Migration in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Migration in Europe

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 : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Public discussion almost exclusively focuses on the refugee crisis. Here, our project “Migration in Europe” started. It placed the refugee wave into a wider context and examined the different sorts of migration which have taken place in the last seventy years, since World War II. The students learnt that migrations took place for various reasons and that they happened in Europe in all epochs. We tried to avoid treating the subject only in an abstract way, but wanted to give the phenomenon “migration” or “refugees” a personal face. Therefore, we contacted migrants and refugees in each country to learn something about their personal fate. To complement these very personal life experiences, the legal circumstances in the different countries and the measures taken to solve the current refugee issues were examined. This gave our students a more sophisticated view on the current situation. By analysing former migration waves our students also learnt details about the various effects of migration in the different countries and that positive effects may result thereof, as history shows us. Due to the implementation of an Internet-based project room the students gained experiences in Internet-based cooperation and they promoted their ITC-skills. And so they gained experiences for their future professional lives. The work with this project room also provided the participating teachers an insight into a different teaching method. In the project five European schools worked together: Gymnasium Wertingen, Germany, Liceo Scientifico „R.Nuzzi“ Andria, Italy, Celldömölki Berzsenyi Dániel Gimnázium, Hungary, Osg Willemblaeu, Netherlands, and Garbi Pere Vergés Badalona, Spain. When choosing the project partners we paid attention to the fact that the countries had had different experiences with migration in the last seventy years and that they had experienced different sorts of migration. In some countries immigration prevailed, in others emigration. And in the current refugee situation the countries of the participating schools have had different experiences and shown different strategies. By comparing these manifold aspects we expected to achieve a more sophisticated picture of the current situation. Another aspect was the readiness to work with an Internet-based learning platform. All five schools have already had experiences with learning platforms and with European cooperation projects and they were ready to improve them.To support the project work a virtual project room on the Twinspace-platform was set up. This room served for communication and cooperation among the participants as well as for the collection of materials developed during the project. During the period of the project four topics were discussed:- Different kinds of migration in the students’ own countries, their reasons and their effects- Regulations about immigration and treatment of refugees in Europe and in the respective countries- The current refugee wave- Efforts to integrate migrants. The students made research in all subject areas in their own countries and they fixed down their results. During the common learning activities those results were revised in transnational work groups and a final version was developed. In the course of the project a collection of materials resulted from that work. To complement the issues a meeting with refugees or representatives of local support organisations took place at each transnational meeting. Besides, a documentation of personal fates of migrants or refugees was produced. At the end, all the results were put together in an e-book and in various expositions, which were presented to the public. Posters of the transnational meetings and the results of the work have got a permanent place inside the school buildings.The online teaching unit, which the participating teachers created from the materials of the project room, was another final product. The different results are available via the Internet, even after the end of the project and they are published as OER. In the long term, by using the materials during the lessons the students got a more sophisticated view of the phenomenon of migration. Apart from that, they have learned that personal research is absolutely necessary for an informed opinion and that the results may well differ from the presentations in the media. As to teachers the experiences with the project may help them to initiate and supervise such projects in the future and – hopefully – they will use their knowledge to develop new online teaching units on their own.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 110515 Eur

Project Coordinator

Gymnasium Wertingen & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Osg Willemblaeu
• Liceo scientifico statale “R.Nuzzi” Andria
• Celldömölki Berzsenyi Dániel Gimnázium
• Fundació Escoles Garbí