‘This is our Time’ is an annual global telecommunications project for secondary schools, organized in partnership with the Netherlands-based non-governmental organization, e-LinQ. It will celebrate its tenth birthday in 2005.
The ‘Time’ project seeks effective and innovative ways to enable young people from many different cultures and countries to communicate and co-operate with each other on current world issues. A different overall theme is chosen every year.
The ninth edition of ‘This is our Time’ took place on Friday 26 November 2004 and highlighted cultural diversity. Within the time-span of 24 hours, some 161 schools from over 39 countries all over the world engaged in dialogue with each other and (in the case of ASPnet schools Sintermeerten college in the Netherlands and Tunaskolan in Sweden) with UNESCO Headquarters. Schools set a new videoconferencing record in 2004: every half hour somewhere in the world schools connected with each other. “Slavery, Yesterday and Today” was also a subject for discussions and videoconferences in 2004 to mark the International Year for the Remembrance of Slavery and its Abolition.
A wide range of educational activities are represented in the ‘Time’ project. Schools and students from all over the world with different cultural backgrounds send poems, essays, drawings, clocks and other contributions. They also take part in an interactive game, ‘Unite the Nations’, which aims to increase awareness of cultural diversity through intercultural exchange. Students create multiple-choice questions on geography, history, social issues, arts and sports in their own country, then race against each other (and against time) in answering questions on other countries.
The winners of the 2004 ‘Unite the Nations’, were students at the IV Gimnazija in Zagreb, Croatia.
To find out more and to register for the 2005 Time Project : www.timeproject.org