I found an interesting teaching project on the homepage of the “Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung”. The project is called “GrafStat” and teachers can use it in their classroom in order to arouse pupil’s interest for the European Union and in specific the upcoming elections.
The program provides knowledge about specific content e.g. the history of Europe, motives and goals of the EU and also problems and planned solutions. The aim of the project is to find out about the opinion of teenagers concerning the idea of Europe, European politics and the elections. The “bpb” provides a lot of material for teachers which they can download from the homepage and use in their classrooms.
After pupils have dealt with the topic “Europe” and found out a lot of facts about positive and negative aspects of the EU, they are able to do an online-survey concerning the opinion of teenagers towards the European Union. This software program is called “GrafStat”.
The overall aim of this teaching project is to motivate pupils to develop interest for the EU and also to commit themselves for the EU. I think this program is really good as it offers a lot of basic material and hints for the teacher how to use these in class. Doing a survey afterwards is also a really good thing as it shows pupils that their knowledge is somehow important.
annika said,
June 9, 2009 @ 6:32 am
HI!
It’s nice you found a project that is up-to-date like the European election. It’s a good way not just to inform the students but also to motivate them to vote. Espeacially that there is also further teaching material provided makes the whole thing attractive to work with. Thanks for this nice idea of how new media can be used in class.
annika
Birte said,
June 9, 2009 @ 6:38 am
Hi Charlotte,
the program sounds good to me. The idea to provide information via an online class about Europe is great. Because pupils should learn what role Germany plays in the EU and get an overview what EU means and what they do. To do this online or with a special program makes it more interesting and offers also more information, because pupils can search the whole www to get information about the EU.
The program GrafStat is also very helpful in school. I actually learned in school how to work with GrafStat. I used it to wrote my “Facharbeit” and I think it supported it well. You have definitely many options to present a result of a questionnaire or something like that.
Take care Birte