virtually connected Erasmus Project

Project Title

Europe 2.0 – Ellwangen and Medina virtually connected

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: Creativity and culture; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The idea of our project had been to create a geocaching quest for Ellwangen (Germany) and Medina de Pomar (Spain).
In a period of two years and with two project groups with pupils at the age of 15/16, we had aimed at creating a modern way of getting into contact with our own culture and a foreign culture and learning more about our common European heritage at the same time.
Furthermore, it had been our goal to implement new technology into the lives of our pupils, of our school community and of the people “out there”.
We had also intended to be part of our pupils’ individual developmental process, by giving them the possibilities to acquire key skills they would probably hardly acquire in a “normal” school environment – such as broad intercultural skills, improved language skills and the insight that being part of a multi-lingual world offers so many opportunities. We had wanted to help them to think about how to do research, organization, time-management, project management etc.
And we had thought that in the end, we would not only have worked on a project together, but would have made friends in another part of the world, would have a wonderful geocaching track as some kind of novelty in both Ellwangen and Medina and that would give both local and foreign people the chance to find out more about our beautiful regions and specific cultures.

Due to various reasons we had to adapt our “noble goals” in some ways:
– It turned out more difficult to find and use technology that was useful in the way we had intended. In the end, we decided to use Kahoot, which enriched our pupils’ (and our teachers’) horizon and provided us with a useful tool we could use for the “home-schooling” period and also to get our pupils more involved in every day classes.
– Further, we could not install a permanent geocaching track as we had intended, so therefore couldn’t reach our goal to provide our community with a permanent “attraction”. / However, our quizzes are online and can be played by pupils or people all over the world permanently so that they can learn more about Ellwangen and Medina virtually.
– Our intercultural exchange was a huge success and bringing two cultures together is something that can be seen as even more relevant in our difficult times.
– Corona, however, made it impossible for us to have a full evaluation of our second cycle as only days after the second visit in Ellwangen, schools had to be closed and the focus of our project got a bit lost afterwards, as other matters became more important.
And of course, unfortunately, our second visit to Spain couldn’t take place at all. Nevertheless, due to the digital nature of our project, our Spanish friends could at least keep in contact with us virtually and also provide us with a digital version of their geocaching track.

So, all in all, it turned out that the content of the project lost its priority a bit in the course of the project due to the circumstances, however, the importance of our main priortities (intercultural learning, development of digital skills, bringing Europe together) has even increased at the same time.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 41580 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hariolf-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• IES CASTELLA VETULA