A small step for us, a giant leap for Europe
A small step for us logoA small step for us, a giant leap for Europe is a news exchange project coordinated by the teacher Merceds García Guerrero (Colegio Caja Granada) in collaboration with her project partner Francesc Romero Gutiérrez at the Swedish school (Fredrikshov Slott Scoala).
English is the vehicular language chosen to communicate with the partner, which permits the enrichment of the linguistic profile of the students and the improvement of their competences in the use of this second language in a real life context.
An important part of the project is developed in the family environment where, at least once a month, the family get together to comment on the news items and help the students to identify the most important events at the national and local level.
A rigorous planning process and assignation of tasks among the participants facilitates the development of the work and its punctual delivery on the dates set for each monthly news programme. The schools exchange the materials using different supports (blog, Dropbox, wiki). Each school takes charge of creating its own local news programme experimenting with different video formats and presentation software and shares the results with the partner school. During the first week of every month the students comment on the material created in a skype session. The project is still at the development stage but they intend to publish a digital yearbook at the end of the school year which each school will keep as a reference book to be disseminated and enjoyed by all the members of the school community.
The activities carried out so far are very varied and reinforce team work, dialogue and debate among the students. We highlight among other aspects: the activity which consisted of reading the first original chapter of Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) and comparing it with the film made by the director Tim Burton; the competition Young Graphic Illustrators which challenged the abilities of the students as comic artists taking the work by Lewis Carroll as a reference; the introduction of the language of advertising to the younger students using a game format; and the competition for the best advertising spots in video format.
Winning comic by Mikaela and Vendela:
The collaboration with external agents who participate in the development of some of the activities, is also worthy of note. For example the virtual meeting uisng Google Hangout beteen the students at the participating schools and the film director J.M. Asensio, who answers different questions about films which were put to him by the students themselves, awakening their interest in the world of cinema.
From the NSS we congratulate the participating teachers and students in the project and hope that they continue to progress at a good pace and go on surprising us with their original proposals which encourage learning autonomy, collaborative work and students' creativity.
Image source: NSS photocomposition and audiovisual materials developed in the project.
