European Traditional Tales ON STAGE!The idea of this project has been to bring traditions to life by drama adaptations of important traditional tales of each participating country and their modern versions. Our goal has been to help students aged 14-17 to increase their knowledge and use of the second language as well as to familiarize them with other cultures in an enjoyable way. We believe that drama actively help second language learning. Pronunciation and intonation are improved when students perform in a foreign language; vocabulary and structures are better internalized when they are learnt and performed since the whole learning process is enhanced when it is enjoyed. That is every teacher’s dream and it has been the objective of this project. Drama is an overall learning experience involving mind and body in the individuals at the same time that forces them to work in a team. So, in our project, each member partner has chosen an outstanding traditional tale from their own country to study and dramatize. The project has involved the whole school and all its activities took into account the basic skills as well as transversal skills. The teachers of different departments have carried out these activities with the students:-The Language department worked on the following:1- Updated versions of the tales. There are classical topics in all the tales, which promote inequality such as domestic violence, huge differences of social classes, sexism or male chauvinism. We have encouraged students to think of those transversal topics that are so common in traditional tales and promote inequality so that they can reflect these topics in the modern versions but in a very different way, that is, promoting social equality.2- The scripts of these tales in order to be performed at the Drama festival.-The Technology and Art departments have worked on the creativity through scenery and stage that have been elaborated to perform the plays.-Science department have worked on the entrepreneurship through the festival budget and statistical studies (results of surveys, the evaluation of the degree of improvement in English for students from the beginning to the end of the project).-Music department have worked on imagination by adapting the songs, sounds and rhymes for the modern versions.Besides, the departments have worked on evaluation cards for each activity. These evaluation cards have generally followed the Portfolio methodology. This innovative methodology have been published and disseminated under Creative Common license in order to be available for all the teaching community.In addition, the Project has involved objectives to the families, teachers and the schools themselves. We have produced several types of outcomes like videos, studies, reports, which have been shown using the different ways that the latest technologies offer us, without leaving out the traditional ways.Finally the potential longer term benefits are remarkable since it is our firm intention to promote The European traditional drama festival to be celebrated every year for ever, in which all the European countries that are interested in this innovative project can take part. This way, we will be promoting cultural drama contact. Likewise, we will improve our drama techniques in order to foster dramatization at Secondary Schools, which is very innovative in the project countries. Our partnership, Turkey, Croatia, Poland and Spain, guarantees valuable synergies due to the fact that all of us have very different cultures and varied ways of teamworking.

The project 'The city rings' focuses on the world of sound, a hitherto seldom explored domain, at least in secundary education. Sound can be directly perceived by the senses, can be relatively easy analysed with scientific equipment. This challenging 'hands on' approach will motivate students to really explore sounds and the effect they have had on the word at large. Our first goal here is to coach the students to come up with the right kind of questions and develop problem-solving strategies while using ICT-tools they haven't used before. We are certain that the development of this new methodology and the use of these new ICT-tools can be transferred on other domains (away from 'sound'). In the course of these two years students (16-18 years old), staff, parents' representatives and the city council will work together and organise a large number of activities that have two focus points. We will be coached by 'Aifoon vzw', a professional organisation subsidized by the government and who have 'sound' as their point of investigation.The first focus is on sound as an element that (often subconciously) influences the well-being of students in schools and citizens in cities. By measuring sounds objectively in spaces in schools and in cities we'll come up with mathematical figures and by administering quesitionnaires to students and citizens we'll find out about the subjective appreciation of sound environments. We'll certainly also investigate the sounds in concerts, on earphones of mp3 players to see if, when and how they can be dangerous. These research activities should come up with data that are compiled in data banks which will allow for making comparisons and drawing conclusions. All these results will be published on our webblog 'Sound check'. This should result in a number of recommendations : the 'Sound Charter'. The second focus is on sound as an expression of identity. In the same way we visualize the person on the other side of the phone by listening to the voice, we experience the soundscape of a city as an expression of its identity. What's more even our listening is culturally determined. We want to investigate what cultural difference and similarities we detect when we make our subconscious analyses and judgments explicit. We will need the new ICT tools in our 'hunt' for the sounds of a city, recreating the soundscape we think reflects our cities best. This should result in a number of sound recordings (sound files, soundscapes...) and a number of articles (reflections on sound and identity) which will be published on our community 'Earbook'.The fact that we publish our results on websites, give presentations of our results during meetings with students from other schools, parent's committees and city councils, have our results published in newspapers and broadcasts over the radio ensures that this project has a far larger impact than just on a number of students directly taking part in this project. On the long term this project will generate a raised awareness for our sound environment, affect the planning of spaces in school buildings and the building sites of cities. In the end working for a better sound environment will make Europe and this world a better place to live.