Bridging traditional and modern pedagogies through Web-based projects
Susanne Pratscher, the Austrian member of the advisory board is one of the pioneers in the field of integrating ICT into the daily teaching. One of her solutions of bridging traditional and modern pedagogies is implementing Web-based classroom projects. In this article Susanne tells us about one of her Web-based classroom projects.
Web-based classroom projects are a solution to connect classes worldwide through modern technologies. In our school this is essential for our students, as they will need it in their future business lives. From my point of view, we should invite students to use the Internet for research, but also draw their attention to the fact, that not everything they find is of excellent quality. In addition they must learn, and that is really difficult for them, that they must not just copy everything from the Net. If they give a report to the class, they have to tell us, which sources they used and they should try to produce their own texts.
Our project "European Bridges" enabled students to understand how people and their cultures are connected since centuries. Many bridges are among the most impressive constructions mankind has invented. Apart from the architectural beauty they also have a very important function: they connect people on two sides of a river or lake, sometimes even part of a sea. Two of my students, Caroline and Marlene, and their classmates from the AVa (2004/05) collected information about bridges in all European countries.
Let me once more quote Ivo Andric (Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate 1961), who is well known all over Europe for his novel The Bridge on the Drina (1945) in which he writes:
... this great stone bridge, a rare structure of unique beauty, such as many richer and busier towns do not possess (There are only two others such as this in the whole Empire, they used to say in old times) was the one real and permanent crossing in the whole middle und upper course of the Drina and an indispensable link on the road between Bosnia and Serbia and further, beyond Serbia, with other parts of the Turkish Empire, all the way to Stambul. The town and its outskirts were only the settlements which always and inevitably grow up around an important centre of communications and on either side of great and important bridges.
This novel, published at the end of WWII, is a literary cry for freedom and mutual understanding of people, a cry for peace and unity. Ivo Andric may then not have thought of today's dimensions of the European peace and understanding, but his novel can stand as a symbol for our common effort to improve communication among people all over Europe and to bring them closer together.
In June 2004 the TIME Magazine published an article on José Manuel Durao Barroso, the new President of the EU Commission, in which they called him a bridge builder. Let's hope the authors of the article are right! From my point of view, it is very important that the old EU member states do their best to bridge gaps between themselves and the new member states, and that the whole European Union tries to bridge the gaps which still separate us from the non-member states, esp. from those in Eastern Europe.
Our project "European Bridges" enabled students to understand how people and their cultures are connected since centuries. Many bridges are among the most impressive constructions mankind has invented. Apart from the architectural beauty they also have a very important function: they connect people on two sides of a river or lake, sometimes even part of a sea. Two of my students, Caroline and Marlene, and their classmates from the AVa (2004/05) collected information about bridges in all European countries. 
In June 2004 the TIME Magazine published an article on 
