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Purpose
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Purpose
Objectives
ECHO will look at middle Danube watershed as a region, examining: 1) environmental issues; and 2) social, economic, and political relationships during the past six hundred years. It will also examine historical and modern relationships of four middle Danuabe nations with their neighbors and with the world community, including the USA. In addition, participants will develop Internet-based curricula and materials (web guides) pertaining to the middle Danube region and will share these items with local, regional, and national colleagues to improve teaching and learning about: 1) cultural similarities, differences, and interrelationships; 2) changing contexts and perspectives in the contemportary world community; and 3) environmental concerns, problems, and practices.
Long-Range Outcomes Sought
1. Group members will gain improved understandings and sensitivities in regard to: a) the region's past, present, and future; b) cultural similarities, differences, and interrelatedness within the regional, European, and global communities; and 3) wise and prudent management of our shared global environment.
2. Based on members' overseas experiences, each participant team will develop an Internet-based curricula and materials package (webguide) built around an environmental, historical, and/or cultural theme. Webguides will include a sequence of teaching objectives, learner activities, evaluation techniques, and such mediated instructional support materials as Internet links, pictures and graphics, journal articles, video tapes, artifacts, maps, and recommended reading lists. (Webguides will be based on the participants' experiences and observations in Central Europe but will have a format that can be generalized and applied to the study of other areas and peoples.) Webguides will be disseminated nationally via the CEC website.
Intermediate Outcomes Sought
During pre-travel and overseas phases, the following objectives will be pursued:
* Participants will examine current “economy vs. ecology” conflicts in the middle Danube's neighboring countries and make generalizations about how the same conditions have or have not been manifested in regions of the Western Hemisphere.
* Participants will: 1) recognize the examples of environmental abuse and identify environmental management concerns--- for example, ecological balance and biodiversity, species survival, and citizen involvement in environmental custodianship--- in Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia; and 2) make generalizations about how the same problems and issues have or have not surfaced in various parts of the USA.
* Participants will understand how the evolution of Danubian history and culture has been shaped by geography, invasion, immigration, Central European political blocs, and related influences. Similarly, they will better understand how the perspectives of small nations often differ from those of political and economic superpowers, particularly in terms of the "balancing act" often required of them.
* Participants will understand how multiethnic populations can overcome differences in traditions, customs, and language in a cooperative manner, thus strengthening the society by capitalizing on divergence and pluralism (or, regretably, the opposite in some instances).
* Participants will understand the problems and issues that have been part of the middle Danube's history (e.g. colonialism, cultural/ethnic cooperation and conflict, economic imbalance, political volatility, resource scarcity, etc.), and will make generalizations about how the same problems have confronted and influenced other nations and populations.
* Participants will better understand the differences in traditions, customs, and language which must be recognized and accommodated if cooperation and collaboration among nations is to become a viable determinant in the future of the the global community.
* Participants will understand the common problems and issues (e.g., unemployment, famine, military invasion, political repression, religious persecution, resource depletion, etc.) which have prompted emigration from the middle Danube region and will make generalizations about how the same problems and issues have historically resulted in similar decisions by other world populations to resettle in the USA.
Short-Range Outcomes Sought
Specific goals for the in-country portion of the project are:
* Participants will identify the various” waves” of political and economic influence or domination in the middle Danube regikon and understand the impact of these "waves" in the context of the continuum of its history.
* Participants will identify the post-World War II political/economic/geographic positions of Slovakia. Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia and, further, identify those factors which have had particularly telling influence on these nations' relations with other members of the world community.
* Participants will identify the cultural/ethnic groups within the Danubian population and trace the pathways leading to cross-cultural understanding, cooperation, and amity (or lack thereof).
* Participants will identify the political and economic conditions that today exist in the middle Danube region and further, will identify the domestic situations that are now undergoing dramatic change---restructuring the educational system, revamped political structure, attention to human rights and ecological issues, etc
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* Participants will identify the principal sub-regions of the middle Danube and the environmental/ecological issues, problems, and practices characteristic to each.* Participants will identify examples of cooperation (or lack thereof) between the nations of the middle Danube in terms of how common environmental resource management concerns have been addressed (e.g., forests and wet lands, water resources and hydroelectricity, natural habitats and species maintenance, environmental education, citizen activism, etc.)
* Participants will develop clearer, more factual understandings of today's Central European realities by means of person-to-person interactions with teachers, professors, students, and citizens of Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia; similarly, they will promote better understandings of the United States and its people by means of their daily ECHO contacts.
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