Summary (Max. 200 words in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian)
This website, made by and for teens, displays the end results of a special 'equal chances' project focusing on ICT and language skills. Seventh graders in the 1B remedial class start out with an ICT initiation and move on to create a school newspaper, both in print and online, thus integrating and developing several classes, subjects and skills.
Summary of benefits and transferability (in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian)
The project involves communication, organisational and social skills, thus allowing the pupils to develop a project from scratch.
Starting out with an ICT initiation the multimedia project soon evolves from switching on a computer or a digital camera, into full publishing skills. The pupils take photographs, create a layout for the printed newspaper and later develop a basic website displaying their latest (preferably sold out) editions. Besides language, ICT skills and responsibilities that will be shared by the team, we also focus on economic procedures, such as basic sales and merchandising techniques and basic bookkeeping. The team is responsible for every edition and works as an editorial staff until such is completed. The need for extra teaching periods to be put into this project is minimal. Classes like Dutch and Language Skills (taalvaardigheid) can be used for staff meetings and calendar/ planning sessions. Whilst math periods can easily be used to integrate and transfer math into much required bookkeeping skills for the sales team, art and computer classes will prove to be necessary for the artistic members to better their illustrating skills, as such urging them to learn and explore more than they bargained for.
Children in remedial class usually start out with a heritage of 'problems'... By using this project they overcome their wariness and learn to work both individually and as a team, building faith in their own abilities and creativity in areas that they are familiar with, soon expanding into new areas that are not that familiar, such as research.
The media that they are presented with become an incentive for them and instead of (re)experiencing the initial limitations they soon find a whole new world within their reach, allowing them to branch out. As such they also involve other classes, students, teachers, parents and grandparents and build their paper and site as a ‘piece of their school’.
The vast accessibility of their end product, printed and published online, and the feedback (live and in the guest-books) builds their confidence even more. It has proven to make them more secure when taking on new and bigger projects, hopefully including their further education.
