Summary (Max. 200 words in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian)
IDE@S stands for International Drama Education at School. More than 100 students from 13 different European countries wrote together a contemporary theatre adaption of Homer's 'Odyssey' (by using a digital platform) and performed their own text at our school, the Heilige-Maagdcollege, in Dendermonde in April 2005. All countries were divided into drama group units. Each drama group unit was responsible for a part of the theatre text and the performance. At the IDE@S site you can find a description of the project, the plot, the theatre text, presentations of each student, a planning, a blueprint of the project, lots of pictures and a series of interactive exercises on classical mythology and Homer's 'Odyssey'. The result was a refreshing theatre performance, which was a postmodernist cocktail of dance, film and classical theatre.
Summary of benefits and transferability (in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian)
A. BENEFITS 1 European citizenship - learning to work together as Europeans - learning to respect each other's traditions - feeling united as Europeans by working together
2 Cultural exchange - making acquaintance with each other's theatre tradition - staying in Belgian hosting families (also these families had a cultural and European experience)
3 Language practice - using English as a lingua franca in the project - using English for creative writing - learning some basic Dutch (for the Belgian hosting families)
B. TRANSFERABILITY The IDE@S site offers a blueprint of this project and shows how ICT can support such a European theatre exchange project. The IDE@S project was discussed as an example of European exchanges at the eTwinning conference in Brussels in 2005. The Powerpoint presentation can be downloaded at http://ideas.projectx2002.org/IDE@S.ppt with further details about this exchange.
