PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The four subprojects of Andersen CROSSWISE are:

I

 Essay Competition

II

 Themes for teaching

III  A Teaching Newspaper
IV

 Research and development


Subproject One: Essay Competition
The essay competition appeals to students in courses at upper secondary level. They are encouraged to use their own individual talents when working with Hans Christian Andersen. They are free to participate by themselves or in connection with a course. They decide. Likewise, the essays might be supported and inspired by themes and material provided by Andersen CROSSWISE but this is by no means a condition. The rules for participating in the essay competition can be found under the link Essay Competition in the menu.


Subproject Two: The Themes
Andersen CROSSWISE is computermediated material for use at upper secondary level. The material will be published here at the Hans Christian Andersen site during 2004. Apart from the essay competition the framework and content of the project has been published on the danish site in June so that teachers have had time to include Andersen in their plans for the next school year. In August, the theme proposals will be fully unfolded. The chosen themes are:

  • Andersen across the Barriers
  • A Genius at School
  • "The Silly Imagination"
  • The Traveller

These themes are relevant for teachers of Danish and at the same time they encourage interaction with other subjects such as physics, geography, media, art and history.We have included three kinds of material relevant to the chosen themes:

  • an electronic anthology of Andersen texts
  • an electronic anthology of texts about Andersen
  • some approaches to Hans Christian Andersen genres crosswise


Subproject Three: The Teaching Newspaper

In cooperation with The Hans Christian Andersen 2005 Fond and the danish newspaper Politiken, DIG is planning a tabloid size teaching newspaper. If everything works out as planned the newspaper will be published in November-December 2004 and will contain examples of entries in the essay competition and the winners will be announced in the paper. Andersen's texts and the essays will hopefully inspire more teachers either to take advantage of Andersen CROSSWISE or to generally include Andersen's works in their teaching.


Subproject Four: Research and Development
Danish Institute for Upper Secondary Education has for several years participated in an evaluation of the development programme for juvenile education (2002-03), which formed the basis of the reform as regards work methods and structure.
At the same time, the didactic research at the institute continues, e.g. with research projects and the education of scholars of language and literature.

Directly linked to Andersen CROSSWISE the research has been strengthened with the setting up of two PhD scholarships within the fields of, respectively, textual and media pedagogics. The focus is on studying and thereby bringing up suggestions as to how one works with Hans Christian Andersen at the upper secondary level.

The two scholarships, which are co-financed by The Hans Christian Andersen 2005 Fond, have been appointed to MA Karin Ørbæk and MA Nikolaj Frydensbjerg Elf, who are at this time well under way with their research. Each scholarship has a built-in subproject on communication, which will take up about six months of the whole period. Both students have spent most of this period participating in the project group behind Andersen CROSSWISE. This fits in with the aim of both projects, which is to develop new kinds of educational aids for teaching at the upper secondary level.

The educational aids of the future 
In reports about Education of the future there is focus on the need of a massive effort in developing new educational aids that include more media, promotes the virtual and takes into account that not only the teachers, but also the students can go from being users to being co-editors of the proposed material.
Andersen CROSSWISE should be seen as an opportunity for drawing up and trying out an electronic educational aid that points forward these respects.