The next stage

After our coordination visit in Poland we are now in the next stage of the project. My intentions in this blog were not really to comment extensively on the activities involved in this particular project but to concentrate more on the problems that have appeared related with running a Comenius project.

At this point of the project I am working on the tasks that the students have to complete and also at the same time on all of the administrative responsibilities connected with the next visit to Thessalonika in Greece. I have to finalise the number of students who are going to Greece, who they are and also which teachers are going to go with me. All of this is needed because I am also looking for the flights for the group. Taking thirteen people to Greece is a bit of a nightmare and after the experience of almost missing the second flight in Stansted to Poland I don't want to have to drag 12 other people around Stansted airport against the clock. To this end I have contacted Inma of Dertotravel in Tortosa to see what options she can offer me for a group reservation in a flight direct to Thessalonika from Barcelona. This has the disadvantage of being from Barna and not from Reus, if it were Reus the kids parents could run them there direct. But the advantage of no extra transfers. I am going to see what prices she can find and I will consider spending more money on these flights than I wanted with a mind to making my life easier. Furthermore I reckon that by the time we go to Germany there will be fewer students to worry about anyway. At the moment I have already lost one, she has left the school, and there are two or three that I haven't seen in days! In addition I calculate that if I have to spend more on the flights then I can always save on the last visit to Cyprus by going alone and saving the money on the other two teachers. After all in the end I am doing the project on my own and extra teachers in an avaluation process seem a little redundant.

So that was Poland

Well we have now returned from the first of our trips within the framework of the comenius project. For the day to day details I am writing a blog which tells (nearly) all and can be found here.

As for the serious side of things the visit was very useful on many fronts. Firstly for the work done on the elements of the project that we have already done, webpages, background work on the countries etc. Secondly it has proved invaluable for the preparation of the next two trips and then finally for the preparation done with regard to the work that still has to be completed by the students in what is left of the project.

The day before

This is Thursday the 13th of November, the day before we leave for Poland and our first trip in the Comnius project.

It is an interesting point in the scheme of things. Project wise we have our blog up and running and we have already completed nearly all of the work we have to do before Christmas. Up until only a few weeks ago the only other country with a working blog was Germany. Then Bulgaria got their acto together but Poland and Italy had one but with no students on it and therefore we couldn't run the pen pal network with them. Now in the last week before our meeting sites have appeared in Greece and Sweden too and the others are starting to be workable. The Polish students appeared on their blog last night, I could see them but Dominika couldn't which was amusing.

We have everything prepared for the trip, tickets and all. We have bought a couple of "gegants" to take to the Polish director and a small present for Dominika too, something we thought was important.

We leave tomorrow morning at eight to go to Reus and catch the plane at 10.30. Then to Stansted and another flight to Katowice at 13.40.

I have arranged substitutes for us for this week after not being able to talk to Nuria Estrada about it I managed to talk to the personnel department and they told me to send our details with the reason and the dates of the trip. This I should have done earlier, had I known, as subs are assigned on Tuesdays and Thursdays apparently.

The only real fly in the ointment is that we don't have any of the money!! This is not only us though, Dominika is in the same boat. The money has been approved and is in Madrid but they haven't deigned to let us have it yet. It makes you think that it is sitting in an account somewhere and someone is benefitting from the interest in the meantime.

Still we soldier on.

The next post should be from Poland together with some photos if all goes well.

Meeting plans for Poland

Dominika has been wonderfully efficient again and has sent us all a program for the meeting in Poland. She has also sent us room numbers for the Eureka hotel, the details of the transfers to and from the airport and even advice about the weather and what clothes we should take. Basically it will be cold!! This level of planning is a great comfort and makes life easier for the rest of us.

Speaking of planning I have also received a breakdown of the foreseeable costs for our meeting in Germany!! Katrin has also been marvellous and sent us all projected costs so we can start to estimate our costs and how to distribute the money. This is wonderful as I have been asking myself about how to do this. With these figures I will be better able to see what to ask the students to contribute and how much I can pay straight off.

Let me explain. My idea at the moment is that I will allot a certain amount, say 200 euros, for each student right now. This money will go towards the flight costs and hotel etc. The rest of the projected costs they will have to pay themselves and at the end of the project I will reimburse them the maximum amount possible from the remaining money. So say they start with 200 euros from me, each pays an extra 500 and then finally gets 300 more back. Of course I also need to take into account that costs for Germany might be higher than those for Greece etc.

Teething problems

Some things have changed since my last post, some good some bad.

The Bulgarians have managed to put the rest of their students on their page together with quite a lot of the basic facts we had to place there. The go into some detail too, though not as much as we have done on our blog. At least my students now have some more people to write to.

Poland have put some of the basic facts on their webpage, albeit very briefly, but no sign of the students yet.

The Italian page is still written mostly in Italian and has provoked some controversy as Nando published our whole Comenius application form on the site, Dominika and the rest of us protested at this as it is our hard work and not something that someone else should be able to just copy and paste. Nando replied that in the end it is published anyway by the authorities and anyone can take it but as Dominika also pointed out, on our application are our personal addresses and telephone numbers too!! He has taken it off the forum.

Apart from that Dominika has been protesting at the lack of movement from most countries, after all only Germany and us really have done what we are supposed to have done so far. Even Dominika herself is behind in the work, though her real complaint is that we have heard almost nothing from Cyprus, Sweden, Greece and Italy. With the first meeting only a couple of weeks away this is a little worrying.

End of October

We are now at the end of October and after a very hectic week I have finally found a minute to write something here.

As for Comenius this week I am not having a meeting, this is mainly because we are well advanced with the work and it seems pointless to get everyone together just to answer mails. I have found the time to send Dominika the summary of the questionnaires that the students completed and also three logos, the only ones I have been given.

I have my group sending and answering mails to the German students. These are the only ones they can correspond with at the moment but at least it is going well. They have also been surprised to see that the level of the Germans is not really any different from their own. I think everyone expected them to be fantastic.

Administratively I am still waiting for the money to appear, I know that the Germans and others have received their 80% already so I suppose that we should get ours soon. I have to send a list of the teachers who are going on the trips to Ensenyament but how I am supposed to know who will go to Cyprus two years from now I have no idea.

I have got together a list of contacts for publicity, newspapers, radio stations and even TV. Now it is a question of contacting them and getting them to come and have a look at what we are doing. I have drawn up invitations for the Mayor of Roquetes, and other dignataries, along with all the parents but now we are so close to the trip to Poland in November that I don't think it is worth doing the inauguration now. I have decided to wait till we have got back, then I will have more material to show people and I also hope that the other countries will have their webpages up and running. At the moment Germany and us have a working page.

Poland's is up and running but has no content.

Bulgaria has a homepage, and as I have just checked, it also has the details of half a dozen students so they are starting to move, that is great.

This afternoon I have received a mail from Italy with an address for their page but it is an online generated forum and is a little difficult to navigate around. Additionally it is full of posts in Italian and I don't really know what is going on in each section.

First steps

I haven't written for a while as we have been busy with the first steps of the project, the actual project!!

It seems odd that finally we are actually involved in the work of the project itself.

Well anyway as I think I have said I have 4-5.30 on Thursday afternoons for the project with the students in Informatica 2. Not the best place as it is hard to use the projector but it is good enough. We have already completed several of the first steps of the project.

We have created the blog, even though Dominika wanted a webpage not a blog, and I have managed to include photos of all of the students on the blog. I have insisted that they be careful to give me decent photos to post on the blog as I know that some of them love taking pictures of themselves and others hate it. This led me to think that if some of them on the page look great and the others look like real morons they would not get the same level of attention from the students of our partner countries. Still now it is done and they have all posted photos of themselves and a short bio on the page.

Initially I thought that the pen pal network would be administered by Dominika, precisely for these reasons. But she has decided that they can all write to who they want to. Fair enough we have started to do just that though at the moment it is only the Germans and us. Poland and Bulgaria have web pages posted but there are no details on them and no one to write to. Still in our last meeting I was able to see that some of the students have already received mails from some of the Germans students and had to reply to them. I have insisted on receiving a copy of everything written by them... because I trust them about as far as I can throw them. Some like Ferran are already seeing this as a great chance to "pull" a foreign girl and their mails read the same way as a dating page!!

Apart from this we have also completed quite a lot of the work that has to be done about basic facts about the country. This has been a mixed success as I have received one piece of work that has been through a translator online and a couple more in Catalan!! I have now reminded them that I need it all in English and they have to write it themselves. The second part of this work has been shared out and I am waiting for the results now. We have only produced a couple of logos that are really worth it and I will send them to Dominika when I get a moment to scan them.

I have also asked the students to think about the contents of the exchange box and I have to chase up on what they think this week.

Admin details...

Ok so the contract has been signed and completed and sent off.

I have been on the net and reserved the flights for the visit in November to Poland. I am going with Guillem and Salome, Guillem is from the music dept and Salome teaches English with me. There is the hope that Guillem and I can use this visit to organise a music trip to Poland for the orchestra this year, a sort of English Music combination, and that is why he is coming along for this trip. Music, after all, is very transversal.

Unfortunately we will be away for nine days in total!!! The flights out are no problem, although we have to take two to get to Katowicwe! But on the flights back here we have to spend one night in the UK in Stansted. Of course as that is where I am from it presents no problem, I will phone one of my uncles and impose upon him!! The only other bummer was that I had to pay for the tickets myself and then ask for the money back, no problem except for the panicky phone call from my wife when she went to the bank and saw I had spent 700 odd euros on something!!

I have spoken to Nuria Estrada about all the things I needed to checl, basically she doesn't want to know, she has enough paperwork already and only wants to contact with us when she wants to. Fair enough that means I am on my own and responsible for the whole shooting match. Chould be fun.

I still have worries about things, we will just have to see how some things pan out.

First meeting of the Comenius group

Yesterday afternoon I had the first meeting of the group. Not what you would call a tremendous success as most of them didn't come!

Four of them excused their absence beforehand but quite a lot simply didn't come because they had other things to do. I will have to make clear to them that this really isn't an optional thing and that they will have to attend. As it is I have made up an attendance sheet so that they will have to sign every time we have a meeting.

The meeting itself with the people who attended wasn't too bad, I did most of it in English but some of them, Ferran and Mayte, got lost immediately and I had to repeat a lot of it in Catalan. We did get the basics done, I have told them all to create a gmail account and I handed out the questionnaire and explained how to fill it in.

The fun part was when Mayte wanted to create a mail address called maytetas@gmail.com, I had to explain to her that this is not the sort of image we really wanted to present to the rest of the participants. She was unfazed but happily settled for mayteroq in the end. Mariona insisted we took a photo of the three of us on the first day and so we have been immortalised thus;












Who can guess which is Mayte? No prizes I am afraid. Mariona saw this photo and felt that she was being outshone by Mayte so we took another.












Today I have been doing documents for the students, I get the feeling that I have to make this appear official to them as soon as possible so they develop a work ethic for the project. Mayte and Mariona were just a little to "happy" yesterday and of course many of them just didn't come. I will allow a couple of weeks before really coming down on them hard in any way but in the meantime I want them to have to sign forms, fill in things and have to read the noticeboard so that they get a feeling of the official nature of what we are doing.

As for other things, the contracts have been sent off to Madrid, I hope, with a covering letter so that is done, now we just wait. I have commented briefly with Mª Jose about an official opening for the project and she said we could even get the Mayor of Roquetes to come. That would be good as if he comes it means photos and appearing in the press. I asked for "permission" to start working on publicity and she said I can do what I want. As a result I have to phone the local radio station as I want to appear on it to talk about the project, maybe take a couple of students too, and I will have to contact the local papers too.

I have talked with one of my colleagues, Batiste, about a webpage. He and I are in the middle of redesigning the school's webpage and he says that it wouldn't be too difficult to make up a webpage for the project if that is what I have to have. I am quite happy with the blog but if everyone has a page and Dominika asks for that then I will have to do something about it I suppose. We are trying to find a moment to meet and do something about it.

Mª Jose

Today I have spoken to Mª Jose about the contract and everything and there is no problem at all there. I want to phone Nuria Estrada to confirm some things, things that I think I am clear on but I want cleared, but this apart I will fill in the details of the bank account and get Francesc to sign them asap.

Completing the contract

Today I have seen and talked to Tere about the contract and what we are going to do with the money. The school apparently only has one bank account, why does that surprise me? And everything that the school receives has to go through it. So I have taken the details and I will use them to fill in the forms. They then have to be sent off to Madrid, once Francesc has signed them, and then we should receive one copy back and THE MONEY.

One immediate hiccup is that even if we had to money now we need to book the flights with a credit card and the school doesn't have one. Tere said that she is always asking for one but that the bank refuses to give the school one because two people have to sign on all school cheques and transactions. This seems strange as as she says a company is in the same situation and yet has no problem with issuing its people with credit cards. So anyway when I want to book the flights I will have to do so with my own card!

With regard to the flights I think I will book multiple flights through Ryan air, we will have to go to Stansted and then to Katowice through Stansted. This is no problem on the way out but on the way back we will have to leave a day later, on the 22nd, and spend the night in the UK as there is no continuing flight back to Reus. So this will add two days to the original seven and we will be back on the 23rd. I will have to look to see if this is just silly, I am not sure at the moment. After all if we have to come back on the 23rd we might as well stay in Poland and come back on Wizzair on their Sunday flight, the only problem is that it goes to Girona!

A little more study is called for and then I will have to book them, this week if I can.

We receive official notification

Now it's official, today Francesc told me to look at my mail whilst passing in the corridor and Mª Jose said there was something about the Comenius and lo and behold... the contract has arrived.

This was last thing this afternoon and really I haven't had time to do much more than print out a copy and glance over it. From the little I have seen it is an official contract in which all our obligations are set out and that basically what it adds up to is that we get 80% of the money now but God help us if we can't justify how we spend it as then the school will end up paying for everything.

I will read it further this evening and talk to Mª Jose and Tere Sabate (the school secretary and sort of treasurer) tomorrow.

Oooops, small problem

These things are sent to try us I suppose. Out of interest I checked the price of tickets just now on wizzair and it seems that there aren't flights on the 14th and 21st, the nearest I can get are two days before or after these dates.

I am not sure how to solve this as with other airlines I am going to be charged the earth!! We will see, perhaps we will have to go wednesday to wednesday and miss that last two days with everyone else, after all, needs must when the devil drives.

It's official!

Dominika has sent a mail to everyone today making the dates for the visit in Poland officially the 14th to the 21st. This means that if, IF, I had access to the money I could reserve the tickets already.

She has also confirmed that she wants us all to book into the Villa Eureka, this apparently is in the centre of her city and only two minutes away from her school on foot.










She will make the bookings necessary here and let us know when it is done.

So now I just wait, though I think if I don't hear anything by Thursday I will ask the school if they will advance me the money... though whether they will or not I have no idea.

First notification to the students

Today has been the first day of school for us. I have had my tutorial group all morning and I took advantage of this to do my presentation about the Comenius Project to the three groups we now have at 1r Batx.

I have only given them a simple introduction and advised them that there will be a meeting next week for the people who are interested in participating. I have told them that if the project is oversubscribed then there will be a process of selection that will consist of an interview, in English. It is difficult to really gauge the level of interest among the students we will just have to wait and see I suppose.

This afternoon at home I received a surprise phone call from the Father of one of my students of last year. He was checking on the times for the project in school, 4-5.30 on Thursday afternoons, because his son has got into the EOI and he will be studying in the first session every thursday. At least I know that one person is interested in it!

Waiting for notification

Today I phoned Nuria Estrada at Ensenyament and asked the simple question about, "what do we do now?" She told me, very briefly, that now the only thing I can do is just wait for official notification that we have been approved. This has to arrive from Barcelona and should be here next week. Once we get it I will have the details of what to do next and how to access the money.

The money is really the important bit as things are starting to fall into place and I could probably reserve the flights for November now. Of course as Wizzair is a low cost airline the sooner the better.

Work to do and Katrin's webpage

Today I have to phone Nuria and find out about what I have to do now, Dominika said that a contract has to be signed. In addition I have to discover how the money has to be controlled and administered as I ought to try to finalise the flights to Poland in November as soon as possible before the price starts to go up on Wizzair.

Katrin, in the mail she sent, gave us an address for the web page that she has done (or has been done for her) for the project.

Which at first glance I liked a lot, it is clean and impressive, especially in these colours. The only link that works at the moment is the one directly to her school's page, we will have to wait and see how the rest work. Her school page is nice too, it uses the same photo, but doesn't contain an awful lot and is only in german. In her mail she mentioned that she has seen my blog, the only problem is that I don't know which one she means, this one?

Our work programme

Things are finally starting to move, although perhaps even too fast now.

Yesterday I connected to the Comenius e-mail account and was astounded to see that there were six unread mails waiting for me, six! This is a never before seen occurence, not all of them were even from Dominika. Among these mails was our programme of work, a reminder that we have to sign the LLP contract and a mail from Katrin in Germany.

The programme of work is the same as we originally agreed upon in the application so no surprises there although I think that it is now time to start to fine tune what we want the students to do. We all agreed to make a blog for the project, do we really mean only one? Just one run by the teacher? I would be inclined to get the students to all make one individually and then coordinate them through the teacher's blog. Additionally Dominika talks about 30 odd students in one of her mails whereas Katrina only mentions 22 of hers. I thought that 20/22 was the maximum we could have in the group?

Dominika has also mentioned holding an inauguration for the project at the same time in all countries... I am not sure if the powers that be here even want to hold an inauguration. I shall have to check and see, maybe we should, get the press here and invite Nuria Estrada to attend. We'll have to see, whatever we do I don't think it will be soon. We also have to create a logo, one for all the participating schools would probably be best, that means the students here have to create some possible logos and choose one to be submitted to Dominika without delay.

Changes, Birgit has left the school in Germany, a shame that I liked her. Stella has changed her e-mail address in Cyprus, so that's why she never answered anything and Laura is not in the school in Italy anymore. Now I can understand why Dominika made a point of it being important to have two people coordinating the project in each country, we are falling like flies.

I now have to mail her and let her know about the video channel and comment all the other things, I will say hi to Katrin at the same time.

Last gasp surprises, Approval and Youtube

Today has been one of those days, a day for last gasp surprises that make for a bit of a nervous atmosphere.

We got our timetables today and I saw that Manel hadn't taken off the couple of hours with the first year I knew I had doing an AAL, this is a subject as an alternative to religion. He had said he would take this off my timetable to compensate for the time I will have to spend doing Comenius stuff.

I went to ask him about this and he said that he hadn't done so as Nuria Estrada hadn't been able to confirm that we had had the project approved, in fact he added that the problems according to her lay with the coordinator. Dominika.

We agreed that we needed to sort this out asap so that he could wind up the timetable as once it is done there is hardly any way it can be then changed. So I said I would phone Nuria and if necessary, and she didn't mind, I would also phone Joana Vidal in Barcelona to see what on earth was happening. On talking to Nuria I discovered that the "problems" are the same rumours about problems that were around at the end of last year, meaning that Dominika had said she wanted to give up teaching and we would all be minus a coordinator. Apart from this she simply hadn't been given the list of approved projects and couldn't tell us what was happening. I asked if I could phone Joana directly and she agreed. This I then did and got nowhere so I handed it all back to Manel and said he ought to phone her, him or Francesc as she is likely to get annoyed if a lowly teacher like me bugs her about this.

Fortunately in the time it took to give Manel the number and find Francesc Nuria phoned back and told us that yes, we have been approved!! So now it is all steam ahead.

I did find time this morning to create a channel on Youtube for videos.

Of course there is nothing there at the moment. (Actually I have just updated this and now there is a video 9-9-08)

This is the address and I hope to record myself, ugh, giving a welcome to the other partners and then send them all a mail with the address, then I hope that they will record themselves and post their videos in turn. The only inconvenient is that I will have to give out the name and password to channel and thus leave it open to unwitting sabotage. Still it is a risk worth taking.

Back to school

The first of September and back to school, well more or less anyway. We don't have the students back until the 14th so until then we have all the preparation stuff to get on with.

There has still been no official confirmation of our participation in the Comenius from the authorities here in Catalunya. I was able to briefly have a word with Francesc, our director, in passing today and all he could say was that he has received something but he didn't say what. I definitely haven't.

The only worrying note is what has been mentioned about the structure of classes in 1r Batx, we wanted them to be as they have before, three groups all at the same time. This is the past has allowed us to mount flexible groups (according to ability) and was going to allow me to seperate out all the students who wanted to participate in the Comenius and have them all on their own as my class within the three. I have now been told that Manel for timetabling considerations can't do that, we can't have all three groups at the same time, so we can't "set" them. If I can't have all the Comenius lot together it will make my job a lot harder and will mean many more hours "fora d'horari". Manel hasn't confirmed this yet to me, I will chase him tomorrow and try to get him to bring me up to speed.

Dominika said she would send a work schedule to all of us but she hasn't yet. Now it is just a waiting game to see how this is all going to shape up.

Billy the Wizz!

Dominika has just come to my rescue over the flights. She tells me that when she came here in January she flew Lufthansa and that it cost her around 400 euros, that's a lot! However there is a specialist airline called Wiz which flies to Eastern Europe.








They are at www.wizzair.com and I think I will be able to fly for next to nothing, which is a relief!

By the way does anyone know who Billy the Wizz is? Or was?

Here he is, Billy the Wizz










He was one of the main characters in the Beano comic, obligatory reading when I was younger. Along with other old favourites such as Dennis the Menace, Rodger Dodger and Gnasher. Ahhh them was the days.


This is the new version of the Beano











The main characters

Dennis the menace in front with Gnasher the dog bottom right

Flights for November

Flights for our November meeting are proving to be a problem, I have been through all the normal airlines and they are all asking for a lot of money to get to Katowice.

Most of them are saying that I will have to go via somewhere else, hence two flights, hence prices that are all around 300-400 euros. My idea has always been to take three staff members with me in order to spread the experience as much as possible. This is looking a little doubtful at the moment. We shall have to see.

Things get underway, we got max points!

Today I have received the first mail from our coordinator that is really to do with the project itself proper.

Dominika has sent all of us a reminder about the meeting that is planned in Poland this November. She has asked us all to think about dates for the week long meeting and will send us details of hotels as soon as possible. She has asked that we all arrive and leave on the same day together so that her task of meeting us at the airport and arranging transport will be that much easier. When I organised the preparatory meeting I didn't arrange to meet anyone at the airport! The meeting is in her town of Czechowice-Dziedzice. We have to fly to Katowice so I can get my skates on looking for flights right now.

Apparently in our application we received the maximum points possible for an application, the full 100 points. That can only be a good sign and proof that we did our job during the week of the prep meeting.



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What now?

Now what I have to do is some preparation for the start of term.

The project has to be presented to the students of 1r Batx to find out who is interested in taking part. This means that I will prepare a powerpoint presentation with an explanation of what a Comenius project is, what it could mean for them and what they would have to do if they wanted to take part in it.

I will also have to prepare some sort of evaluatory process in case we get too many people wanting to take part in it. Considering that we only have to trips abroad with students and theoretically I will be limited to 8-10 students on each I can't realistically have a group much larger than 20.

Then I have to go over the contents of our new textbook for 1r Batx and marry up its contents with what we want to do in the project as my class in 1r will be made up of all the Comenius students and we will have to follow the syllabus and carry out the work of the project at the same time.

Work but I am actually looking forward to it, it should be fun.

Success confirmed, more or less

Life is weird sometimes, here I have been mentally wringing my hands awaiting the outcome of the Comenius selection process, Dominika tells me that we have all been passed but still I have to wait as our agency is closed in August (of course). Then I run into Mª Jose in the supermarket this afternoon and tell her that our coordinator thinks we have all been approved and she off handedly replies that at the end of July she spoke to Nuria Estrada and was told that we had been approved then!

Apart from feeling a bit knocked back I suppose that at least it is some sort of confirmation. Mª Jose did also add that Nuria said that we were lacking some of the documentation that our coordinator had to supply.

This I will check out with Dominika when I can.

A hint of future success?

I ran into Dominika on Facebook last night and she was able to send me the link to a page from her national agency in which our project figured as one of those that has been passed. In truth, as she pointed out, of the 800 or so projects that had been presented only a handful failed, so this is not perhaps the best guide as to how well we are doing.

She also told me that someone at her agency has said that we won't find anything out until at least the end of July, this is in a way what I suspected, we won't find out till it is just late enough not to be able to do anything in the way of preparations. Ah well, c'est la vie.

In the end I will end up doing all the presentation work on my own over August and then springing it on Francesc at the beginning of the school year in September, at least he won't have time to argue.

I have to remember to take all the details of the project home with me so I will have it all to work on.

Not quite the end of our coordinator

Yesterday I was able to chat to Dominika via the Facebook chat facility that they have introduced. She has told me that whilst she is determined to change schools at least, if not give up teaching altogether, this won't be for at least a year. It seems that she has been in the same school for the last ten years and wants a change. However at the moment she has a group that she likes a lot and wants to take them through to the end of their time at least.

When I asked her about the project and what would happen to it, if there is someone else in the school who would run it, she said that if we get the project she would probably stay in the school the next two years to see the project through to the end. This is a relief as we now don't have to look for a new coordinator although perhaps it is a lost opportunity as the responsibility would have come to me and perhaps it would have been a good chance to get some experience in directing a project such as this. Still it is early days and there is a lot of time ahead in which I can run my own project.

The really good thing is that we won't have to look for a new place for the first project visit.

Ups and downs

Here I think is the perfect example of what can happen in a Comenius project. My project coordinator, Dominika, from Poland has just sent me a mail in which she has told me that she is looking for another job, and not just a different school but also perhaps in a different field, project management or as a flight attendant.


What that means at this point for our project I really can't say. I presume that there is another person in her school who would take over the project from her, although I don't know. If that is not the case who takes over the role of coordinator? In addition what will happen to the visit that was planned for Poland? On the papers of the application my school was put as one of the schools that would take over the role of coordinator, I can't however remember if it was only us or another school as well.

It is just another good example of the ups and downs of these types of projects.

Jornada de Promoció i Valorització de Projectes Internacionals

Today I have been to Serveis Territorials in the "Jornada de Promoció i Valorització de Projectes Internacionals." (Conference on the promotion and assessment of International Projects) I had to do a "ponencia" or a speech about preparing a preparatory meeting. The Jornada took up the whole morning and I went with Anna.

When we saw the programme we were a little dismayed as I had to do my bit last. I had visions of everyone having gone by then and having to present my ponencia to an empty hall. In the end this was not the case.

The morning started with the presentation by Joana Vidal who explained the situation of PAP in Catalunya at the moment and also presented, ta da da daaaaaaaaa the PAP page which is finally available. This page, www.xtec.cat/pap has been a long time in the coming and finally has arrived. On it you can now find all the necessary information about PAP and the different projects that are being run, Gruntvig, Comenius, Da Vinvi etc. It has all those things that we spent weeks looking for and had to find on our own or through links on weird and wonderful pages within the EU system.

After her presentation there was the coffee break which for me was a bit of a waste of time as I hardly know anyone. Having only been in the state system for three years I don't have the enormous range of contacts and ex-colleagues that makes any of these conferences fun for the vast majority. Nearly everyone else had 8-10 people they knew and with whom they wanted to catch up.

Then there were the various presentations about Comenius Projects that had been run by primary schools. Of course for me this was not terribly interesting even though it was obvious that the schools involved had worked extremely hard and obtained some fantastic results from their projects. The only problem was that it was all a little uphill, a little long and involved, all of which made the whole thing a little slow and boring.

When my turn finally came Joana presented me and I got my powerpoint presentation going, only about five or six slides, and off I went.

When I looked out over the room I could see quite a few familiar faces, faces of people I have had in class at some point, that were all smiling at me and it occurred to me that these people were waiting for my presentation and anticipating that it would be funny or amusing. My style of teaching obviously leads people to think I will always be funny. I didn't really have an awful lot to say, what can you really say about the actual organisation of a preparatory meeting. The organisation side was comparatively easy. I mentioned making the virtual tour blog, reservations and things like that. The nuts and bolts of what I had to do. Then I spent more time giving people a feeling of the sort of problems we had to resolve, the conflicts that appeared, the surprises that there were. I won't go into all of that here but I will write about it in different entries in the future. I did make it amusing in places and I could feel how people were relaxing.

As part of what I mentioned had a lot to do with the enormous difficulties we had had to overcome in terms of just simply finding things out, what comenius was and what we had to do, finding partners for a project and a coordinator, when I had finished (and I got a few laughs which was good) Joana Vidal came up onto the stage and congratulated me and then picked up on some of the points I had made, reinforcing how things have improved now. All in all it went well and I made a good impression whilst keeping things light and interesting.

Barcelona, PAP conference

Jornada d’impuls als projectes internacionals per al diàleg intercultural:
“monitorització i valorització de Projectes del PAP”
Barcelona, 12 de març 2008
Hotel Barceló Sants

This is the name of the conference that I have recently been to in Barcelona. What it says is "Meeting of Promotion for Intercultural Dialogue in International Projects: The Monitoring and Avaluation of PAP Projects."

I went with Mª Jose by bus all the way up to Barcelona, to the Hotel Barceló at Sants. Once there there were several hundred people at the conference. We missed the opening political bit with all the big names but were there for the interesting real bit. The contents of the conference can be found on the PAP homepage on Xtec. The address is www.xtec.cat/pap and then you have to go to the Jornades difusió and you can open the complete text.

The main speaker was Emilio Garcia Prieto, Director del Organismo Autónomo Programas Educativos, he spoke about;
Valorització de projectes educatius europeus. Dinamització de bones pràctiques en els centres: exemples de projectes PAP
The avaluation of european educative projects. The "reinforcement/promotion of good practice in centre and examples of PAP projects.

Basically the most important thing that was said in the conference was that people are putting an awful lot of effort into setting up and running the projects but then they are not putting enough effort into their difusion. The result is that their target audience (kids at school, parents, local community, local government and other schools) never get to hear of all the work they have done and the results they have obtained.

Another presentation that I liked was that of Lateral thinking for managing networking school projects by Samira Idelcadi, a teacher from Morocco. Her presentation was curious and thought provoking if a little poorly thought out as trying to do practical examples of activities and question and answer with several hundred people just doesn't work. Her presentation is also available in English and Catalan.


After a break for coffee and perhaps the only example of a "pica pica" where the food provided has actually outlasted the hunger of the participants, we went back in for different workshops. I saw some schools explain the projects they had already finished which was ok if a little dull and then I saw Web2.0 Eines fàcils per a entorns més rics This I had wanted to see out of curiousity to find out if there were any more decent web sites out there. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I am pretty much on the cutting edge in terms of the web pages I use and the things I do in class.

Comenius January Preparatory Meeting

We have now completed the week of preparatory meetings for the application for a Comenius Project to start in September of this year.

The meeting was held this last week, the 13^th to the 19^th. At the beginning of the week those in attendance were;

Dominika Owsiany (Poland and co-ordinator for this project)

Katrin Mulcahy and Birgit Mehnert (Germany)

Susanne Kallanvaara and Nina Larsson (Sweden)

Nikos Ekonomou and Georgia (Greece)

Susanne and Nina had to leave on Thursday due to the fact they had booked their flights as cheaply as possible and it would have been too expensive for them to have stayed longer.

On Wednesday at midday Stella Lantsia arrived from Cyprus. She had been unable to attend the meeting from the beginning of the weed given her obligations in school in Cyprus but was able to attend the end of the week staying till Saturday.

Finally all the participants left us on Friday in order to be in Barcelona for Friday night because their flights left early on Saturday morning and the connections by train from Tortosa would not have allowed them to catch their flights in time had they stayed here on Friday evening.

Agenda and work:

The purpose of the meeting was the planning of our project but more specifically the completion of the application for the project that has to be completed and handed in before February 15^th (I have checked this date with Nuria Estrada)

Monday

Whilst we had a full agenda we did not really follow what was specified in it. The first full day of work was more a contact session in which people described the situation of their schools and introduced themselves to each other. We loosely discussed the possible contents of the project and what we wanted it to address. It was decided that the project ought to address stereotypes and national prejudices and promote open mindedness among out students. To this end we made a rough list of the possible activities that could be included over the two year period.

During this day we did discover that there are fundamental differences between the schools of the different countries and that some of these can and will create difficulties among the project members. For example, in Sweden it is illegal for schools to ask the students to contribute money to any school activity; this therefore means that any and all students that they wish to have participating in the project will need to be funded entirely from the money allocated to them. In addition the school in Sweden is located in an area populated principally by immigrants, whey have over 50% immigrants for their students, and so it would be difficult for them to ask students to have foreign students staying at home with them on an exchange visit. Similarly the German school is in an area where many of the students have to come to school by public transport, travelling up to an hour each time, and so would also find it difficult to organise places for students to stay in homes.

In the afternoon of Monday we started to check the national information that we had all provided for the application. Dominika placed great emphasis on the fact that the application had to be identical for all countries involved. As co-ordinator she has to present the application to her Agency in Polish and in English, as associates we will all have to present it only in English.

This done we then proceeded to fill in the rest of that application. Dominika explained to us that the applications are rated on a points system, out of 100, and then this is taken into account along with other factors such as the projects that each school has or hasn’t already completed etc. It was also commented that it is perfectly possible for one or more of the schools participating in our project to not be approved and that in this case there is nothing we can do. She did also mention that we still have three more schools, from Italy, Rumania and Turkey, which could potentially participate in the project. It was decided that should these schools complete the application information forms that Dominika has sent them then they should be allowed to participate given that it is possible that some of the schools will be rejected but that should they fail to do so we will not consider any other schools that may contact her in the meantime.

Since this meeting we have now learnt that in fact two more schools have met the application requirements and should now be considered as part of the project. These are; St. Cyril and Methodius Secondary School (Bulgaria) our contact there is with Svetla Ivanova and the IIS Albert Einstein (Italy), where we are in contact with Laura Rua and Ferdinando Cabrini.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we continued with the application form. Going through the different sections and therefore at the same time deciding on the contents of the project. During the morning we decided on a schedule of visits and activities that are here in our other Comenius blog.

The two student exchanges were planned for Greece and then for Sweden so that students will have the chance to visit both the north of Europe and the South. The final student exchange is close to the period when our students of 2n Batx will be preparing for the PAU exams. In a previous meeting it had been agreed that no groups of 2n Batx would be involved in visits outside the school in this time period. It remains to be seen if this will be the case or we will need to review which age groups take part in the project.

In later discussions some of the members of the project made the comment that it had seemed that the Swedes were in fact reluctant to host the final visit in Sweden in April of 2010. If this is the case, and Dominika will ask t

hem directly once she gets back home, and they do not really want to host the visit then the suggestion is to hold the second student exchange in Germany at the start of December 2009. This is because at this time in Germany there is a Winter Christmas festival that would be marvellous for the students. If this change occurs then the final visit would be a teacher visit for project evaluation either to Sweden or to Cyprus in April 2010. Furthermore if this change happens then there would be no conflict with our students and the PAU exams and we could preserve the continuity of the project with 1r and 2b Batx.

The only other firm decision taken on Tuesday was the name of the project which is to be: “Young Europeans, alike but different.”

Wednesday

Wednesday initially was supposed to simply be the continuation of the work already started Katrina, however, immediately presented us with a document she had been able to download from her agency. This document was an annotated copy of the Comenius application form with notes on how many points each section could gain and what the contents of the section should be. With this in mind we all then decided to go over the parts of the application that we had already completed with the objective of making the necessary changes for the application to meet, as closely as possible, the description we had at our disposal. To this end we included much more detail in the description of the elements of the project so that the Programme of Work was then written out. This is available in our other Comenius blog here.

-We were able to use the remaining time available to us on Wednesday to almost complete the application, this was considered to be important given that our Swedish partners Susanne and Nina had to leave on the Thursday.

On Wednesday at midday Stella Lantsia arrived from Cyprus. At midday we had a lunch at the Casa de Fusta which was useful for all of us to be able to meet and socialise and to get to know each other better out of the work environment.

Thursday

First thing in the morning we had to decide how many movements we wanted to apply for. Each time a teacher or a student travels this is one movement. The largest packet of movements available is 24 and we soon saw that all of us needed to apply for this, the maximum quantity of movements. This discussion also concerned the question of just how many students we wanted to take on each of the student exchanges. In the end despite the Germans and myself asking to be able to take up to 15 it was decided that the optimum number would probably be 5 with the chance of some schools taking more should the circumstances permit this. As I have already mentioned these circumstances include accommodation, facilities available and things so simple as the problems of moving so many students around. We now have eight schools in the project, if all of us take five students and two teachers whenever we travel we will have to move 56 people. With more students this could become a real problem.

The rest of the time was spent revising the work we had already done for Stella’s benefit. We were able to include the information about her and her school and also to incorporate some of the ideas she gave us into the application.

The rest of the day was spent completing the needed parts of the application in sufficient detail so that on the whole we were able to conclude that we had completed the work for which we had arranged to meet during this week.

In the afternoon we made a final critical evaluation of the work done and we made sure that there was nothing missing from the application.

In the evening we all attended a supper that had been organised between the Comenius group and a group of local teachers which was a good chance for the members of the group to meet a group of teachers not directly related to our school.

Friday

On Friday the group decided that due to problems with train times and the early flights they had to catch on Saturday it would be easier for them to go up to Barcelona during the day and then to stay there for Friday night in order to be able to catch their flights on Saturday morning.

Summary

In conclusion I think that we have an excellent chance of our application being approved because we have been fortunate in being able to tailor our application to their demands. In addition we now also have a Bulgarian school and a Cypriot school and these are areas which increase the possibilities of the application being approved

The next step is that Dominika has to redact the final version of the application and send a copy to all of us. We then have to hand in our application before the 15^th of February. Once this has been done we have to wait till June to find out if we have been approved and also how many of our partners have been approved.

It remains to be decided exactly when we communicate the project to the students and exactly to which group of students we direct it.