Etwinning

Family Lab, teaching and learning values

Title: Family Lab

Educational level: Compulsory Secondary Education 

Subject: Interdisciplinary

The multicultural team that developed this project comes from Germany, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom. 

Two Spanish schools with students from the 3rd and 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education, the IES Marina Cebrián school and the IES Viera y Clavijo school (Santa Cruz de Tenerife), have actively participated with the coordination of the teacher María del Carmen Rodríguez García for two school years (2010-2012) 

With the aim of discovering and comparing the basic rules of behaviour in the different countries, the teachers set their students a motivating challenge: to convert a naughty badly behaved teenager with different behavioural problems (addiction, abuse, etc.) into a well behaved and social adult. The fictitious character of Willy was created with these characteristics, and was even registered in the IES Marina Cebrián school and made "virtual" trips to all the participating schools. The students creatively analyzed different social problems of the present day and internalized universal norms and values, as shown in the words of Thorahi Felipe Ver, one of the participating students: "Thanks to Willy I realized that I sometimes behave like him and that I had to respect my parents and my teachers. I learned the norms and customs of other countries."

The Spanish teacher Mª del Carmen Rodríguez García, says: "They carried out all the tasks with passion and commitment. The project also touches on very important topics which they are interested in and teaches the human and universal values which they should apply in their lives. The project has contributed to improving the social environment and discipline at school, which has been positively reflected in performance. It permits greater participation on the part of the families and institutions and of the whole school community in the life of the school".

At the beginning, the idea was to create an international comic starring Willy and to reflect suitable behaviour in different every day situations in the whole of Europe. The forming of mixed nationality groups to carry out this project, also allowed the students to compare the rules which govern certain situations in the different countries. And their involvement was so great that as well as the comic, they carried out sketches which faithfully represented different typical scenes, protocol videos, amusing digital posters on basic norms, podcasts with the school rules, jokes, drawings, logos, poems and cartoons about Willy, etc., in fact an immense amount of very attractive material in different formats to be used in the schools. 

Tackling topics like the environment, family life, good eating habits, practising sports, etc., the project has become an excellent method for working, in an interdisciplinary manner, on some of the cross curricular contents, like value education and information and communication technologies. With regard to the latter, the products created in the different activities have required the use of a large variety of ICT tools by the students: Comic Life for the comics, Windows Movie Maker for the short cartoons, Photoshop to edit images, PowerPoint for the presentations, also VoiceThread to present some basic norms, Scrapblog and Glogster for the digital posters, Scribd for publishing some material, Flash-meeting for the video conferences, etc." 

Nicolás Nieves Ramírez, another one of the Spanish students, not only emphasizes the learning of norms and values, but also the use of the ICT tools and, above all, practising English: "I learned and I really enjoyed using the Comic Life programme, inserting cartoons on the correct behaviour for Willy, but above all, I liked talking in English with my companions from Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland. We did a lot of dialogues and discussions on Willy's behaviour in English. For the comic, first we wrote English sentences on the norms which we exchanged with our European companions; our teachers, parents and grandparents gave us the sentences ..., then we looked for images from the Sims family, the Simpsons, actual photos, actual and animated drawings, etc. We made a video, digital poster or comic, associating the norms to a concrete situation for the character of Willy, for example, Willy at home, at school, with his neighbours, with his friends, with his girlfriend, etc. "

They even prepared and enjoyed other extracurricular activities which were also connected to the project. For example the Spanish students visited an old people's home and, from the experiences they heard from the people themselves, were able to compare the education that they currently receive with the one transmitted to previous generations. They also had the opportunity to see differences among the students and their own families, when they participated together in workshops and debated about equality and domestic violence. But there was also time to celebrate together certain important dates like Europe Day or the 5th anniversary of eTwinning. Not only students and their families were able to attend the events organized to celebrate them but some local authorities were also present.  

Like the rest of the projects which have been selected this year from the national eTwinning prizes competition, the school directorate has also supported the work carried out. In this case, Natalia Mª Fajardo González, director of the IES Marina Cebrían school, says: "The development of the Family Lab project in our school, thanks to the teachers' experimentation and creativity, permitted the implementation of new methodological strategies in a collaborative working environment."

Carmen Gloria Herrera, the mother of one of the Spanish students, also reflects the satisfaction with the project of this sector of the school community: "Educating Willy in values and norms was very interesting and has served us to educate our daughter in day to day family life, etc. My daughter educated Willy using the same norms and values that we and her grandparents were teaching her".

The final product from Family Lab is a very useful guide of norms for anyone who wants to travel through Europe and has been the object of many reports in the press and on local television. It has also received the third eTwinning Prize in the Polish National Competition. Go to the links and marvel at all the published material. In the following video you can also see the presentation on Family Lab which was shown at the 2012 National eTwinning Prize Giving Ceremony  which is a clear summary of the project:

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Links:

TwinSpace: http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p26158/welcome

Wiki: http://familylab.wikispaces.com/