This document outlines a European creative writing project involving four schools from Portugal, Belgium, and Romania. The goals of the project are for students to collaboratively write stories exploring each other's cultures using ICT tools like a wiki. Students will develop their writing, collaboration, technology, and language skills. Teachers will guide students through brainstorming characters and plots, writing sections of shared stories online, and creating final multimedia presentations of the stories in their languages. The final products will be published online for all participants to experience different cultures and languages through the shared stories.
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INTRODUCTION
ETwinning is the Community Schools of Europe. Teachers in all participating
countries can enroll and utilize online tools to eTwinning (the Portal and the
Desktop) to get to know each other, to meet virtually, to exchange ideas and
examples of practice, to gather in groups to learn together in Learning Events
and to engage in online projects.
WHAT IS A PROJECT ETWINNING?
Teachers from two schools from at least two different European countries and
create a project using the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to
develop their work. How do schools communicate and collaborate via the
Internet does not provide subsidies, or administrative procedures exist and are
not required face meetings.
PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT
The project involves four classes of four schools, two from Portugal, one from
Belgium and one from Romania. It seeks to involve various groups in the class
production of collaborative stories, to explore the cultures and countries from
each. This way they can also discover aspects of their own cultures that had
never previously thought. In parallel, we collect general information about the
cultures, countries and cities of origin of its partners.
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They will also have opportunity to become acquainted with three languages
(Portuguese, Flemish and Romanian), as is thorough knowledge of English as a
foreign language (as it will be the working language).
Simultaneously, the project also intends to work with different ICT tools,
especially one with students, other teachers with more, and still others with
both.
PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT
Students learn to collaborate in a project using ICT, with colleagues from
another country;
Teachers learn to integrate projects with ICT in basic education;
All actors deepen knowledge of the English language in a context of
active learning;
Through sharing of experiences, all players develop or deepen their
European awareness.
SKILLS INVOLVED
This type of project allows students to:
Working within a truly collaborative project, using a concrete way,
knowledge relating to curriculum areas.
Develop collaborative skills and familiarize themselves with the maps of
ideas.
Develop critical thinking skills, to seek, select and organize information
relevant to the project.
Develop a creative mind.
Develop communication skills oral and written language (s) foreign (s).
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Learning to express themselves using different types of media - Web
design, digital photography, stories, video, etc..
Acquire knowledge about issues such as copyright, publishing, etc..
Enhance their ICT skills within a collaborative project.
Developing genuine intercultural skills.
PROCESS
The tool chosen for the realization of collaborative work between the four
schools is a WIKI.
Wiki is a collection of many interlinked Web pages and each can be visited and
edited by anyone, which makes it quite practical to reprint and future visits. Wiki
is today the most democratic and simple to anyone, even without technical
knowledge, contribute to the contents of a web page. The best known example
of wiki is Wikipedia.
Thus, the whole process can be followed
http://belgiumandportugalcreativewriting.wikispaces.com/
Preparatory work of teachers:
Teachers reach agreement with the (s) is (s) partner (s) abroad (s) on:
the educational objectives of the overall project
the nature of the final result,
the type of publication (Web publishing, video, photos, etc.)..
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DEVELOPMENT
Each teacher explores the wiki with your students;
The teacher helps students to identify potential cultural differences and
similarities between partners;
Each teacher develops with her students a map of ideas about how to
write a story;
In each class, the teacher asks a brainstorming session to find the
characters, scenarios and other aspects of the construction of the
narrative;
Established an outline of each story, the interaction begins;
Began to write his history. The story needs to be written collaboratively
online using the wiki;
Weekly on a rotational basis, each class group in each school, adds to
the narrative, according to what was pre-defined;
The school students write parts of the story that takes place in the
country in school B and so on;
Students organize the information, discuss it and use it to draft parts of
the story you're writing;
By Christmas, the stories must be completed. We will have four stories,
built collaboratively across four different schools;
Each group chooses a class presentation of the stories in their mother
tongue, recording an audio file;
The presentation of history may be in Digital Story Telling, using stop-
motion video, etc..
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FINAL PRODUCT
The final product will be published on a blog that will be created for this
purpose, the films may be placed on Youtube.
Classes in the language they hear the story of his companions and compare
the two languages. As we all know the stories will be an opportunity to hear
different languages in addition to the sharing of animation techniques.
EVALUATION
Ask students to present their project to other classes is a great way to assess
their general involvement in the project. The project can also be presented to
parents at a meeting with his presence.