This summer I took advantage of having the murals back in my possession and had an exhabition within the local cultural centre.
We have now reached the sponsorship of three children from Africa
This was and is only possible because of you and your students hard work.
Lets keep going we are leading the way installing Peace and at the same time helping our students gain values.
An education provided for a child in need,the first of many.
Sponsored by infant teachers of Elisabeth.
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=znN1eqIZOHjw.kiW03c8701-0
The bird of peace will soon spread its wings.
The new 2014 European Youth Murals tour is begining to take shape.
Your culture our culture is joining together with the language of art.
http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/profile.cfm?fuseaction=app.project&pid=86333&lang=en
Curricular integration
With this project students can develop different skills : improve the teaching and learning of the English language; increase the use of ICT; improve the relationships and the knowledge among schools and cultural backgrounds in Europe; develop the main competences though different activities: Treatment of information and Digital competence, Linguistic Communicative competence, Knowledge and interaction, citizenship, Cultural and Artistic competences, Autonomy and personal initiative competence. Students can show and increase their creativity while they create the murals, write short texts or produce different works (powerpoint /prezi presentations, short videos and blog entries). Most of the works are produced in English and Visual Education Lessons, but they include contents of other subjects such as sciences, geography, history and citizenship in cooperation with the school library team.
Cooperation
The idea of creating murals and short texts to share on the twinspace and in a blog is deeply based on cooperative work. The founding school Elizabeth gave the partners all the necessary instructions and guidelines to particirate in the project, so that the participant teachers and students could work together and at their own rhythms/ pace, in order to develop the items and main subjects chosen .Students worked in groups to create the murals. Throughout the project ideas and suggestions are exchanged between the participant teachers on the twinspace (there are now 175 teachers on the twinspace )
Creativity in ICT use
Each participant school was free to use the software/ ICT tools teachers and students considered most suitable to achieve the aims of the project , in order to enhance the production of the murals and as a way to show their art works, either on the twinspace or website. On the twinspace students can also learn about other web 2.0 tools that their partners have selected to show their murals (for instance photo puzzle, photo decorator, photoPeach. Voki, glogster, blogspot, WordPress, among others). Lousã team has worked on prezi, powerpoint, Photopeach, MovieMaker, Microsoft autocollage etc. Creativity can be shown and developed while students produce the murals, write messages and short articles and create presentations for the twinspace and blog.
Transferability
The first 2012/2013 Murals exhibition will take place at the Founder school Elizabeth and it will “travel” to other participant schools to be shown at their local communities.
Some of the works can be used and presented at the school library and also inVisual Education, Geography,
History, Sciences, English, ICT and Citizenship lessons.
Students and teachers can learn more about the different European countries/ regions, culture and partner schools.
Results
The final work is a Murals exhibition which will “travel” to different countries/schools. Students have the opportunity to develop creativity and cooperative work, using Art, as a universal language, to express their feelings, concepts and to show their cultural patrimonies – this way they will respect their own culture and learn to be tolerant to diversity. They will learn more about other countries and cultures and it will help them to feel they are European Citizens.The project enables teachers and students from different countries to earn together and improve their Art, language and ICT skills. They can improve ICT skills and use Art and English in real and effective situations.
Bringung lerning to life and life into lerning
https://theartofenglishwithteachernick.wordpress.com/
We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice. And if we choose to do so, we can help put an end to suffering and the causes of suffering, Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes, we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others. That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it. In today’s highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of their problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility . . . It is our collective and individual responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live. Sometimes we feel that one individual’s action is very insignificant. Then we think, of course, that effects should come from channeling or from a unifying movement. But the movement of the society, community or group of people means joining individuals. Society means a collection of individuals, so that initiative must come from individuals. Unless each individual develops a sense of responsibility, the whole community cannot move. So therefore, it is very essential that we should not feel that individual effort is meaningless- you should not feel that way. We should make an effort. We can’t blame one individual for what happens in our world. I think we should blame our entire society. Society produces our leaders and politicians, and if we try to develop a more compassionate and affectionate society, we will have human beings with a more peaceful nature. Leaders, politicians, and businesspeople coming from such a society would offer hope for a better world. Our long-term responsibility–everyone’s responsibility, whether they are believers or nonbelievers–is to find ways to promote a peaceful and compassionate society. I think one way is quite simple. Each individual must try to ensure peace and compassion in his [or her] family. Put together ten peaceful, compassionate homes, or one hundred, and that’s a community. The children in such a society would receive affection in their family and in their schools from the educators concerned. We might have one or two setbacks, but generally I think we could develop a sensible society. Sensible here means a sense of community, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of commitment. Look around us at this world that we call “civilized” and that for more than 2,000 years has searched to obtain happiness and avoid suffering by false means: trickery, corruption, hate, abuse of power, and exploitation of others. We have searched only for individual and material happiness, opposing people against each other, one race against another, social systems against others. This has led to a time of fear, of suffering, murder, and famine. If in India, Africa, and other countries, misery and famine rule, it is not because natural resources are lacking, nor that the means of bringing about lasting well-being are flawed. It is because each person has looked only for his own profit without fear of oppressing others for selfish goals, and this sad and pitiful world is the result. The root of this civilization is rotten, the world suffers, and if it continues in this way, it will suffer more and more. War, sadly, has remained a part of human history up to the present, but I think the time has come to change the concepts that lead to war. We can help as educators with directions of understanding about other cultures within a universal language. our century is very important historically for the planet. There is a big competition between world peace and world war, between the force of mind and the force of materialism, between democracy and totalitarianism. And now within this century, the force of peace is gaining the upper hand. Still, of course, the material force is very strong, but there is a kind of dissatisfaction about materialism and a realization or feeling that something is missing. …entering the twenty-first century, I think the basic concerns are human values and the value of truth. These things have more value, more weight now.
It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act. There are two aspects to action. One is to overcome the distortions and afflictions of your own mind, that is, in terms of calming and eventually dispelling anger. This is action out of compassion. The other is more social, more public. When something needs to be done in the world to rectify the wrongs, if one is really concerned with benefiting others, one needs to be engaged, involved.
CONTACT – europeanyouthmurals@hotmail.com
European youth murals 