Blog of the Digital Bridges project, Erasmus+
Some thoughts by German student Emily Martin:
I think the digital bridges project this year was quite difficult. I thought it would be a good opportunity to improve my language skills and to get to know new people. I got the E-mail addresses of two Swedish students and we had some contact via Snapchat and Instagram. Unfortunately I got the impression that the Swedish students weren’t very interested in the project. I texted them several times. One of the student answered sometimes, the other one didn’t answer at all. In case they had a problem with understanding or writing English I offered to they to write in Spanish what I knew is their mother tongue. There were still just a few messages. About maths the students didn’t talk at all.
I got an E-mail of a Swedish woman who asked for an Interview. She told me that the Swedish students said that they missed important lessons because of the project and in general they didn’t like the working hours.
I think the project can be a very good opportunity for intercultural communication but it is important to find a way how everyone wants to work on the project. For the future it could be a lot of fun for the German and Swedish students to get to know other people.
Dear Ylva and the others who are interested in art,
At GCLG the “Kunstmeile” opened. Its a yearly art exhibition which shows some results of different age groups. They are presenting variously genres like painting, sculpturing, performing, installing, etc.
I hope we are able to visit your exhibition nearby Rudbeck, when we come to visit.
Hope you enjoy it, see you soon!
with the best wishes
Eva
Here are some impressions of the opening.
In the subject mathematics, Marcus Wreber and Matthias Heitmann started a new cooperation, where Matthias’ students are supporting Marcus’ group of students, who are taking a course in basic-level maths. Marcus’ students regularly get a homework containing a variety of topics. Matthias’ students get these homework as well, but they support, answer questions ans explain using digital devices. Here’s an example of the work Deba and Abol are doing:
My digital bridges mate Abol and I worked on the topic linear functions and on exponential. First of all I wrote to him, if he needs help, he can ask me in farsi. After I wrote him he asked me to help him (tasks are in the appendix). Then I just explained in farsi how to solve the tasks and I also explained him what a logarithm is and for what you use it.
– in the first task he inserted the x variable into the equations to find out which of these equations is suitable for the table
-then i taught him what a logarithm is and how you can solve it with the calculator
With kind regards
Deba Siddiqi
Here the worksheet with the informations and the assignments for the german students. We are curious expecting the results.
We spent three fruitful and constructive days with students and teachers of the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg School. We were given the opportunity to visit the school and sit in during lessons, giving our students the opportunity to reflect and comparing the Swedish and German School Systems. We also visited the Art fair “Documenta 14″ together. There we did some workshops and talked about art, identity, human rights among many other subjects. Our students from Rudbecksskolan are enrolled in the Aesthetics- and Media-programs and supposed to writing their exam papers with the visit at the Art Fair “Documenta 14” as a starting point. The result will be presented as an Artwork at our annual exhibition at Edsvik Konsthall in Sollentuna.
The work process will be initiated during the “Documenta 14 visit and develop into a digital contact and cooperation with the students of the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg Schule. The students will work under the theme, “Roots”, and develop an artistic digital dialog. The visit and the actual meeting with the students will hopefully facilitate further digital contact and a greater sense of meaningfulness in the cooperation.
Ylva Sanner, teacher in Art and Media at Rudbecksskolan
Between 30th August and 2nd September three Swedish students and their two teachers were in Kassel to visit the documenta exhibition.
The interim report testifies a good project work according to the standard of strategic partnerships within Erasmus+. Despite mentioned initial difficulties and organizational problems both partners have succeeded in completing exciting sub-projects so that the achievement of the goals can be expected at the end of the contract period.
This report consists of the following main sections:
Project Management and Implementation
Please provide an overall state of play of your project: what are the achievements of the project at this stage? Are the initial project activities and objectives being carried out and reached so far?
Slow start due to many participants (about 20 teachers and 120 students) and different time concepts in Sweden and in Germany, but… Read More
This will start negative but I hope that you will read on and find that this project has given, at least me, a lot of ideas on how to use communication with other students from a different country to enhance students understanding of math. I hope that my students also has discovered new ways to look at math and how to communicate it to others.
There has been a number of obstacles to overcome in this project, regarding math. Most of them can be traced back to the compact courses at Rudbeck, there’s a lot of content that has to be taught in a short time. This makes it hard to find time for students to work on something that might not be in their current course but can give them knowledge that will help them with their understanding of math.
Me and Matthias have found ways to work around these problems to a good degree. Both our courses progress in pretty much the same way but they don’t match time wise. We solved this problem by letting the students send problems to each other on material from my last course and Matthias current one. Since I couldn’t use these problems for grading in my current course I instead focused on the communication between the students more than the actual math itself. Later on we switched and let Matthias’ students work on the imaginary numbers which was in my last course. Read More
