Under constuction

Classroom4.eu - An interactive textbook on European civilisation and culture

Classroom4.eu is a project that tries to map the cultural history and civilization of Europe as an exchange and communication process with the help of a student-designed wiki. A wiki is a kind of public lexicon with self-formulated contributions on the Internet. European history is connected with the local research: Students describe in short essays how their city, their region has participated in the European innovation processes.
The project aims at all European Upper secondary schools, and especially promotes an independent, research-based and propaedeutic learning. It traces back to a declaration by the members of the European Academy of Yuste (Spain), including Abram de Swaan, Umberto Eco, Hans Küng and Vaclav Havel. The members of the Academy stated that young people continue to learn in school in art, history, literature, but also in sciences mainly with curricula orientated on their own national history and little about Europe. Therefore, the Academicians raised the question of what students at secondary level should have learned about Europe at the end of their schooldays.

A canon of facts and data is out of question. Preliminary projects, including a European textbook, have been rightly criticized and forgotten. If one tries to grasp the (cultural) history of Europe in one single book, one must strongly prescind and omit so much details that no one can be satisfied. In consequence, it provokes action against the loss of one's “own” history.

That's why a different approach must be chosen. The former president of the Academy, Abram de Swaan started three years ago a working group to develop a project for the implementation of the Academy statement under the name classroom4.eu. The group is composed of Abram de Swaan himself, Jan Onland, a librarian from Amsterdam, who is looking after the website and the wiki looks and one teacher from each of the following countries: Germany, France, Poland and Spain. 
For Germany, the author has been working on this project since 2008.

1 Idea, structure and topics of the project

The project is open to anyone interested. Seen the demanded standards, the project aims at students of upper secondary schools. Each year, different topics will be designated to cover different areas of European civilisation and sciences.
These are the themes for the current test phase: the (optical) lens, the post office, the piano, the portrait and the (secret) ballot. Each theme starts with a concrete object as pars pro toto, e.g. the optical lens from the invention and development of telescopes, microscopes, cameras to modern mobile phones. As a result, the project is not only appropriate for history lessons but also for other school subjects such as music, physics, or for cross-curricular projects.
The underlying idea of the project is not about the outstanding artistic achievements or pioneering inventions in one's own region or city, but about how these are integrated and intertwined in the development of European history. Scientists and artists have always been in contact with each other, exchanged letters, read the works of their colleagues or travelled to meet them, to exchange views and to learn from each other. Europe ca be understood as a space of communications, a network of permanent exchange, as a sort of woven cloth. This was tight at certain times, loose at others and fraying at the edges, but also has threads going beyond the European continent. Hardly an invention or development was actually the ingenious idea of a single inventor, still less is a supposed genius exclusively attributable to one nation. Rather, the project classroom4.eu is based on the idea that it was the intensive, cross-border exchange in Europe that promoted the development of arts and sciences in Europe substantially.

Take for example the theme of portraiture, portraits hang in any museum, in castles and palaces, partly in the foyer of some schools: Where do these portraits come from? When were they painted? Who painted them? Who is represented? Why? Many painters went to Italy, later to France to be trained themselves. This results into influences and schools of painting. Those who could not travel had copies of famous and popular works made and sent in order to emulate them.

In the 19th century with photography a new kind of portraiture was created. Here is an intersection for the theme of the (optical) lens. Today, almost every teenager has a mobile phone in the pocket of his trousers and can thus quickly take snapshots or portraits of his or her friends and classmates. What a change, compared to the seriousness of the rare early portrait paintings and photographs!

With these simple reflections one is right in the middle of working on one of the topics. The questions already indicate the range of learning content and processes that are possible. The project seems particularly suited for teaching basic propaedeutic techniques and skills in upper secondary classes.

2 Introduction and implementation in the classroom

2.1 Introduction

Working with classroom4.eu is especially useful for the initial phase for senior classes or for preparation of research papers. After a brief presentation of the project and the underlying idea students should first be given time to read some of the previously published articles in the wiki as well as and other introductory information on the topic. This activity can be followed by a short brainstorming session, students formulating their questions on the topic which will become their starting point for research.
Depending on the subject and the occasion, the work can be limited on one of the topics or the choice of topic can be left to each student. This offers large possibilities of differentiation of themes and approaches. However, as a teacher, one should consider that some students need appropriate assistance and their works could also be marked. This requires by the teacher an overview on the topics which are rarely part of the ordinary school curriculum or at least the willingness to acquaint oneself with the unknown topic(s).

2.2 Research

Working on the project goes along with an opening of class, a high autonomy of the students and a change in the teacher's role to a sort of learning consultant. It is useful to start the research with a discussion of research strategies. The experiences of the learners should be the base of the discussion with intent to gather, discuss and structure them, so that in the end all students have an idea of how to do their research in an effective way. The Internet is for students, and to be honest for teachers today too, the first place to go for a quick search. It would be wrong to artificially prescribe other ways of research in school.

The reflection should go hand in hand with how one could successfully develop appropriate strategies for Internet research. It must be pointed out what information can be found in the Internet , or where the boundaries of Internet research lie. These boundaries are achieved relatively quickly in this project, because (currently) little detailed information can be found on local and regional history and thus students have to resort to books.

Using printed works is is necessary, thus makes sense in the students' minds and is integrated in their research process, as only there, they can find additional information. This works better than rather unmotivated and unmotivating requests by teachers to also have a look in a book.

It is advisable to work also in out-of-class learning places and to combine the work with an introduction of how to use a (scientific) library and/or an archive. The visit to a local or regional museum can help and give way for further approaches of research. To find starting points for their own contributions, students should also have a look in the blanks of the already published articles: names of other people and places with no own contribution in the wiki are highlighted in red colour within the text.

2.3 Time and project planning - role of the teacher and autonomy of the learner

At the beginning one should fix in accordance with the students a firm deadline for contributions, so that the timeframe for the work is clearly defined and the students are able to plan and structure their work. The last point can be also an important learning objective when working on this the project in school. Once all students have found an issue with a precise question, correct excerpting and bibliographising should be discussed and practiced. This can also happen at an earlier date, for example in connection with a library tour. It is important that the students do not learn in a dry run, but activity-oriented on a concrete topic. The work aims at individual products that can be submitted for publication in classroom4.eu, where they will be published as articles naming the authors. This may be an additional motivation for the learners. The teacher can also mark the articles written by the learners. Besides the contents, established a formal mechanism such as correct references should be considered in the marking.

Since the work on the project lasts over several weeks, it is useful to consider stopovers and to discuss in plenary sessions the status and progress of each article. The students should help and support each other. Questions should be addressed first to the classmates and only if they are not able to help to the teacher. It is helpful to know the topics chosen by one's fellow students, because, for example, when detecting an interesting text or image relating to the theme of my classmate one could share it. The use of learning management systems, e.g. Moodle, can be of great help to share links, reading lists and ask questions outside of the school lessons. A forum and a chat are available at Euopean level on the classroom4.eu-site after registration to facilitate the exchange between the different classes and students working on the same or similar topics on a European level.

2.4 Support and differentiation

As the students largely investigate, read, excerpt and write autonomously, the teacher wins time to take care of individual learners in the classroom and to support them in their work. This requires the availability of a sufficient number of computer workstations or laptops for each student. Working with the computer endorses individualization of learning processes. Preparation of lessons during the project is reduced to a minimum for the teacher, so that there is time to accompany the learning processes of the students outside of the actual lessons, e.g. checking and advising on intermediate results, giving detailed feedback on their concepts or just answering questions. This can be done via e-mail. Rewarding is the use of an Internet-based learning management system, since both individual responses as well as organization of work and information throughout the group with the exchange of information, links, texts etc. are possible. By this way of intensive tutoring, each learner can individually be assisted. In addition, the students have a choice of different content within on theme or even between different themes, where they, according to their inclinations and interests, can set their own research priorities. One student may be interested more in the technology of telescopes or cameras. Another would rather like to research the subjects of early photography, their first use in educational institutions or the emergence of appropriate specialized shops in their home town. The same applies to all topics: e.g. By choosing the Piano theme, the emphasis can be laid on the piano players, the compositions, the development of piano teaching, the creation of music schools or the technology of the piano, the factories and shops or even the impressions of the audience to piano concerts they visited and they wrote about in newspapers or letters.

In addition to the historical contents, students, depending on prior knowledge, acquire or practise the following skills and competencies:

– Self-organization and autonomous assignment over a longer period of time,

– Internet research and information evaluation,

– Cooperative team-work (possibly with the help of an Internet-based tools, like a LMS),

– How to document their working process and to create a bibliography,

– How to use a library or an archive,

– Writing encyclopedia articles.

3 Outlook

So far, about 30 exemplary contributions by students are in the wiki. These are sufficient to show how this project can work and that students can achieve remarkable results. A very positive feedback by a student at the beginning of the 11th grade was: "In school, students are rarely challenged in this way." Students could and should be justly proud on the great performances they made. In their feedback on evaluating the project in classroom, all students noted that they learned and practised important skills going beyond the actual subject.

After the planning and test phase, the project is now on the point of further development. The participation in the project is open to cooperation and and contributions from schools all over Europe. Articles can submitted in English, German, French, Dutch or Polish. Unlike other wikis, e.g. Wikipedia, all submissions will be checked by an editorial board on their quality and accuracy.

After the examination they will be published online or, if necessary, sent back to the author with references for revision and a later publication.

Currently, financial options are checked to professionalize and secure the project in the long run.

Once the financing is secure, annual competitions will be held in which the best entries will be awarded by a jury. Over the years an interactive online “textbook” on European cultural history and cilisation will arise. The main advantage of a digital wiki compared to a book is obvious: There is no limitation regarding the space. All places and regions of Europe can find their place in this “book”. It is interactive in the sense that students write texts themselves for this “school book” and once published, these articles will become a base of information for other students.

The project is innovative in several respects:

– the creation of an interactive textbook by students for students,

– the self-evident and integrated use of ICT,

– the multilingualism of the wiki,

– the combination of regional and European perspectives,

– the revision of the history of European civilisation under a theoretical approach of focussing on networks and communication.

Links

Website of the project: http://www.classroom4.eu/

Interactive textbook /classroom4.eu-wiki: http://www.classroom4wiki.eu/index.php

European Academy of Yuste: http://www.fundacionyuste.es/

en traduction......

• Selbstorganisation und selbstständiges Arbeiten über einen längeren Zeitraum
• Internetrecherche und Informationsbewertung
• Kooperatives Arbeiten im Team (ggf. mit Hilfe der Werkzeuge einer internetbasierten Lernplattform)
• ibliographieren
• Nutzung einer Bibliothek / eines Archivs
• Verfassen von Lexikonartikeln.

• die Schaffung eines interaktiven Schulbuchs von Schülern für Schüler,
• den selbstverständlichen Einsatz von ICT,
• die Mehrsprachigkeit des Wikis,
• die Verbindung von regionaler und europäischer Geschichte,
• die Neuschreibung der europäischen Kulturgeschichte unter
• netzwerk-/kommunikationstheoretischem Ansatz.

en la traducción......

w tłumaczeniu......

wordt vertaald.......