CyberFair Project ID: 4985

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Eropean Union - Diverse people, one union
Category: 6. Historical Landmarks
URL: http://www.ab-bg.com/eu
Bibliography: http://www.ab-bg.com/eu/project.html

School: A&B school
    Shumen, Shumen, Bulgaria

2 students, ages 16, 16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 12, 2007. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2007

Classes and Teachers: George, Nikolay, Mr. Angel Angelov and Mr. Krasimir Harizanov

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.ab-bg.com

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Team

Our team consists of two members – George and Nikolay. It was George’s main obligation to find information, organize it and prepare it to use , but he also helped to create the most appropriate site design; Nikolay who is art orientated had the job to create design both simple and convenient. Our team had most problems with the realization of the site, and that’s what our coaches took part in. Mr. Angel Angelov, who is the leading web programmer in the school helped us a lot with creating the source and Mr. Krasimir Harizanov helped with our intro and doing the script for our test. We joined together to create this project, because the European Union is such a great institution, but there aren’t enough sites providing information about the history and the organization of the union. After our country joined the union this year we decided that it would be great to facilitate our coevals’ curiosity about The European Union.

2. Summary of Our Project

“European Union- Diverse people, one union” is a multimedia project, teaching about the history, organization and goals of the European Union, as well as past European policy initiatives and significant historical events in European diplomacy. Our project aims at informing students about the importance of the European Union, its role in the world diplomacy and its effectiveness and impact on the lives of all the 493 million people living there.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

We are in a programming school, we have 10 computers in each classroom, each with broad band connection and each of us has a personal computer connected to the internet at home, which was very important for our group. We used the internet to communicate, share information, ideas, opinions and everything connected with making our website.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

We had several problems during the creation of our project. Firstly we had to gather information, which was, as we thought, very hard to do, because of the lack of time and appropriate information. Then we had to make it brief and understandable, which itself also needed great amount of time and the lack of such occurred to be our greatest problem. We decided to take part in the contest only four weeks before the deadline and that meant a lot of work had to be done very fast. We had also some problems with doing our intro, because we both had only basic skills on Flash but with the help of our coaches who took off their precious time, we managed to create something we are proud of.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The European Union is a true proof how diverse people can be united in one common goal - freedom, justice, economic stability, peace. And that’s a lesson all people have to learn - 'Unity makes strength'.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Since our country (Bulgaria) joined the European Union, studying the EU history, organization and tasks has become an important part of our curriculum. Our team’s main goal was to present our classmates and teachers with a multimedia project teaching about the European Union in an interesting manner. And a website is much more interesting than reading an incomprehensible book. Our classmates and teachers liked our project, because it is easy to understand and the students liked the information and the pictures, which really helped them understand the EU better. The teachers really liked the Test we made, because it offers questions in various areas of the EU. We think the internet is more effective than traditional methods for teaching and learning, because it offers students the opportunity to teach themselves and the information it provides is easier to understand than the books and articles our teachers use.

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Project Elements

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

Technology played a very important part in the creation of our project. We used telephones and the internet to coordinate our efforts and email to share information, notes and ideas about our project. We used the internet mainly to find information and pictures for our website and also books and articles. The most helpful software we used was Adobe Photoshop for our website design, Macromedia Flash for the intro and Dreamweaver to create the source of our website. Our team used every possible tool to make this website better.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

Our ambassador work included numerous activities. First, we presented our website to our classmates and teachers, we sent e-mails to our friends to make them aware of our project and support us. We also wrote an article about our website, and it was published in our school’s newspaper and we distributed flyers about our website in our school and in the library. Also, we used researches, pictures, documents and tests for other people to learn more about The European Union and then test their knowledge. They can also post articles, links to sites or other useful information, concerning the EU, in our forum.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

“European union- Diverse people, one union” is aimed at raising awareness of global politics and in particular, the politics in Europe. Our project is already making a difference, having been presented in our school. A lot of students learned things about the European Union they didn’t know before, and our team is hoping that one day some of these students will create the new generation of politicians and government officials. We also hope that when our project is published on the “Doors to Diplomacy” official website, it will make a difference in many countries around the world. One of our team’s goals was also to show the students how the EU helps humanity and how the countries in the union collaborate to keep the peace not only in Europe, but in the world. To make our site more popular we spread word of our project through email, flyers and the school newspaper, we presented our website to other classes and teachers in our school and we gave them brochures describing our project. We also gave an interview on our local radio which is a great success for our team and it greatly helped us make our site more popular.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

Our team received many suggestions and opinions from our classmates, teachers and parents, and we are very grateful for that, because it really helped us make our website better. We also made a questionnaire to test our classmates’ knowledge about the European Union before we presented them our project. Only a few of them answered more than two or three questions correctly. So we focused on improving our website toward the more unknown for the students areas. After we presented them our project they answered all the questions right! Furthermore, we created a forum, where all who are interested in the EU can debate pressing issues, or just post their opinions, questions or suggestions about our website.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

“European Union - Diverse people, one union” is our first large project through the web and at the beginning it was new and hard to all of us. But soon we learned how to collaborate, to respect our differences and to make compromises. Although we were very diverse and our opinions about the creation of this website didn’t match, we managed these minor difficulties and now we are like the European Union- diverse, but united. Moreover, we found out how important the European Union past and present are and how great the power of people working toward a common goal of unity is. Finally, we learned to use a great variety of software programs, so that we could make our website properly. We learned how to work with documents, books and articles and how to organize our time.

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View our CyberFair Project (Project ID: 4985)

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