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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