Minutes of the Comenius Conference in Château-du-Loir

21st to 25th January 2009

PARTICIPANTS

Aywaille (BE): Collette Franck, Jacqueline Vanstalle, Christiane
Château du Loir (F): Chrystelle Capdecomme, Stéphane Duarte, Patricia Guitton
Ourense (ES): Elisa Álvarez Fernández, Raquel Pato Lorenzo, Almudena
Alonso García, Roberto Fernández López
Bremen (GER) : Andrea Holzinger, Christian Braun, Frauke Eitmann, Christel
Spielhoff, Irene Janoschek

AGENDA

- Final presentation of the program

- Final Result

- Visit to Germany

- Europass


Final presentation of the program

Chrystelle Capdecomme and Stéphane Duarte presented the program (see individual file).

Final Result

Elisa Alvarez pointed out that the final result will be a CD /DVD containing the blog.

She explained that each country works on their own on the main topic. This is due to individual possibilities of each participating school.
Then each country presented their plans:

SPAIN
They are going to create a series of short films, explaining different possibilities of leisure activities in Ourense, including interviews with English subtitles, short documentary films, and so on.

GERMANY
Andrea informed about their plans. They will proceed with writing texts on leisure possibilities as already started and seen on the blog.
They have also already distributed the questionnaire on leisure activities. A group of students will evaluate them and create a presentation. This will as well be available on the blog.
For the future they might also make interviews. The form of presentation is yet unknown but the idea of creating a video is likely.

BELGIUM
Colette tells us that interviews and a questionnaire have been done, but texts on them have to be created.
She presents their plan of creating a small book on the negative aspects of leisure time, focusing on 3 main questions, including drawings and a photo report.
Topics:
1 - Abuse of alcohol
2 - Abuse of TV
3 - Abuse of new technologies (computers)

The positive aspects, such as basketball, horse riding, swimming, dancing, going out and shopping, will appear in a photo report.

Jacqueline talks about her collaboration with the science teacher of their school respecting the physical consequences dealing with this topic. Related to this activity they plan to visit a Museum in Liège, where they will get information about former leisure activities, their history and traditions.

FRANCE
Chrystelle informs us about the workshops they have set up in France. The students work in different workshops and later presented their work themselves involving the partners (students and teachers). They are going to create a newspaper on current leisure activities and during the workshop we got extracts of what was already initiated, articles written by the participating students and teachers as well, concerning their leisure activities, as for example TV series, weekend or holiday trips, sports, computer and social networking websites (e.g. facebook), expectations of the COMENIUS project, etc.

Visit to Germany

Germany proposed the partners to arrive on Tuesday 12 May in the evening to make it possible to start with the programme on Wednesday 13 May in the morning. Departure will be on Sunday 17 May.
France and Spain can make this possible. Belgium might just be able to arrive on Wednesday. We still decided on this arrangement and Germany will keep this in mind when setting up their programme.
It is possible for France to bring along 7 students instead of 4. For 2 student we can not yet guarantee 100% a placement in a family of our students but we will definitely accommodate them privately (e.g. Irene’s house).
They presented as well the possibility to accommodate teachers at Townside, a low-budget backpacker-hostel in Bremen (http://www.townside.de/english/).

Europass

For Germany it is possible to get Europass mobility certificates for the travelling students. This information has already been passed on to all partners by email. The Spanish national agency does not accept Comenius for Europass mobility. So each country has to check on their own whether they will get this for their students (see email on EUROPASS).


We would furthermore very much like to thank all the French people involved in this visit for making this a succesful and inspiring visit and exchange. All the more as this was the first time with students meeting each other.

by Elisa and Andrea