COMENIUS

The Co-ordinating School was Norwich School and our partner schools were the Martinus Gymnasium in Linz am Rhein, Germany and the Verkmanntaskoli Austurland and Unglingadeild Nesskola in Neskaupstadur, Iceland.

The aim of our project has been to share views on issues affecting our daily life and to look at the common experiences of young people in Europe today. Teachers have had the opportunity to share resources and to further their knowledge of ICT in particular. Students have spent a year researching, writing and drawing about their environment, history, culture and daily lives. They have collected and exchanged data on school life, plans for the future, employment opportunities, hobbies and interests and local customs. The idea was to publish a joint magazine on the Internet in all three languages and ultimately to print it in hard copy.

The term in Germany and Iceland was well underway by the time the Norwich pupils went back to school in September but a lightning strike, which burnt out our school's network meant that access to the Web was not available until our partners were about to go on their Autumn holiday. We therefore each had to put the project into action in our own schools and interaction by e-mail was only possible between staff and individual students. However, on September 1st a party of exchange students from Linz was already in Norwich and the German teachers returned with resources from the Art Department to use with their students, while a group of Norwich boys, recently returned from an expedition to Iceland brought back photographs and accounts, which were immediatley published on the Web through the Scout newsletter. In Norwich individual year groups were assigned tasks according to their current schemes of work in Art and German and Local History. A Year 9 tutor group was to spend a number of PSE sessions producing material. Cross-curricular work would evolve through research into local geography, religious festivals and political issues and the use of ICT to produce charts and graphs and to prepare the material for publishing. The English Department was to be involved through the Grapevine Press, whose Director became our Webmaster, and a number of native German-speaking parents was approached to help with the more technical translations.

A major blow early on was the resignation from his school of the Icelandic Co-ordinator and so correspondence between pupils and classes dried up instantly. Attempts between us and our Linz partners to make contact with the two teachers subsequently appointed produced no result and so we had to continue our work bilaterally with the Central Bureau's blessing.

By October the main outline of the Linz school's Web Page was developing well and our technical problems had been solved. There were already articles to which we could react and respond, such as the survey of interests and views by Klasse 9, upon which our own Year 9 based a similar survey and comparisons could be made. By Christmas our own Comenius Web Page was up and running and our years 8 and 9 were able to make comparisons of English and German Christmas customs. Year 9 also wrote about the Millennium celebrations here in Norwich, which brought in a flood of responses from our partners. At Easter some Year 8 pupils took up the idea of decorated eggs and produced some highly inventive designs of their own, while our Sixth Formers responded to items on Lent and Easter customs.The Sixth Form students were able to use articles from Linz on the German education system, military service and job prospects for research purposes for their coursework and wrote letters in response, which have been published. Sixth formers on both sides exchanged views on the new media and also shared environmental concerns. It has been interesting to read about world history from the German point of view. The magazine provided a context for GCSE coursework as our pupils were invited to provide a virtual guided tour of Norwich, to include articles evaluating conscription in Germany and to use the Linz pages to make a comparison of the two schools. By coincidence four students from Linz spent between a half and two terms in the Norwich Sixth Form and contributed to articles or artwork on both sides of the channel. Originally we had envisaged that only the older students would produce work in the target language but much of the junior work was also done in German. Our pupils were relieved and amused to see that their foreign counterparts sometimes produce amusing howlers in English. A German article on Carnival had to be expurgated and toned down in translation for the more delicate English reader! Most of our work was also typed up by the students themselves and much of the translation into English was done by the senior students, who found this skill, not now developed much in schools, quite challenging. Many of the younger students had DTP skills well in advance of their teachers. Art work was chosen, which enhanced and illustrated the various articles and a logo was chosen from a design by one of the Linz students studying in the Norwich Art Department.

An important and beneficial feature of the project for both schools was the cross-curricular nature of the work. This was quite novel for the Linz teachers, where a large number of Departments became involved. In Norwich there is already close co-operation and there was widespread enthusiasm for the project but in the end only the German and Art Departments together with the Grapevine Press produced the bulk of the work, although future potential was appreciated by the Geographers, following the inclusion of some of their work and the Local History Project from Year 7 has yet to be published, once technical difficulties have been solved. Our Webmaster was able to visit Linz through the extra funding and was able to give valuable help to his German counterpart as well as gaining the opportunity to exchange ideas with his counterparts in the English Department there. Other staff in Norwich have benefited too from the chance to develop further their IT skills, especially in the use of the scanner and digital camera. The pupils were much enthused by seeing not only their work in print but also themselves on the Web and of course their proud parents have been inspired to surf the pages as a result.

Our planned evaluation meeting in Iceland could not take place for obvious reasons but instead I visited Linz in April to meet the German co-ordinators. It was salutary to find that the Germans had experienced similar technical problems to us and that their access to ICT facilities was more limited than was ours. However as a result of the project they were in the process of receiving and upgrading better computer facilities. One outcome of the project, which we decided would have to be changed, was that, as a result of the vast amount of material produced, it would not be feasible simply to download the whole magazine in colour as it stood. It would be too bulky and the cost would be so prohibitive that no-one would buy it. The Germans did not have the facilities to download the hard copy in magazine format and so it was decided that the final publication would be on the Web. The pages would not be merged, as this was technically too complex and unnecessary as there were good links between the two. A limited number of hard copies would be published in black and white, in 3 sections, printed in Norwich and sent by post. We agreed that in the Comenius Web page we had a valuable resource to share with each other and add to in the future. Please access it on www.norwich-school.org.uk/comenius and see for yourselves.

With the withdrawal of the Icelanders it was not felt possible to find a partner and continue for another year. We shared our disappointment in having lost contact with what promised to be an exciting extra dimension to our work and are still hoping that they may yet read our Web pages and respond.

The Germans have now completed their input and are indeed already on holiday. At the time of writing we are currently evaluating the project. The magazine has been sent to our Euro MP and the Minister for Europe as well as the local library. Our Head Master has just sent us a valedictory message and the project has just been put before the Governors for their response. The pupils have been very enthusiastic in their reaction and are busy using the resource to revise for their examinations. Whereas our established exchange programme only reaches a few, many more students have had a chance to interact with youngsters abroad. This makes much of their normal schoolwork seem "real". Their linguisitic skills have been improved, as has their use of ICT. At a time when there is much publicised distrust of Europe and all things foreign, an appreciation of our common cultural heritage and an increased awareness of shared problems among our young people can only be beneficial. At our Open Day at the end of term, parents, who have not already done so, will be invited to visit the Website and to make their own contributions by filling in a questionnaire on the European dimension as they see it and on the way in which their views may have changed by reading this material.

Marguerite Phillips
Project Co-ordinator June 2000