The ABV4Kids project aims to establish a virtual village on school bullying and violence, racism and xenophobia within OpenSim, a 3D virtual learning environment (3DVLE).
The project builds on the educational potential 3DVLEs offer. More than other online platforms they give users a sense of real time involvement, promote new forms of social interaction and give them room for creative processes what makes them highly attractive for young people. The project explicitly aims at involving young people in the planning, development and creation of the ABV and its events.
The project’s first phase will focus on establishing the infrastructure of the Anti-Bullying-Village (ABV) that will be commonly created by the partners and school teams from the partner countries. The ABV will consists of a Virtual Parliament that hosts parliamentary sessions of pupils from all partner countries, a Virtual School that includes classrooms created by the school teams and a Creative Arts Centre, a public place that includes exhibition areas, a virtual cinema and a public stage.
The project’s second phase will focus on events and activities that will be held at the ABV, i.e. a 2-day conference for young people, work shops, role plays, public discussions and exhibitions. Each school team will be encouraged to prepare one event such as exhibitions, film productions or composing songs. In the second phase the ABV and its events also open up to pupils and young pupils from throughout Europe.
Apart from making young people deal with the project’s overall topic of school bullying, violence, racism and xenophobia, the project will be a practical exercise in commonly establishing a platform that promotes e-participation and intercultural cooperative processes. In a playful way this will not only promote social thinking, e-collaboration and e-competences, it will also encourage the reflection of the cultural diversity of Europe in terms of languages, working styles and ways of thinking.

Projektmitarbeiter

Dr. Paul Roland Arbinger, Dipl.-Psych.

Thomas Jäger

Claudia Stelter