Project

Short description

The project "The goblins of Four Seasons" is born from the need to guide students to realize, in a period of marked impairment of our ecosystem, the importance of a correct relationship between man and nature, and lay the groundwork for the development of active citizen, responsible towards the environment and culture, able to fit into an active and driving in the society of globalization. The theme of the project is tied to the four seasons. The sequence of the four seasons, in fact, determined by the rotational movement of the earth, means that in every part of the earth be repeated annually the same climatic conditions. This has an important role for all living beings in general, and for the man in particular. At different climatic conditions, in fact, man has responded by developing its own culture and its own way of life. Based on the consolidation and expansion of knowledge of their surroundings, students will be guided through the interactive use of ICT and international collaboration, to become aware of ever wider areas and far between related, as well as the variety of natural elements and humans interacting in them.
Purpose: promote development of active citizen, responsible towards the environment and culture, able to fit into an active and driving in the society of globalization.
Aims
(From Recommendation of the European Parliament and of Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning, from OECD):

Learning objectives

• Consolidate the concept of seasons as time with specific characteristics relating to temperature, aspect of nature, clothing, traditions, foods.
• Understand that humans change the environment in relation to their needs.
• Acquire the concepts of transformation and adaptation..
• Bring students to some important masterpieces of our cultural heritage, groped for an early form of interpretation and elaboration
• Understand that every fact or phenomenon is related to others, taking different values and weights and that each phenomenon generates other and for the sustainability of society we live in is necessary to take into account the multiple aspects of physical and anthropogenic in mutuality.

Educational Goals

• 
  
• Knowing how to find, select and reuse information.
• Use new technologies to process data, text and images, produce documents in different situations.
• Being able to share experiences and knowledge learned.
• Knowing how to organize own work.
• Search appropriate strategies to solve problems.
• Facilitate the transition from experiencing culture to culture as shared intellectual reconstruction
• Increasing pupils' motivation in learning.

• Appreciate the value of our natural and cultural heritage and the need to respect it
  
• Identify problems relating to the protection and enhancement of natural and cultural heritage, analyzing the solutions adopted and propose appropriate solutions in own environment.
• Stimulate the ability of the students to relate positively with other peoples and environments in Europe.
• Facilitate the acquisition of an ecological conscience.
• Develop a positive attitude towards the English language to arous interest in different cultures and peoples.
  • Develop the ability to use English as a communication tool.

Cognitive functions

Observe, analyse, investigate, interpret, decode, recognize, distinguish, infer, compare, correlate, assumptions, linking cause and effect, recognize, communicate, revise, reconstruct, relate, narrate

Keywords

Environment,Time, Space,Need,Transformation, Adaptation Seasons,Weather and climate factors, Succession, Cyclicality, Culture, Nature, Environment, Retention, Management, Protection, Respect,Reconstruction, Duration

Work process

There will be significant learning within the constructivist and cooperative. Guided by the instrument of the WebQuest the students will acquire information on the Internet, access to virtual encyclopedias, libraries,art gallery and museums, will complement the knowledge gained online to their personal experience and data from direct observation of reality, will use multimedia tools to rebuild and exchange their experience and knowledge (power point, web gallery, word, video graphics, email, chat, videoconferencing), come closer to important masterpieces of our culture and will make an early form of revision through the creative use of ICT . The building of a Wiky will give to the local community in different partners countries to actively wing of the project and to students better organize their work. The final product will consist in realize the fable "The goblins of Four Seasons ",and the building of a website where the story will be published. The story created and the material produced can be used to build a gaming theme for younger children and a book for older children.

Methodology

Will use a heuristic methodology, based on the child's motivation and active and constructive participation of all. The process methodology is based on certain fundamental criteria:

Teaching workshop
The conscious and profitable use of new technologies will facilitate the overcoming of the traditional lecture-type transmission for the creation of an educational workshop designed operating mode in which the pupil construct their knowledge actively, according to the logic of research, throug observation of the facts, the description of relevant aspects, the definition of problems, production of hypotheses, testing operational testing, impersonation / representational of the search paths and / or explanations identified. Web Quest tool will be used to guide students to conduct research in web combining the acquisition of a method of investigation with new technologies.
Cooperative learning.
Great importance will be given to work-sharing and cooperation among students, among them
and teachers in order to overcome the rigid separation of roles and make a real learning communities where teachers and students together reach their goals.
In addition, the synergistic and coordinated use of interactive communication tools between the different partner schools will exceed the vision of the network as a simple container of information for the creation of a cooperative and collaborative environment, where content is generated with the help of throughout the virtual community of students and teachers, thus restoring learning his true nature of social process.
Constructivism
Build an environment of meaningful learning based on problem solving and the operation of the pupil, where those who learners can work helping each other, using a variety of
tools and information resources, enriched by moments of individual reflection and
collective, in which learning is the result of mutual exchange "essentially means giving importance to constructivist teaching.
Blended learning
Convinced that the direct observation of reality is the basis of a valid learning process opt for a type of blended training in which the concrete and real experience of pupil will be alternated with moments of networked learning with partner schools. This learning will be through times of synchronous collaboration (chat, videoconferencing), moments of asynchronous communication (email, forums, wiky, blogs, social networks).

Control of learning

They provide opportunities for verification:
Starting with diagnostic function for acquiring information on pre-existing knowledge of students.
With ongoing training function to capture evidence on the effectiveness of the active route and / or reorientation.
Final summative function to assess whether the disciplinary knowledge and skills have transformed into skills.
The verification shall be effected by:
Observation of social and cognitive behaviors.
Structured and unstructured tests.
Conversations and oral reports.