School name: Burnham Market Primary School (East of England)

Teacher: Steven Hales

Project Name: Eric the Viking

Twinned with: Sweden

*UK National Award Winner 2009. First Prize in Primary*

Project Overview

'Erik the Viking' is a project between Burnham Market Primary School (UK) and Slottsbrun Skola (Sweden), which was set up after the UK-Sweden Teachers' Bilateral Professional Development workshop in York in June 2008. The project involved 30 UK and 50 Swedish students aged between 9-12. The project included UK teachers visiting Sweden in August 2008, children introducing themselves using Vokis, each school presenting perspectives on Viking history from their own country and, finally and most significantly, the creation and presentation of their video story called "Erik the Viking".

Pedagogical Innovation and Creativity

• The innovation and creativity of "Erik the Viking" is based on a number of key factors:
• The willingness of the teachers involved to communicate easily - via phone, email, sms
• Both schools being inclusive of each other, working as one unit
• That the children felt able to be creative with their audience in the partner school in mind
• That the learning from the project was so significant that it will not be lost from the childrens' minds

Curricular Integration

'Erik the Viking' was undoubtedly cross-curricular in both schools. For the Swedish school, it was the foundation of most language teaching (Swedish + English) and art + design and ICT. For the English school, it was a significant part of the Literacy teaching in Autumn II, as well as art + design and ICT. The international dimension of the project enabled all pupils in both schools to learn about each other's country, culture, heritage and history.

Partner Collaboration

From the beginning, there was a strong plan which gave the teachers guidelines, responsibilities and timescale for each element of the project. The key focus for collaboration was the creation of the two-part story of "Erik the Viking". There was a real need for continuity - the creation and making of the characters and ensuring that the film was seamless from Part 1 (which the Swedish children made) and Part 2 (which the UK children made).

Use of ICT

Neither of the schools had used Vokis or Wikispaces before, but had been introduced to these at the York workshop. There was shared learning in these, as well as in the development of the website. Both schools had used PhotoStory before, but the technique had to be sharpened. Certainly for the UK pupils it was interesting using Google translator to get the Swedish words, although they did have to be edited by the Swedish teachers!

Results and Benefits

Both schools regard this to be an innovative and creative project in terms of content of the website and the "Erik the Viking" story. Every child can identify with a part of the story that they had contributed in terms of writing or in creating the scene. It was so special to show the final "Erik the Viking" DVD to parents, governors and other pupils in both schools.

The UK school is using this project as part of their International Schools Award portfolio 2008-10, and the Swedish school will be doing the same.