About the project

The project was born from the desire to promote inclusive relationships and enhance diversity through reading, dramatization, and reconstruction, using images, artifacts, videos, manuscripts, documents, and stories in collaboration with the "EUROPEANA" platform, the European digital library.

 It has been practiced an experiential approach to cultural heritage through the eyes of students by digital storytelling. The activities of the project were created to tell about artworks, objects, environments, places, and territories in an ancient Turkish city named IZNIK, a UNESCO heritage site, by the use of innovative methodologies.

 Contexts and tools, as well, have been planned in order to raise the "pleasure" of storytelling, both in oral, written, and digital ways. 

Thanks to the storytelling activities, a special way of welcoming the pupils has been created. A welcome that has become a mutual enrichment, an intellectual and emotional growth. That “welcome moment “has been a great occasion useful for pupils to get to know their feelings/ emotions and master them, in an atmosphere of intercultural exchange.

 Practical and technical activities has been proposed in order to stimulate the need and pleasure of storytelling in an educational, playful, creative, and digital context. 

NEEDS 

Digital Storytelling promotes active and deep learning, critical thinking, synthesize and analyze abilities, allowing, the effective integration of digital techniques and technology in education curricula. 

The use at school of storytelling empowers listening, analyzing, understanding and creating stories enhancing imagination, identification and emotional awareness, and last, but not least, facilitating socialization processes. 

Digital storytelling is a valuable aid for the development of information literacy (literacy in the search for information ) of media* and digital literacy, too.

(*referring to skills, knowledge, and understanding that allow consumers to use the media effectively and safely)

The skills connected to literacy are necessary especially today when transitional societies require solid reading skills, information and media skills for the citizens of the world. 

The pupils, as citizens, have to be able to understand social phenomena, to orient themselves and to learn in a globalized and interconnected context. Moreover, storytelling in several different communicative forms is suitable for the transmission of traditions and cultural identities; it represents an ideal tool for the enhancement and promotion of historical-artistic and landscape heritages. 

PEDAGOGICAL OBJECTIVES

• Develop and enhance communication skills 

• Develop different learning styles 

•  Empower listening and concentration 

•  Facilitate the integration of pupils with different skills 

•  Develop collaboration within the class group, in small groups and in pairs 

•  Reflect on the theme of diversity 

•  Use of new technologies 

• Promote the development of skills aimed at autonomy, self-control, and self-esteem

•  Discover the cultural heritage and identity, the feeling of belonging, the love for culture, natural and landscape beauties of the city of Iznik. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Building knowledge in a meaningful way for oneself == >> ACTIVE LEARNING 

• Reflect and bring in one’s own inner the contents == >> DEEP LEARNING 

•  Making sense of one's own reality and identity == >> AUTHENTIC LEARNING 

• Gain awareness of one's own and others' cultural identities 

• Memorize information and concepts • Acquire new vocabulary 

•  Transmit values 

•  Imagine the future 

•  Communicate ideas and projects 

•  Present theories, concepts and problems

•   Develop transversal skills 

•  Create interdisciplinary links between multiple subjects 

For Trainees

The trainees will plan lessons, developing soft skills, too, and the students and teachers at school will act and realize the lesson in daily school life. 

The initial training path of future preschool and primary school teachers will be enriched by this project. The trainees have to communicate in English and the lesson plan is written in English, too. The result will be an improvement of the English Language. Meanwhile, they will reach the development of digital and soft skills thanks to the training opportunities offered by eTwinning 

RESULTS

Key competences:

 communication in mother tongue / Foreign Languages / Citizenship / Digital / Literacy / Math / Science / Technology / Social and Learning

 Subjects: 

English / French / Turkish / Italian/Citizenship / Foreign Languages / Geography / History /Maths Computing / ICT / Language and Literature / Religion / Technology / Art / Music 

METODOLOGY AND STRATEGIES

For trainees: 

•  Empower the use of the English language 

• Develop social skills (work in pairs, teams, respect for the ideas of others, self-confidence, taking responsibility for actions).

• Provide trainees with the tools for the development of pedagogical-didactic skills for teaching English in primary schools, by innovative techniques, too. Learn how to structure subject materials in a cross curricular way, respecting the needs of each pupil in order to achieve primary school goals by CLIL methodology. 

•  Realize by lesson planning that the CLIL methodology represents a challenge and a great opportunity for future teachers 

•  Develop CLIL lessons with ESL Method( Episodes of Situated Learning) in primary school 

•  Develop creative thinking.

•  Develop soft skills

 For the pupils:

 active methodologies such as

•  Role playing

•  Cooperative learning

•  Peer education 

•   Flipped classroom 

• Laboratory teaching

•  The ESLMethod

•  Methodology of Digital Storytelling

•  Gamification Active methodologies and teaching are realized only if there is a flexible way of teaching style in the learning environment, which allows growing the interests of the pupils and their experiences: the students are at the center of the process, enhancing their previous skills. 

METODOLOGY AND STRATEGIES

ITE unicatt

A training methodology is introduced which specifically focuses on the enhancement of the English language, internationalization, and the use of new technologies (Luzzini M. in ITE National Coordination Event March 8-9, 2021). 

This is a very dear topic to eTwinning, as also underlined during the Empowering Future Teachers with eTwinning Online Conference on 24-26 November 2020 during which Professor Pier Cesare Rivoltella spoke, highlighting the importance of eTwinning also for the development of digital skills.

Along with digital skills, the benefit for students also concerns soft skills, such as the ability to work in a team, present their ideas, design flexibility, and teamwork, which will be useful for entering the world of the school.