The project, involving 9th and 10th-grade students from three European high schools, aims to delve into the study of ancient Roman roads: where they passed though, why and how they were built, what remains of them in the surroundings of the three cities involved in the project. Throughout the project, video conferences will be organised, not only to facilitate synchronous collaboration among the participating students but also for online lessons with experts, so we can widen the walls of our classes to Europe. The educational approach will be Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Game-Based Learning (GBL), and the final output will be a virtual escape room per team created with Genially, so students will add some storytelling and use the the information about the Roman roads they obtained by their researches and during the experts videoconferences. An onsite meeting will be organìsed at La Rochelle from 11th to 15th March: 10 Italian students and 10 Hungarian students will be selected to take part in it.
Introductory video conference
Mentimeter Survey: students answered the project's driving question ("Why did the Romans build so many roads?"), voted for the project's title (choosing in a bunch proposed by each of them in a Google.Survey offline), and voted for the logo background images (choosing in a bunch propsed by teachers who generated them using AI)
Logo Composition: students were invited to send to the teachers at least 5 pictures related to the project's topic using. The pictures must be of their own property or with CC licence.
Town Game: international teams had to collaborate in a game about their towns using Socrative: the pictures are very easy for the ones living in a town but impossible to be solved by the others. The final score was calculated with the averages scores of each national team.
Wish a happy Erasmus Day!: as the videoconference was held in the Erasmus Week, students were sensibilized by their teacher about Erasmus+ and European values and wrote sentences to their foreing mates on virtual board.
Video conference by dr Traverso
All of our students took part in a conference on January 26, 2024, conducted by Dr. Antonella Traverso (Director of the national archaeological museum of Luni and archaeological zone, archaeological museum of Chiavari and Prehistoric museum of the "Balzi Rossi" Ventimiglia).
The conference focused on the road system of the ancient Roman city of Luni, situated on the border between Liguria and Tuscany, near the marble quarries of Carrara.
The students actively participated in the event, sharing their thoughts through various interventions. Time passed quickly, with the students expressing genuine interest and satisfaction in gaining a deeper understanding of the topic, aided by the slides accompanying the expert's presentation.
This serves as evidence that through eTwinning, we can open the doors of our classrooms, facilitating the sharing of knowledge and skills, and enabling distance learning on curricular subjects with the involvement of highly qualified experts. In the upcoming Spring, Italian students will take part into an educational trip to the site, guided once again by Dr. Traverso, who is also an alumna of the Italian lyceum.
Creating the virtual escape rooms
Each international team must now use the information obtained from their teachers, during Dr. Traverso's conference and during the group mobility in La Rochelle to design a virtual escape room which will have to be solved by another group decided by the teachers during the final video conference on May 16th.
By the first week of April each group must deliver the plot of the escape room and by the end of April they will have to share their virtual escape room with the reference teacher in the international team.
The images can be generated by AI, by websites (with attention to CC privileges as explained on the second page of TwinSapce) and at least an image must necessarily be taken from the Europeana website (obviously citing the sources and credits as requested by those who have shared the image).
Here you can have some examples (and links) of the stuffs you can find on Europeana. Remember to insert (in the label of the object you choose to use) the references of the image.
Each team has a tutor who can help the team and who supervises the activities.
Final video conference
On Thursday, May 16th we have our final step in this project: playing together the escape rooms created by other teams and solving the riddles helping each other. Each team's work will be evaluated thanks to this rubric agreed between the teachers.
Before playing, we'll listen to the Italian students who visited the Roman city of Luni and the ancient quarry of Fossacava last week and to the Hungarian students who visited the remains of ancient Roman Baths.