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.