Visegradopedia - Guide to the Four Visegrad Countries

"<< Background >>We, the creators and implementers of the Visegradopedia Project, were all born and raised in one of the ""Visegrad countries"" (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary). We observed that, while people in each country of the region know a lot about their own nation, most only have a vague understanding of the cultural connections within the region. In our view, however, getting to know each other’s countries better also enhances our understanding of our own culture. Our project’s credo is, “Get to know our neighbours, and in doing so, understand ourselves better.”The leader of the coordinating organization realized during a trip to Prague how superficial his knowledge of the Czech Republic was. This moment highlighted that, although we are geographically close, our mutual knowledge and understanding are limited. Therefore, we need a platform that can expand users’ knowledge about the ""Visegrad countries"" and reach a broader audience in a new way, fostering greater familiarity with the neighbouring countries' history, culture, and daily lives. This platform will promote mutual understanding, help overcome prejudices, and connect people based on shared values and interests.<< Objectives >>The experiences described above motivated us to create an information collection to ensure that younger generations do not enter adulthood with only superficial knowledge, but instead gain a deeper understanding of European history and culture. Our aim was to reach the digitally native generation, for whom the digital environment is second nature (and who thus have high expectations for any digital product). We understood that to engage this audience, we would need to develop a mobile application that meets their standards. This is why we chose to create a user-friendly, visually engaging app that delivers information in a concise and interesting format.Additionally, we wanted the illustrations and articles to be usable beyond the Visegradopedia digital app, providing educators with resources they can use in geography and history classes. This approach not only simplifies their work but also equips them with a tool to deliver essential knowledge in a modern, engaging way that suits this generation’s needs.<< Implementation >>In line with our original commitment, we developed 200 original articles, each available in five languages. Each article is accompanied by one of 200 original illustrations, making the content easier to absorb (See FTP 1).All of this text and visual content has been uploaded to a custom-developed mobile application named after the project, which is freely downloadable from the two largest digital app stores: the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The application is designed to be expandable, capable of incorporating additional content and adding partner countries in the future (See FTP 2).We also created the website visegradopedia.com, where the complete text and visual content of the app is available in all the languages of the Visegrad countries, as well as in English. The inclusion of English in both the app and the website is intended to give users outside the region the opportunity to discover this culturally rich area (See FTP 3).To promote and support the app and website, we have also created and manage the pages facebook.com/visegradopedia and instagram.com/visegradopedia (See FTP 4).<< Results >>A key goal of the application is to support and facilitate the work of teachers in education; therefore, we also created teaching materials. These can be used in their everyday work (See FTP 5).We personally presented the application’s content to students of the appropriate age group in an interactive session. Additionally, we involved parents in these testing sessions, providing them with new information as well. We aimed not only to test the content of the application but also to refine it based on the experiences gathered. Fortunately, this refinement was unnecessary, as feedback indicated that students found the application’s content to be particularly exciting and interesting. Students who encountered the content in a playful, interactive setting responded especially well to the information. We received most of the feedback from them, such as: “I like the illustrations,” “I didn’t know the Esztergom Castle was so beautiful,” and “That pirog looks pretty good; I’m definitely going to try it.”We can be proud of the result that the proportion of active users exceeded the average of 9% typically seen in educational apps. We take pride in the fact that those who downloaded Visegradopedia have become active users of the app."