The World Of Mediarama

The World OfMediarama

Ms. von Dincklage and Mr. Tolksdorff about the Cross-Course Project ´´This is your Baby´´ said Ms. von Dincklage, the teacher of our English EA course and one of the coordinators of the cross-course project. With ´baby´ she obviously meant the project Mediarama. The project has brought together two EA courses which are working on a product over a period of three weeks. The product is unknown at present but it will have something to do with the world of Media. It is the first time that the FKG offers such a cross-course project. It was the idea of Ms. von Dincklage and Mr. Tolksdorff because they wanted to show us students how school can be different, how it can be more exciting. Before they revealed their ideas, they both met and discussed ´´why should they do it´´, ´´how should they do it´´ and ´´what topics should be worked on´´. The intentions of this cross-course project are to make every student more secure about their English and to help people who are not so experienced. She and Mr. Tolksdorff want to ´drop out´ of the project as much as possible in order to promote the students self-reliance and to bring out their creativity. They decided to bring both courses together for one entire day in order to get them formed into groups and get their topics fixed. The rest was left to the students, which means that they had their own time-management and the full responsibility about their product. Misses von Dinklage thinks that the free time-management is a good exercise for the groups to organize and to be disciplined by having regular meetings outside the timetable. She is very impressed in how serious and focused every group is working on the final product. Misses von Dingklage is very optimistic towards this project and is excited to see the outcome. She would always do it again and would even suggest to other teachers to try it. Mr. Tolksdorff, the teacher of the other English EA course, is convinced that the project is going to be a great success and is going to have a great outcome. His suggestion is it to present our final products in front of our parents, siblings, friends and all people who are interested. He knows that the students have to work very hard but he thinks that a project like this is just preparing us for any studies late on in our lives. We experience how to work with people you didn´t know before and how to organize your meetings yourselves. His major concern is it for us to work consequently in order to get things done in time. ´´Deadline is deadline´´, he repeated over and over again. Our headmaster Dr. Juraschek supported the ideas of the cross-course project from the beginning and is very excited about how it is working out.  Laura Rose

The Media is one of the topics students have to cope with in their final exams in the Abitur. The problem is that only a few books and little information can be found to help us understand enough about it. That is one of the reasons why two English courses cooperated on a cross-course project to research some aspects of the multi-media world. In order to make it more interesting, the large group divided into smaller groups. Each group dealt with a different aspect of the media, such as TV shows, commercials, movies and jingles. "I really like these independent learning groups, even though I have no idea exactly what that means, but it sounds good," says one of the students. His team is trying to make the book 'Beowulf' into a film parody. Is it a good idea to co-operate with another course though? "Yes", says another of the students, "because you learn how to work with different people and you benefit from other people's creativity." Another student adds, "You also improve your English because we're all at different levels.ŽŽ Several students crtizised the free time management that was given to us. One said: "Time management is quite difficult because we all have school at different times." Another added, "It's hard to cope with time management when you're not quite sure how to put your plans into action. Furthermore, we all have to deal with our Facharbeit, which makes it really hard to take the time you need." In an attempt to overcome this problem the teachers cancelled one lesson per week to give the students time to meet outside school in order to make progress with the project, but whilst this was appreciated it didn't resolve all the time management problems. In spite of these problems, the students are having fun. "I like this project, because now we are able to be creative, and we meet new people and make new connections," says a female student whose team are dealing with embarrassment in publicity." We had so much fun shooting our video: we were laughing the whole time. We love it because we all have different ideas, and that makes it more interesting, because we are pushing each other for better results. I'm glad we did this project because we gained a lot of good experience." The ideas and their applications are very promising, and we now await the outcomes with some excitement and nervousness. We are all looking forward to the performances, which will be the result of hard work, productive fun and new connections.  Anna-Lena Kamm