This School Collaboration combined various tasks and methods to equip students with practical life lessons “What makes a happy life”? In today’s work, individuals and societies often focus solely on success and money. In the school context, educators prepare students for exams and mainly teach them how to deal with professional problems. They often forget and underestimate the importance of teaching about values to build a happy life. Shouldn’t teachers also be guides for their students and help them stay happy and fulfilled? In this School Collaboration, teachers helped students explore questions about happiness and teach them necessary soft skills to improve their self-confidence.
“Postcard from the Edge” engaged students in a global writing community to experience the pleasure of writing and to express their thoughts with peers from Asia and Europe. This School Collaboration built empathy and a sense of urgency among young writers to develop a greater understanding of themselves, their own and other cultures. The writing journey began with hand-written postcards and ended with poems, essays and stories published on a joint blog.
“Around the World in 70 Days – The Backpackers” was a sequel School Collaboration from 2018 that created a backpacker trip itinerary across both Asia and Europe. Students planned a detailed journey in their own countries based on a 7-day schedule and linked it with the itinerary of school peers abroad. The itinerary included routes, modes of transportation, hotels, must-visit places, local cuisine and a sightseeing programmed. The final product was a travel guidebook published on a travel blog, and maybe inspire students and teachers for their future holiday plans.
The School Collaboration “Cultural Immersion” invited students to collaborate with global peers to chalk out cultural changes and developments in their respective local communities and societies. Students learnt and shared similarities and differences of their countries & cultures, ranging from daily lifestyle to traditional beliefs and celebrations. By using pictorial depictions, photo stories, facts and personal experiences, students were invited to exchange views and conclude whether geographical boundaries are only a cartographer’s creation.
“Our Stories in Photographs” provided students the opportunity to develop photographic skills and to express themselves and their views through photography. The Students explored three domains: 1) home/personal, 2) school and 3) public. They decided on the focus, location and perspective and produce photo storyboards with captions and/or short narratives. All photos were shared on a joint e-platform to create a large photo collage. The photo collage was transformed into postcards, and the students are invited to send them to their partners as a symbol of friendship or to be collated collectively to create a walk-through gallery at the end of the School Collaboration.
“My Travel Postcard” revived the communication medium of postcards and the excitement of sending and receiving them. The first postcard dates to the late 18th century. With the advent of technology, the use of postcards and their significance are slowly diminishing, and, likewise, their evidences are vanishing. This School Collaboration invited students to create digital postcards to showcase places of historical/cultural significance and to write a short story. Weekly online quizzes were conducted based on the cards posted online. All digital postcards were collected for a digital photo album.
This collaboration allowed students to learn about their own history and cultures as well as others by doing research and collaborations focusing on minerals and stones.
This collaboration enabled the students to plan trip itineraries for backpackers both in Asia and Europe. The students collaborated and selected routes in their home counties which were of potential interests to the foreign tourists. The School Collaboration created backpacker trips of 7 days long. These itineraries covered both Asia and Europe including valuable information on transportation, accommodation, must-visit places and local gastronomic specialties.
“The Bridge – Connecting Two Things Or More!” allowed students to dive into the historical connections and cultures of their own as well as other countries.
A sequel project from “KWARTED! A Card Game for Four,” this collaboration allowed students to widen their language skills and knowledge of another country by developing a kwartet game. This edition focused on history.