European citizenship

Project Location

Country: 
Italy
City: 
Gorgonzola (MI)

Organization

Organization Name: 
ITIS Marconi di Gorgonzola
Organization Type: 
School

Website

http://www.cycling-in-europe.eu/

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Project Type

Education up to 18 years

Project Description

Description Frase (max. 500 characters): 

The partnership aim is to give students the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and
understanding of different subjects such as sustainable development, history, art and culture of the
region they live in, multimedia documents production and editing, planning and management of an
open source website, international team cooperation.

Project Summary (max. 2000 characters): 

We want to develop understanding among students and educational staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages and its value. All this goals will be accomplished building a website to document some cycling routes. This website will be useful to anyone interested in cycling and in the future it would be possible for other schools to join the web community and update the site with new cycling routes documentation. We would like to cooperate with people from other countries on the theme of sustainable development, that for its importance and complexity can’t be limited and faced at national level. Through the participation in the European cooperation we hope to promote cycling among young people, and, through the dissemination of the documentation produced, to raise the interest of
local communities on the importance of planning and designing cycle paths.
We want to involve students, teachers and scholastic communities in the development of products that are not limited to educational fields, but that cross the boundaries of scholastic and national areas to be available to everyone in the European Union. We think that working together on common and real problems is the best way to know and meet different cultures and scholastic systems.
Students will have a central role in all activities. They will have to plan the cycling route, gathering information on flora, fauna, climate, historical and artistic points of interest in the region, try it and describe it with special attention to critical passages, and get all the photographic documentation.
They will be responsible for the translation of all provided documentation into English and for the updating of the website.
They will evaluate documentation provided by students of partner schools by trying the described routes, during the scheduled exchanges. They present and discuss their results in international groups during the meetings and online conferences.

How long has your project been running?

2009-08-30 22:00:00

Objectives and Innovative Aspects

Concrete objectives of the partnership and subjects or problems we intend to address:
- Environmental education through promoting the use of clean and healthy transportation and sustainable development both for daily purposes and for tourism;
- Promoting cultural exchange, language learning and linguistic diversity through the website pages in English and the different partner languages, and through the students’ and teachers’ exchanges when trying the different routes;
- Promoting cooperation through gathering and organizing in proper documentation morphological,
geological, botanical, climatic, historical and artistic information;
- Supporting the development of innovative ICT-based content, working with the freedom to cooperate with each other, which is the aim of open source projects’ philosophy;
- Promoting creativity, personal fulfilment and the growth of an entrepreneurial spirit through developing a website as a platform to document the cycling paths in Europe, to be used not only by students but by all citizens within the European community.

Approach we take to achieve our objectives:
Each member school forms a group of 30 students aged 16-19, from different classes, and at least two teachers, with good knowledge of English, acting as supervisors. Different class origin of the students is helpful in spreading through pupils the results of the partnership, as peer education is often more efficient in disseminating experiences and information.
Each website page can be updated easily, and for each one is expected a manager who will be responsible for the document loaded. At the end of the project we hope to have achieved an increased awareness not only of our individual responsibility for our own health and environment, but also of the importance of European cooperation.

Results

Describe the results achieved by your project How do you measure (parameters) these. (max. 2000 characters): 
Tasks and competences: - Gathering information about the meaning of cycling and bikes in each country, developing a questionnaire about tourism/everyday life with bikes; - Testing and documenting cycling routes in each country, uploading all material to the website. The website will be in English and the partaking country languages; - Having given the communication infrastructure, the portal ensures a constant sharing of information and ideas between all partners; - Developing a common agenda with all steps, tasks and responsibilities; - Testing the routes during student exchanges on such different aspects as ecological diversity and cultural specialities on the basis of information provided on the website; - Getting in touch with foreign cultures through mobilities, as the students stay in families. Student exchange should last one week; - Developing a kind of logo, icon or statue as a symbol of a bike and ecology orientated school; Evaluation will be achieved through ongoing monitoring of project evolution and team work through the scheduled meetings by the participating members: . monitoring of the respect of deadlines . analysis of produced documentation . questionnaires . involved students prepare a survey for other students in school . student diaries after each meeting . analysis of trend and number of visits to the website . new results will be integrated into the ongoing project Evaluation will also be made on the final expected product. - an evaluation questionnaire for visitors will be put on the website to make a survey on quality and usefulness of the information provided; - the long-term impact of the project will be evaluated by the interest from new partners to update and expand information provided on the website.
How many users interact with your project monthly and what are the preferred forms of interaction? (max. 500 characters): 

The coordinator will create a positive team mood, thanks to face to face meetings and
online conferences (once a month). The common language will be English. During the meetings and online conferences we will exchange the individual results of the schools and evaluate them to be able to put them on the webpages. Collaboration and involvement of all partners will be achieved using web 2.0 tools and also be with frequent access to the website itself, which will become the
place where students and teachers virtually meet and work together.

Sustainability

What is the full duration of your project (from beginning to end)?: 
From 1 to 3 years
What is the approximate total budget for your project (in Euro)?: 
From 75.001 to 500.000 Euro
What is the source of funding for your project?: 
Grants
Specify: 
Istituto Tecnico Industriale
Is your project economically self sufficient now?: 
Yes
Since when?: 
2009-08-30 22:00:00

Transferability

Has your project been replicated/adapted elsewhere?: 
No
What lessons can others learn from your project? (max. 1500 characters): 

To promote language learning and communication exchanges with foreign students and colleagues, through the production of written documents to be published and made available to all Internet users in English and foreign languages.

Are you available to help others to start or work on similar projects?: 
Yes

Background Information

environmental sustainability cycling European citizenship foreign languages ICT Comenius
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