This blog shall be a report about a teaching project which makes use of the new media.
By searching the internet I found a project which seems very interesting to me. The “Gymnasium Neusiedl”, which is a grammar school in the Austrian town Neusiedl am See (Burgenland), established a project using the new media in foreign language education. The project which was called “das Ägyptenprojekt” was carried out in the 5th grade and was an interdisciplinary project which comprised the subjects history, English, and computer science. The aim was to create an interactive CD-ROM about the cult of the dead of the Egyptians and to send the CD-ROM to the Egyptian tourist association to win a week-long trip to Egypt for the whole class.
The whole project was done in class and also after school. The different subjects were connected insofar as that the historical background about the cult of the dead was part of the history lessons. The main idea was to highlight the differences between the cult of the dead of the Egyptians and the cult of the dead of the Austrians under Joseph II. The main emphasize was put on the mummification. The main part of the CD-ROM was an animated comic which the students had to develop by themselves and which should involve the historical facts taught in the history lessons. Therefore, the subject art was part of this project as well. To connect the area of foreign language education with this project the whole user interface and the comic was completely created in English. The part of computer science was to animate the comic and to design the user interface of the CD-ROM. In addition to the comic, the students also had to develop interactive games. Finally, two of them were put onto the CD.
After sending the complete CD-ROM to the Egyptian tourist association the project came in third. Unfortunately, the students did not win the week-long trip to Egypt because only the projects on the first and the second place won the trip.
Nevertheless, I think that this project was still successful. It shows that the new media can be used in school not only in terms of one subject but can also be used interdisciplinary which I think is something very important because this automatically lead to a big variety of learning skills which can be improved so that you can kill two birds with one stone. Not only that the students could improve their writing, reading, grammatical, or listening skills, the students were also part of the whole project so that also other competences like social or creative skills could be improved.
Therefore, again, in my opinion the project has shown how the new media can be used in school very successfully and appropriately.
Maybe you want to take a look at the school website:
http://www.gymnasium-neusiedl.at/eLearning.144.0.html
Hi Daniel,
The project you chose sounds very interesting. I like the idea of combinig various subjects. In my opinion this is how pupils learn the most. They do have to apply their skills and think interdisciplinary.
I think this project is also a good idea to make apropriate use of new media. It is not used just for the new media’s sake but also makes sense.
I would agree on the success of this project.
Best,
Sophia