Being European

Developing ‘connectedness’ and cross-cultural empathy through the Creative Connections Project.

The paper will examine the impact of the Creative Connections website as a site for learning to enable school children across Europe to explore notions of belonging, individual and collective identities and concepts of citizenship.

The small-scale study will examine the functionality and effectiveness of the quad blogging capacity of the creative connections website to enable pupils voiceand image sharing. The research will present the tensions and synergies that existed, as children communicated through both visual and text-based multilingual ‘voices’ to interrogated concepts of identity and citizenship from both a national and European perspective.

The paper will examine the usefulness of the blogging platform to provide a forum for children to respond to their peers about being European, as a means to develop cross-cultural empathy and a sense of connectedness.  A case study will focus specifically on the experience and interaction of an Irish school and their blogging partners as a means to analyse the effectiveness of a virtual learning portal in a trans European context.

Key words: Blogging, Pupils voices, Visual and text-based multilingual voices, National and European identity, Connectedness.

References

Glisan, E., & Trainin, G. (2006). Online community and connectedness. Retrieved January 31, 2014, from the University of Nebraska Digital Commons website: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cehsgpirw/7

Healy, T. (2008) Some educational issues raised in response to the taskforce on Active Citizenship in

Jeffers and O’Connor’s (2008) Education for Citizenship and Diversity in Irish Contexts. Dublin:IPA

Granville, G (2010) Principles for the Teaching of Citizenship.