Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 6 2016 | Page 11
Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------learning is a promising educational means that can
meet the individual needs of every child and can
also help develop social acceptance skills, ethics
and values. Teachers who teach different subjects
can design activities based on ICT, applying the
PBL, putting into use the modern concepts about
active and collaborative learning as well as about
cross-curricular approach to knowledge. Τhey can
support the student-centered, active, exploratory,
discovering and collaborative learning, the
procedural knowledge, expression and
communication activities which contribute to the
creation of interaction between teachers, but also
between teachers and pupils through authentic
activities (Raptis & Rapti, 1999; Repousi & Tsivas,
1999; Giakoumatou, 2004; kavoura, 2004).
On the other hand, eTwinning- the European School
Community promotes cooperation in Europe by
means of using ICT providing schools with support,
tools and services. What we have here is a Digital
Community of Learning whose potential for
collaborative learning and for social networking
creates hopeful and innovative intercultural crosscurricular prospects. Through technology mediated
communication it allows the active participation of
pupils and teachers in cooperative learning tasks
with the aim of achieving common goals (Paloff &
Pratt, 1999). Farther more eTwinning aims to
integrate a feeling of European identity, as well as
an awareness of the continent’s linguistic diversity
into the learning process.
It has been observed lately in the most educational
systems in Europe lately that the use of comics is
on the increase. Digital ones in particular can be
used in subjects of all grades, both in Primary and
Secondary Education.
More specifically, as a literary genre which presents
adaptations of all-time classics or even of antiquity
myths or of contemporary history, comics can be
used in teaching cultural diversity and tolerance at
school, as a tool of familiarizing pupils with
multilingual and pluricultural society with computers
and of developing cultural awareness and mutual
understanding. It is only natural that comics have a
vast application range in the teaching of tolerance
taking into consideration the fact that their use
promotes the development of reading and
expression skills on the level of speech and image,
the evaluation of possibilities and limit-actions
given by verbal means of expression, compared to
visual ones, as well as the production of texts in
which speech and image cooperate and function
together (Paschalidis & Daniil, 2007).
Cultural context becomes more attractive when
pupils are asked to create their own digital comics
through the use of web 2.0 tools and acquires new
interest when these comic creations are
incorporated in the eTwinning cooperative projects.
Moreover, through a collaborative eTwinning project
and the English language, pupils have the chance to
communicate to their peers from other countries
their own way of viewing social issues. By
exchanging views on specific social or historical
facts that happened at the same period and
changed the course of history in every place, pupils
are able to have not just a photo reenactment of
these situations, but also the opportunity to “build
up” assumptions, to compare arguments, to
articulate thoughts.
The first step towards realizing an eTwinning
project aimed at teaching tolerance through the use
of comics amongst European schools is to define
the topic, historical or social, within which
educators and pupils will move so as to draw the
required material. Secondly, goals are set. For
instance pupils to be able to:
Identify and recognize elements from
foreign cultures as well as confl icts or
misunderstandings in specific comics
Understand the fictional characters in them
and express their own feelings
Identify national stereotypes
Compare their own culturally determined
opinions and attitudes towards the comics
Write their own fictional strips/scenes and
discuss the written ones by the partner
class taking into account cultural differences
between the model comics, their own ones
and their own cultural origin
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