Think Different, Do Together Erasmus Project

Project Title

Think Different, Do Together

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; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

This project was designed to allow European pupils and teachers to work together and share their opinions and points of view in order to have a better understanding of how diverse and complex Europe is.
Our main objective was to make people feel European. We wanted them to become aware of how difficult it can be to communicate with a foreigner. This could be seen as what it means to be European and to develop a feeling of European citizenship.
On a more pragmatic level, we also aimed at improving pupils’ proficiency in English, or at least, to improve their self-confidence when speaking. We also aimed at improving their ICT skills. Indeed, all the project unfolded in English and numerous modern ICT tools were used.
Initially, the project had been designed for 5 countries. Unfortunately Portugal had to pull out because the school closed down. So in the end there were only 4 of us.
The French were coordinating. Our partners were Italians, Polish and Greek. The Italians and the Poles were senior high school pupils while the Greeks were a junior high school. Our common point was that all or most of our pupils are socially or geographically challenged, whether they live in a very rural area, or in the mountains, or on an island.
The project was designed in 4 parts. They all followed the same logic but tackled a different topic every time. The topics we selected were : women’s place in society (Italy), sustainable development (Poland), bioethics (France) and solidarities at the local, national, intra-European levels, and towards migrants (Greece).

For each topic, the pupils, helped by their teachers, had to create an exhibition. This exhibition was meant to show what the state of affairs in each country was. There were 3 panels : one showed the national representation of the topic through a mind map, another showed what the law said regarding this topic and the last panel shed light on the current debates, limits and imperfections of the system.
Meanwhile, the pupils had to brainstorm, think and implement a civic action related to the topic in their school. It could have been an information day, or giving out leaflets… The idea was the make the whole school aware of the problem, for example the place of women in society.
This work ended on an actual meeting of pupils and teachers in a different country each time. We met for a week. During this work week, the national exhibitions were shown to all the partners (12 panels). We had pupils collect information and think about the situation in Europe. Each national team also presented the local civic project that had been carried out. Multinational teams (1 nationality by team) also shot videos to make the others think of the problem. These were shown at the end of the week. We thought that multinational teams were the only way to reach our objective of reaching to the other and communicating with them. Besides, pupils had to speak English if they wanted to communicate so this organisation guaranteed the use of English as a communication means.
On the whole, we may say that this project has been successful, whether it be regarding the productions expected from the pupils (exhibitions, local projects, videos) or pupils’ skills improvement. They felt better equipped to get in touch with foreigners, they felt they had improved in English and in ICT.
Some local projects are even meant to last in the school and beyond.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 98840 Eur

Project Coordinator

Lycée Jean-Baptiste Delambre & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Ancorensis Cooperativa de Ensino, CRL
• ISTITUTO OMNICOMPRENSIVO SAN MARCELLO PISTOIESE
• Zespol Szkol Ponadgimnazjalnych im. Jana Pawla II
• GYMNASIO PLOMARIOU