EUtopia is a project
that emerges from the analysis of the demand and request of our partner schools
to achieve a goal for a better Europe. The intention is to collaborate to
achieve competence and meaningful learning of our students.
EUtopia will be
innovative:
The European Union
Commission aims to get better results in all the subjects within 2020. Our
project has complementary and regenerating skills to equally contribute in the
EU project.
The basis of our
project is the use of cross curricular skills. As a field well suited for this
kind of approach the filming of a documentary can provide a kind of
experiential knowledge, while at the same time allows students to experiment in
an international project.
The intention is to
organize a collaborative analysis of six European schools to achieve a common
goal. It will analyse and compare important issues such as social exclusion,
early school dropout, health, immigration and environment.
It will be a record
of where and who we are, with different national traits and languages being
seen and heard, even if the final single product could be a good summary of
what we studied. The assumption of the creation will bring various historical
and social attributes together for each participant school and country. The
film will be a unique development that has been created by the students, for
the students, and will show the places where they live and, through its
creation, the differences and similarities that they share, learning to make
decisions by consensus, overcoming challenges and collaborating with their
partners, leaving aside prejudice and being tolerant, cooperative and
enthusiastic and discovering therefore the importance of communicating in
English.
The creation of
EUtopia teams in each country will serve to strengthen the aim in the students
understanding and knowledge of the problem and their characteristics. Through
the visits for workshops and the final product creation, all people involved
will be able to see and experience at first hand the variety of realities,
culture and languages that are present within the European Union. The tasks
involved in the workshops and making of the final product will be varied.
The teaching of
skills will be different from what the students learn in their own schools,
seeing that the resources and ideas in each country will be different. They
will have to adapt to differences in ideas and ways of working and this will be
an exciting challenge to them, and will give them an insight of what is
possible for future projects and employment.
At the end of the
project a collaborative documentary will record the six parts elaborated and
reflect our vision of Europe 2020.
For this work,
positive communication and cooperation will have to be developed between all
the countries involved meaning that the students will have to improve their
English and acquire very good ICT skills. The use of E-twinning, E-mail, blog,
website and other social media will have to be learnt. Any communication will
be planned during the project development.
Students will achieve
a better understanding of history, culture and traditions of other European
countries (improvement of multicultural competence) and their own.
Moreover, EUtopia is
sided by European projects in which our centres had previously worked:
Italy, Spain and
Turkey (along with five other countries) previously attended a Comenius
partnership. The “HIP” (History in the Present) goal was to learn about the
history and heritage of the different EU countries that collaborated together.
Both EUtopia and HIP projects are corresponding and promoting an awareness of
the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe as we need to
eliminate racism, prejudice and xenophobia where mobility will help to break
down barriers for integration and end with the possible reticence to work with
foreign partners.
Latvia undertook the project “Footprints’’. It
was about handling of waste, natural resources, food and energy. The extension
will be a healthy diet and all activities connected with it like research on
the food pyramid, how to make healthy food at home, economic lessons, visiting
organic farms, taking part in harvesting etc.
Poland contributed to
the project “C Code to Common Future”. It was devoted to raising awareness of the
environmental issues among the students in the participating five countries
from different cultures and aimed at developing good practices and promoting
sustainable eco-friendly development in each country. Some experience from that
project could be shared with new partners.
The Greek partners do
not have experience with the Comenius project for secondary, however they do
have it in the one for primary.
