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.