Sailing the sea of time: European history as OUR (hi)story Erasmus Project

Project Title

Sailing the sea of time: European history as OUR (hi)story

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: Creativity and culture; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue)

Project Summary

“Frieden ist nicht selbstverständlich.” These words of Jean-Claude Juncker are central for our project which is addressed to students aged 13-17 years from six European countries. In a time of increasing separatism, nationalism and latent racism also in EU countries the motivation of our project is to make our students aware that peace and international cooperation is a treasure which has to be protected actively. Our aim is to promote respect – for both persons and cultures – and responsibility – social and personal – as values for a fair and non-discriminatory society. Our students will learn about constructive and destructive moments of European history, find out about various cultural connections among our countries and detect values which connect them across times and borders to one cultural unity: Europe. Working on the project collaboratively, the participants themselves will practice constructive and respectful intercultural interaction.

Objectives of our project are:
– increased sense of respect and responsibility
– strengthening of transversal key competences such as digital, language, learning, social and civic competences
– improved creative and interdisciplinary thinking, cultural awareness and expression
– a broader European dimension of learning and teaching.

To reach this we plan the following activities:
1. APPROACH: Our project has two starting points: near future, ancient past. One point are myths from Greek antiquity as cradle of European culture. Myths tell us about men’s hopes and fears and the struggle for defining one’s role in nature / kosmos. Our students show their interpretation of myths creatively as lyrics, sketches, philosophical essays and by comparing ancient thoughts to modern scientific approaches. With the same creative means they show their feelings towards “Europe 2040 – our hopes, fears and wishes”. Thus, they reflect about differences and similarities through time and regions and necessary improvements. In multilateral teams they think up small activities which contribute to improvement. Locally, they carry them out. Thus, they realize how effective, but also necessary civic engagement is. This meets the needs of a young generation who wants to speak up for their future.
2. LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER (research and ICT): The students look for examples of civic engagement and moral courage in their countries’ history. Another focus is on migration in history of their families, schools, regions. They present their results online and combine them with their partners’ results putting historical events of all partner countries next to each other in a huge timeline on a wall in the school building. In multilateral groups they work on styles and movements in art and culture which link our countries to each other and add these cultural links to their timelines. Together they create board games whose settings the students plan online and whose equipment they design with software for a 3D printer; thus, they make their results of our first project year available to other student groups in a playful way.
3. CREATING WITH EACH OTHER: In year 2 the students continue in international groups to work on historical events and to integrate cultural and artistic expression; they combine the results into scenes for a stage play about cooperation and confrontation with focus on common values. They integrate philosophical thoughts (e.g. Arendt’s “banality of evil”), learn about theatre traditions of the partners (e.g. shadow theatre), try them out together. They invent plot and scenes by collaborative writing. They visit memorials and add their reflections as scenic interpretation to the stage play. Finally they perform their play as an international team.

Methods we will use are: cooperative learning such as collaborative writing, gallery walk etc.; research (library, online, interviews); product orientation; blended learning (online activities, traditional lessons in various subjects according to curricula and needs of each school, off-campus activities).

Results, impacts and long-term benefits we expect of our project are:
+ increased quality of learning and teaching by: better integration of ICT into all sbujects; increased willingness and ability to learn and teach in interdisciplinary, intercultural, European context; better teamwork skills; growing cultural awareness; greater motivation of our students in language learning and multilinguism; increased motivation of our teachers to try new methods
+ long-term integration of activities of civic engagement and responsibility in regular intervals in our school routine
+ additional recognition and attractiveness of our schools due to the combination of digitization and internationalization by: presentation of our products (ebook “Europe – our hopes, fears, wishes”, timetable, board games, stage play, TwinSpace / project website) in school, local community, online.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 179120 Eur

Project Coordinator

Neues Gymnasium Wilhelmshaven & Country: DE

Project Partners

• 1 Gymnasio Volou
• OSNOVNA ŠOLA PRULE
• Srednja skola Isidora Krsnjavoga Nasice
• Groupe scolaire Demotz de la Salle
• LICEO SCIENTIFICO STATALE GALILEO GALIEI PERUGIA