Projet Etwinning: A world without books

This project is based on Fahrenheit 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury, and a short story entitled The Fun They Had by Isaac Asimov and was aimed to make the students think about the role of books and their destruction along history, about the consequences of the pandemic on school, and about teaching and learning processes.

The first steps

Apart from the traditional ice breaking activities and choosing a logo, a collaborative timeline, a collaborative e-magazine, a collaborative video and other tasks were proposed.
The aim of this project is to make students aware of the importance of books in our society, in sharing knowledge and collective memory. It is linked to our now traditional reading break, which has been going on for 3 years in our school, during which almost all the classes read in silence for 15 minutes every Thursday afternoon.
So, the project began with a survey about the students’ reading habits and a series of videos to watch on the benefits of reading an open online discussion with the partners on the topic.

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The differents skills aimed at

The different tasks proposed were very varied and allowed to improve all the language skills such as reading, speaking, writing, etc., but also technological skills and communication skills. The teachers of this project are aware of the importance of these skills in the job market and want their students to be able to think on their own and express their opinions. For them the role of school is not limited to give knowledge, but also to know where to find it , to be able to analyze it (critical thinking), to deal with it and implement it and to discuss it with others.
The students worked individually and in small groups depending on the task. They were asked to research and select the relevant information to introduce Ray Bradbury, then to create games about this author in order to have the others play.

The use of applications and the discovery of new skills was linked to almost every task. We began to use Bitmoji and Voki for education to have the students introduce themselves, they had to create games to know the partners, their schools and their countries and cities. They also had fun creating Book faces.

So, applications such as Kahoot, Doozy or learning apps were integrated in the process. Google docs and Google slides or canva were a good way to create collaborative products such as a timeline about the history of book destruction.

Evaluation

An important aspect of the project is evaluation; indeed, every step of the project is evaluated by the students either by a survey or a Flipgrid or Toontastic activity (oral assessment).
Every term the students had a mark based on their investment and the number of items they had carried out.
ETwinning projects are totally integrated in the curriculum here, it is based on the axis n°5 fiction and reality.

Productions

• The students also learned how to create a film; after reading The Fun They Had, they created their own collaborative adaptation of the short story. They had to imagine the dialogues, sketch the storyboard and shoot their part of the story.

• As the reading proposed was mostly science fiction, the students created a collaborative e-book about the must read science fiction books or must see science fiction movies .

• The last part of the project was about e-education and the future of education. The students were asked to present orally their ideal school and the matter was discussed online with the partners as a closing activity.

Conclusion