UniDiversity
is a project about cultural identity and has to do with those
characteristics that define us and make us belong to a group of people,
community or country.
We will
work on different issues such as language, family, religion, education,
gastronomy, politics, climate, customs, traditions, lifestyle, music,
art, etc organized into five main topics for study and research:
1.
Role of women. We will study the traditional roles given to men and
women in the different countries that participate in this project and
the development of the role of women in the last century. We will pay
special attention to all the messages that our culture through music,
cinema, etc transmits us about what a woman is supposed to be and we
will discuss about gender violence.
2. Prejudices and stereotypes.
What do we think about ourselves and about the others? Is it real? How
do they affect our attitude towards immigrants? We will also learn about
the others and discover the contribution of foreign cultures to our own
ones.
3. Globalization and different lifestyles. We want to analyse
how globalization is affecting our way of living and we will see
advantages and disadvantages. Are we losing our national identity
because of globalization?. We will study about the use of the internet,
social networks, mobile phones, Mass Media and so on.
4. Festivals
and traditions. It is impossible to deny the influence of culture in our
way of thinking. That’s why we want to work on them, to get to know
about different festivities, their origins, the similarities among the
countries. The role of women and men in our traditions, the values they
promote and if they have turned into old fashion or continue being
current.
5. Education system and citizen participation. In this case
we are going to see different education systems and different ways to
participate as critical citizens in society.
There
will be three countries involved: Spain, Poland and Romania and these
are the different contributions that each organization can bring to our
project:
-Spain. We will focus on the issue of the role of woman
in society. Spain is a Catholic country, defender of a traditional
family and with a macho culture. Many cases of gender-based violence are
taking place nowadays and we want to find out whether it only happens
in this country or it has become a global problem.
-Romania. It is a
country we don’t have much information about, we just know something
about its gypsy background. We are amazed by the different religions
that coexist in the country and how this may have influenced its
inhabitants and its language of Latin origin like Spanish. We will see
similarities and differences with the rest of the countries.
-Poland.
Being one of the relatively recent countries that joined the European
Union after the fall of communism, we are interested in getting to know
how this transition took place and how it has affected people in its
opening towards Europe. It will be relevant to get first-hand knowledge
about the impact on its economy and society.
We will also deal with
prejudices and stereotypes because of the high number of immigrants in
our countries. We would like to know how the problem of refugees is
being lived and what solutions are being given.
Finally, we will compare the different education systems and the citizen participation in each of the participant countries.
The
purpose of all the activities is to promote among the students the
development of skills such as the empathy, teamwork, dialogue, etc and
to reach this objective we must think about our differences. Are they as
deep as we can fancy? What do we have in common? Is there anything that
can be called national identity? And if it is so, can we make of it a
source of enrichment?
Our methodology will be active and
collaborative based on the use of the new technologies and the different
tools from the web 2.0 such as Blog, Google sites, Youtube, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram etc..Students will access knowledge from a
constructivist perspective, they will learn "by doing" and they will be
working on the different activities in national and international
cooperative teams sharing goals in order to maximize learning. Videos,
podcasts, digital books etc...will be made and shared on the net.
Afterwards when meeting up in a country we will review our conclusions
and reflect on our previous work. Workshops will be carried out and the
final products, after each visit, will be uploaded to the various
digital platforms (e-twinning, blog, etc…) There will be also
exhibitions, presentations, discussions and a constant dissemination
plan of the whole project.
Our main aim is not only to find
out similarities and differences among the countries involved and
reflect on it but also to make students and teachers get involved in the
knowledge creation process by working together and try to go a bit
further so as to achieve meaningful learning by extending it beyond the
classroom.
Our project is a “pro human” project, with an
individual-centred approach ,because we think that by searching for our
own identity and getting to know the others better we can become more
tolerant, generous, critical, supportive, understanding and appreciate
the different cultures as a vehicle of enrichment based on mutual
respect. Learning from ourselves and from the others can be an important
way of social integration to build a better world.
- family.
Credit 
- family.
