WHAT WE DID DURING THE PROJECT

Through the 2009-2010 school year we completed the following activities:

1. Presentation of the project to the group involved, parents and teachers.
2. Presentation and information to management team and school board.
3. Comenius corner: Making a point of information about the project with photographs, advertisements and so on. The school community is regularly informed about all aspects of our activities.
4. Creating the project blog (www.comeniusmendebaldea.blogspot.com).
5. Placing information on the webpage of the school and the common project webpage managed by Germany (www.mendebaldea.net and www.equalbylaw.eu ).
6. Trip to Downpatrick (Ireland) and Birmingham (England) for academic school year planning and coordination of activities.
7. Making of an initial content related assessment aimed at students in order to observe their progress achieved at the end.
8. Uploading a photo of the group of students to the website.
9. Placing information about the school in the website.
10. Placement of individual photographs of students in the website.
11. Self-registration of students on the website (creation of email addresses, etc.) (Classroom activity: Computers).
12. Placement in the website of students’ self-descriptions produced by themselves (name, age, family, town, friends, hobbies …) (English).
13. Information about the project published periodically in Mendeberri, our school magazine.
14. Preparation of “Countries Questionnaires” that collect information from the vision of each partner of the other countries (History, English).
15. Production (design, recording, assembly and shipping for publication on the website) of a video with information about the environment, daily life and habits of students (Computers, English, History, Design).
16. Repetition of the “Countries Questionnaires” after viewing the videos of all countries on the web page trying to show the change of image produced. Sending the results to the other partners.
17. Launching the logo contest. As each partner, we have conducted an internal competition to select the best logo of the project. Subsequently we voted to select the best logo among all partners, being chosen the one presented by Germany. Placing information on this matter on the Comenius Corner and the Blog.
18. Sending pictures of the group of students working to Ireland for the creation of a Collage.
19. Classroom activity: analysis of the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen and the Bill of Rights of Virginia (History).
20. Classroom Activities: Human rights' history: background, classification, different generations of rights, analysis and study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its current effect. Relationship between the development of Human Rights and the construction of Europe. (History).
21. Maintenance and periodical renewal of the Comenius Corner and the Blog.
22. Sporadic participation in the chat of the common website Common web page: chats, infromations.
23. Classroom activities: analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Ethics).
24. Classroom activities: work on the subject of homophobia. Creating tests or stories related to this issue. Publication of the best in the Blog of the project. (Sex Education for affective / Alternative to Religion).
25. Classroom activities: Collective reading and analysis through questionnaires and discussions of the book by Miguel Vazquez Freire "What About Human Rights".
26. Preparing for trip to Turkey: briefing with parents of students.
27. Making digital presentations by groups around the issue of human rights history (History, English and Computer Science).
28. Preparation of an exhibition of fundamental rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The students designed a series of panels that were exposed during the cultural week held at school in late March. (History, English, Computers). This activity was also extended to other groups at the same level (ethics) not directly involved in the project, but wanted to contribute.
29. Created bye ach student participant in a group of an essay or story about the general theme of "Equality and Human Rights" The the text was written in Spanish and the best were published in the Blog (Spanish Language).
30. Each student also wrote a poem, again on the general theme of "Equality and Human Rights." The poems were written in Euskera and the best published in the Blog (Basque Language).
31. Assessment Activities: In February we designed a questionnaire which was passed to all partners who answered it. The questionnaire assessed the progress of the project so far so that the coordinators and partners would try to correct any errors. A much broader survey was developed to conduct a thorough assessment at the meeting scheduled for April in Smyrna. Based on the answers and the prior debate in each school the final evaluation of progress was performed at this meeting and remedial action taken for the next academic year 2010-2011.
32. Travel (mobility) to Turkey: Four students and three teachers travelled in April to Turkey to participate in the meeting scheduled for end of term. Students from each participating school will submit a summary of the activities carried out throughout the year. Also participated in joint activities related to the project and planned for them on the days of the meeting (wall painting, excursions ...). The group of teachers made the assessment of project progress to date and sought ways to improve future. The lines for the next meeting in Lithuania were also designed.
33. Detection of points of inequality and violations of human rights in the community. The group of students developed a questionnaire that was subsequently passed by each of them through ten people in their environment. This questionnaire was to gather information to prepare a final report to send to other members.
34. Related with the same issue of identifying points of inequality or human rights violations in the community the students did an activity involving the search for information on NGOs working in some way on behalf of human rights, contacting and interviewing them and developing small reports on their activities Ethics).
35. Selection and comment by the students, some recent news in the press regarding the same issue of identifying points of inequality and violations of human rights in the community. (English).
36. Writing the brief final report "Analysis of Human Rights Situation in Our Own Community" to be sent to all partners. This report will be used as a starting point to begin work next year.

Through the 2010-2011 school year we completed the following activities:

37. Presentation of the project to the new pupils of group involved, new parents and new teachers.
38. Presentation and information to management team and school board.
39. Regular updates to Comenius corner informing about the news related to the project.
40. Updates of the information about the new students to the website: self-descriptions produced by themselves (name, age, family, town, friends, hobbies …), pictures
41. Regular uploads to our blog (www.comeniusmendebaldea.blogspot.com) with the latest news and works on the project.
42. Uploading information on the webpage of the school and the common project webpage managed by Germany (www.mendebaldea.net and www.equalbylaw.eu).
43. Travel (mobility) to Kaunas (Lithuania) for academic school year planning and coordination of activities: two teachers met other teachers from other countries to assess activities done during last school year. We also defined main objectives and activities for the school year. All schools would analyse four topics connected with equality: Freedom of speech, social background and education, handicapped people and equality and gender equality.
44. Initial content related assessment aimed at students in order to observe their progress achieved at the end.
45. Information about the project (Articles and interviews) published periodically in “Mendeberri”, our school magazine.
46. New final repetition of the “countries questionnaires” for evaluating the amendments made since the project started (English, History). To share the results with the other partners.
47. Regular participation of the students in the common website forums in order to keep partners informed of our activities and to know about other members’ activities.
48. Meeting with Philosophy Department and Basque teachers in order to plan joint activities.
49. Classroom activities: team work: Students got into different groups to research on one of the above mentioned topics (freedom of speech, social background and education, handicapped people and equality and gender equality). Making digital presentations and materials in groups about their respective issue. Publication of the results in the blog (History and English).
50. Classroom activities: Each team kept a diary of the work done and task to be fulfilled by other members. (History and English).
51. Classroom activities: Students analysed laws connected with the topics (English)
52. Classroom activities: Students spotted, summarized and translated news related to the topics. (English, History).
53. Classroom activities: Students interviewed people who worked in associations in favour of equality. They transcribed the interviews and translated them into English. (English, History).
54. Classroom activities: Out of their research based on these tasks, they drew their own conclusions. (English, History).
55. Classroom activities: Every two weeks students wrote a brief account of what they were doing on the webpage of the project so that students from other countries would get new ideas. (English).
56. Preparing for trip to Germany: briefing with students’ parents and meeting with students.
57. Organization and development of a photo contest about Equality:

a. Rules and prizes design. Students and/or their families could present original photos and a title connected to the four topics of equality.

b. Looking for sponsorship: interviews with companies for the selection of sponsors.

c. Dissemination and publicity of the contest.

d. Exhibition of a selection of works presented.

e. Jury selection and award ceremony.

58. Participation in the School cultural week through the photo exhibition of works that took part in the in the contest and the award ceremony.
59. Preparing for trip to Poland: briefing with students’ parents.
60. Trip (mobility) to Germany: Two teachers and ten students went to Friesoythe. Teachers met to assess work done and plan end of project activities. Students worked in international groups about one of the topics and presented their conclusions to the others.
61. Classroom activities: Students wrote about their host families in Germany. These writings were displayed at the Comenius Corner. (English).
62. Countries questionnaires were answered again and we drew conclusions about the progress made (English).
63. Classroom activities: Initial questionnaires were answered again and we drew conclusions about the changes made (History).
64. Classroom activities: A theoretical work and reflection on the issue of equality in the subjects of philosophy and psychology. Students wrote a reflection on equality in philosophy class. (Psychology, Philosophy).
65. Classroom activities: Students worked on how to build an essay. As a result, using the ideas worked in classes in philosophy and psychology, they wrote an essay in Basque language about how to be more equal (How Can We Be More Equal?). The best ones were translated into English. (Basque Language).
66. Meeting with students and teachers to prepare mobility to Poland.
67. Trip to Poland: Three teachers and eight students travelled to Lodz. While the teachers assessed worked done and decided main points about final publication, the students answered questions about Poland, worked on several case studies on topics, prepared a symbolic act, etc.
68. Assessment Activities: Design assessment questionnaires before each meeting in order to pass them to every partner, assessment of the work in each school and evaluation of the common project at the corresponding meeting. A wider questionnaire was designed for a final evaluation assessment.
69. Regular reports of project progress and activities in meetings with the management team.
70. Information on the project progress, plans and activities in the staff meetings.

ASSESSMENT

Final assessment. May 2011

Throughout the project we have conducted several evaluations aimed to correct shortcomings and improve our work and our results. At each meeting an evaluation questionnaire was delivered to all the schools to be discussed. The following results are a summary of the final evaluation that was done in Lodz (Poland) taking into account the objectives we set at the beginning.

Regarding the dissemination actions, all the schools have organised and carried out diffusion activities addressed to the students, their families and the staff and most of the schools activities have been addressed to the local community as well. School magazines, educational magazines, local newspapers, families’ participation in mobilities, information meetings, questionnaires, surveys and Comenius corners have been the most useful ways of diffusion. But the project has also been disseminated in seminars, conferences and particularly in temporary exhibitions (photographs, students’ works, notice boards and so on). And, finally, we have to make special mention of the broadcast on the Internet of our common webpage, of webpages of schools and project school blogs. We have intensified the relationship between the school and its setting by means of an appropriate dissemination of the direct participation in the project by using surveys, testimony records, talks, etc.

The use of ICT has increased among students, participant teachers and, although it is more difficult to detect, among the rest of the staff in some cases.

As expected, students’ awareness of being part of a European society and a multicultural society has increased. The same can be said about their knowledge of other European people and cultures, mainly through project meetings, but also through project activities, e.g. countries questionnaire, introductory questionnaire, etc. It is interesting to note that this feeling has been partly extended to staff. We have boosted the contact and mobility among students and teachers from different countries of the European Union. Most of the schools did a lot of mobilities (more than 30 in most cases).

The fact of developing teamwork and cooperating among European students has reduced the stereotyped ideas about other countries. We confirm this through several questionnaires, but we also noted that sometimes the stereotypes have been confirmed.

The use and interest in our knowledge of other European languages ​​has been clearly increased among students, and to some extent among teachers (obviously not among all of them). The improvement in the use of the languages has been general. We found the only exception between students and teachers whose mother Language is English. Finally, although in a more limited way, we consider that we have also endorsed the use of minority languages of the European Union.

The students have a different point of view concerning Europe and being a European citizen nowadays. For example some of them want to study abroad. We have established habits and coexistence patterns based on dialogue and tolerance and promoted respect towards other races, cultures and ideas and boosted pacific cooperation among them. Contact between Christian and muslin students provoked a better understanding.

Although it has been difficult to measure, we all consider that Pupils´ initial attitudes towards human rights have changed so that now they are more favourable to their effective implantation. All the schools judge that through the encouragement of the knowledge and the respect of human rights as one of the essential pillars of the coexistence and the European culture we have reinforced and disseminated the defence of human rights and we have spread the positive experiences of the different partners. We have detected, identified, studied and analysed inequalities in our own communities and we have generated positive attitudes supporting equality and equal rights fulfilment

We have exchanged experiences and strategies about solution of conflicts and analysed possible positive attitudes supporting equality.We have shared them among our communities contributing our experiences to the other partners. Particularly, the awareness of equal rights and opportunities for women and men, races, religion and social background. Also, based on dialogue and consciousness, the awareness of the need of equality of all political options has been increased. These results were particularly visible when we worked in international teams during the meetings. The students could learn from each other about solutions.

With regard to the values for a European citizenship, we have not worked them directly but as a logical consequence of the whole project. The notion of citizenship, as understood before the project, has expanded. Now the students are aware of the fact that they are not only citizens of their own country, but also of the whole European community. Knowledge, values and attitudes related to the European dimension well be included in the curriculum for next school year in some of our schools, but this integration won’t take place in all cases.

Something similar occurs with respect to the incorporation of materials on cultural diversity. Some schools will make curriculum modifications, but not all of them. In some cases activities about European Citizenship or cultural diversity have been included as a part of after school activities.

Special mention deserves the improvement on students’ social competences and skills and the progress on their ability of communication. This has not always been worked directly but it is a logical consequence. The best way to confirm it is to see how students (and teachers) talk about their experiences. And, of course, social networks, blogs and web pages have played a decisive role as channels of communication.

All our schools have clearly raised their self-esteem, and we have established cooperation habits with other European people for the future. Some students have expressed a desire to travel and some are thinking of studying abroad.

We have reinforced cooperation with local institutions, although on a limited scale, and only in some of the schools. We enabled them to participate in the project through sponsorship or other aids.

When we write these lines after the evaluation carried out in our last meeting in Lodz, our intention is to gather our experiences, contributions and all materials used during the project in a final publication. We can not assess the result yet, but hopefully, we will make it available to anyone who would like to make use of it.

THE COMENIUS PROJECT: A SUMMARY OF STUDENTS´ EXPERIENCES

Students were asked to write an essay where they would describe what their experiences taking part in this project had been like. Here is a summary of the ideas they most mentioned:

• Travelling itself was very valued especially because the places were very attractive and, in some cases, unusual. Moreover, for some of the students it was the first time travelling abroad or going aboard a plane

• To get to know different people and cultures during the trips done to other countries: many students took the opportunity of going to a foreign country and staying with host families. They could meet people of different origins and stay in their houses for a few days. In this way, they learned other customs and traditions. Also, some of them made friends with other students and keep in touch with them. When the possibility of staying with families students was not possible, they could travel to the country, know different towns, visit schools and share work and free time with other European students and teachers.

• Together with travelling abroad, they could practice English and they realized what important speaking was and they were motivated to practice more so as to get more fluency, improve pronounciation and acquire more vocabulary.

• By working on Human Rights, especially on the four topics they concentrated on, the more they researched ,the more interest they showed. After all the work done, some students have said that apart from knowing more things about the topics, they are also more conscious of the aspects they have to change so as to change the world step by step and be more equal.

• Team work and projects have also been pointed out by students: They have found the work hard but enjoyable. They list the following activities: they made questionnaires and surveys, selected some news, made summaries and translated them. Then, they made their own comments ralated to the topics. As final projects, they made power-point presentations and murals, wrote essays, poems, stories and a team diary.

ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS IN OUR OWN COMMUNITY

This is the report made at the end of the 2009-2010 course on equality and human rights in our community. It’s addressed in particular to the situations of inequality. This information will form the basis for the work of the coming months.

Pasa den ikasturtearen bukaeran, jarraian dagoen txostena prestatu genuen. Bertan giza eskubideen eta ezberdintasun sozialen egoera aztertzen dira. Lan hau, hurrengo hilabetetako lanaren oinarria izango da.

Este es el informe que se envió a todos los socios a finales del pasado curso. En él se tratan de detectar las situaciones de desigualdad en nuestra comunidad. Este trabajo servirá de base para el trabajo de los próximos meses.
.

ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS IN OUR OWN COMMUNITY (MENDEBALDEA, Vitoria-Gasteiz)

ACTIVITIES:
We carried out three activities to assess the situation of Human Rights in our community:
1. Students prepared thirteen questions to make a diagnosis of the situation of Human Rights. Each of them interviewed ten people and we present the conclusions on a chart.
2. Students interviewed volunteers from several non-governmental organizations which work on behalf of physically or mentally handicapped people.
3. Students had to spot some news appeared on the local or national newspapers which showed violations of Human Rights and they had to translate them into English.

CONCLUSIONS:
1) Diagnosis based on a questionnaire:

Area People concerned about
Discrimination against immigrants 84 %
Discrimination against ideas or religion 83 %
Equality of opportunities 78,2 %
Arbitrary interference with people’s privacy 77,9 %
Equality before the law 77,2 %
Respect for workers’ rights 75,5 %
Right to life 72,6 %
Equal rights for men and women 57,8 %
Freedom of expression 50,5 %
Same opportunities for all political options 48, 9 %
Right to take part in elections for all political parties 48,4 %
Practice of torture. 44,3 %
Equality of opportunities in education 23,8 %

2) The analysis and making contact with various NGOs (Oxfam, Amnesty International, ONCE…) chosen freely by the students have focused on organizations working for equality of different types of physical and mental disabilities, human rights and the fight against poverty.

3) We paid attention to the news appeared on the newspapers reflecting violation of Human Rights. Most of the news selected dealt with genre violence which related killings of women perpetrated by men. Some others showed discrimination against immigrants, especially female immigrants.

WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR

Through the school year we have completed the following activities
1. Presentation of the project to the group involved, parents and teachers.
2. Presentation and information to management team and school board.
3. Comenius corner: Making a point of information about the project with photographs, advertisements and so on. The school community is regularly informed about all aspects of our activities.
4. Creating the project blog (www.comeniusmendebaldea.blogspot.com)
5. Placing information on the webpage of the school and the common project webpage managed by Germany (www.mendebaldea.net and www.equalbylaw.eu )
6. Trip to Downpatrick (Ireland) and Birmingham (England) for academic school year planning and coordination of activities.
7. Making of an initial content related assessment aimed at students in order to observe their progress achieved at the end.
8. Uploading a photo of the group of students to the website.
9. Placing information about the school in the website.
10. Placement of individual photographs of students in the website.
11. Self-registration of students on the website (creation of email addresses, etc.) (Classroom activity: Computers).
12. Placement in the website of students’ self-descriptions produced by themselves (name, age, family, town, friends, hobbies …) (English).
13. Information about the project published periodically in Mendeberri, our school magazine
14. Preparation of “Countries Questionnaires” that collect information from the vision of each partner of the other countries (History, English).
15. Production (design, recording, assembly and shipping for publication on the website) of a video with information about the environment, daily life and habits of students (Computers, English, History, Design).
16. Repetition of the “Countries Questionnaires” after viewing the videos of all countries on the web page trying to show the change of image produced. Sending the results to the other partners.
17. Launching the logo contest. As each partner, we have conducted an internal competition to select the best logo of the project. Subsequently we voted to select the best logo among all partners, being chosen the one presented by Germany. Placing information on this matter on the Comenius Corner and the Blog.
18. Sending pictures of the group of students working to Ireland for the creation of a Collage.
19. Classroom activity: analysis of the French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen and the Bill of Rights of Virginia (History).
20. Classroom Activities: Human rights' history: background, classification, different generations of rights, analysis and study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its current effect. Relationship between the development of Human Rights and the construction of Europe. (History).
21. Maintenance and periodical renewal of the Comenius Corner and the Blog.
22. Sporadic participation in the chat of the common website Common web page: chats, infromations.
23. Classroom activities: analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Ethics)
24. Classroom activities: work on the subject of homophobia. Creating tests or stories related to this issue. Publication of the best in the Blog of the project. (Sex Education for affective / Alternative to Religion).
25. Classroom activities: Collective reading and analysis through questionnaires and discussions of the book by Miguel Vazquez Freire "What About Human Rights".
26. Preparing for trip to Turkey: briefing with parents of students.
27. Making digital presentations by groups around the issue of human rights history (History, English and Computer Science).
28. Preparation of an exhibition of fundamental rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The students designed a series of panels that were exposed during the cultural week held at school in late March. (History, English, Computers). This activity was also extended to other groups at the same level (ethics) not directly involved in the project, but wanted to contribute.
29. Created bye ach student participant in a group of an essay or story about the general theme of "Equality and Human Rights" The the text was written in Spanish and the best were published in the Blog (Spanish Language).
30. Each student also wrote a poem, again on the general theme of "Equality and Human Rights." The poems were written in Euskera and the best published in the Blog (Basque Language).
31. Assessment Activities: In February we designed a questionnaire which was passed to all partners who answered it. The questionnaire assessed the progress of the project so far so that the coordinators and partners would try to correct any errors. A much broader survey was developed to conduct a thorough assessment at the meeting scheduled for April in Smyrna. Based on the answers and the prior debate in each school the final evaluation of progress was performed at this meeting and remedial action taken for the next academic year 2010-2011.
32. Travel (mobility) to Turkey: Four students and three teachers travelled in April to Turkey to participate in the meeting scheduled for end of term. Students from each participating school will submit a summary of the activities carried out throughout the year. Also participated in joint activities related to the project and planned for them on the days of the meeting (wall painting, excursions ...). The group of teachers made the assessment of project progress to date and sought ways to improve future. The lines for the next meeting in Lithuania were also designed.
33. Detection of points of inequality and violations of human rights in the community. The group of students developed a questionnaire that was subsequently passed by each of them through ten people in their environment. This questionnaire was to gather information to prepare a final report to send to other members.
34. Related with the same issue of identifying points of inequality or human rights violations in the community the students did an activity involving the search for information on NGOs working in some way on behalf of human rights, contacting and interviewing them and developing small reports on their activities Ethics).
35. Selection and comment by the students, some recent news in the press regarding the same issue of identifying points of inequality and violations of human rights in the community. (English).
36. Writing the brief final report "Analysis of Human Rights Situation in Our Own Community" to be sent to all partners. This report will be used as a starting point to begin work next year.

COUNTRIES QUESTIONNAIRES

In September we filled a questionnaire on knowledge of our partners. We returned to complete it in early 2010and after the first contacts and viewing the videos they did, some of our views had changed.

Report: What the pupils from Mendebaldea have known about their partners, after finishing the first part of the project in February 2010.

They thought Lithuanians were brown or blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned and tall. Now they have confirmed these previous ideas and they have also known that they are friendly and good people. The famous Lithuanians they keep knowing are basketball players. They also mention some dishes they have learnt such as saltibarsciai or cepelinai. And, of course, they have learnt that the most important faith in Lithuania is Catholicism and the national sport is Basketball.

They thought Irish people were blond-haired or red-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned and friendly. They have corroborated this idea and now they also know that Irish are funny, nice, good and young! As at the beginning, they know some famous Irish celebrities, but there is no one standing out from the others, with the exception of Colin Farrell. There is nothing new about food or sports (except for the mention of horse-riding). Finally, they have learnt that our Irish partners are Catholic.

They know nothing new about Polish people


They thought Germans were fair-skinned, fair-haired, and tall. This perception has not changed, but now they also believe they are funny people. Clearly, the most known person now is Angela Merkel. They associated German food mostly with sausages, but now they have learned about kartoffelsalat. It’s not very clear for them if Germans are Catholic or Protestant. But what they know for sure is that the most popular sport is football.

It has turned out that Turkish people are less dark than they had supposed. They find them friendly, happy and good people. There have not been any changes in their perception about food (donner kebab), celebrities or religion. But there are some changes about sports: at the beginning they mentioned only football and basketball, and now they can talk about a wide range of sports (swimming, volleyball, windsurfs…)

And finally they have learnt that in England all people do not look like the same; in fact, there are many different appearances and, surprisingly, a lot of people are dark-haired. Now they know that there are diverse religions in England (Christians, Muslims…). However, they have not changed their perception about famous people (they mention a lot of different celebrities but none of them stands out from the rest). Neither about food (being fish and chips most mentioned) or sports. They think that they are good students and good people. Some of them believe that they are serious and others that they are funny people.