Minutes of the Comenius Conference in Belgium 21st to 25th October 2009

PARTICIPANTS

Aywaille (BE): Collette Franck, Sophie Defise
Chateau du Loir (F): Valier Baraile, Stéphane Duarte, Patricia Guitton
Ourense (ES): Elisa Álvarez Fernández, Almudena Alonso García, Carmen Babarro, Amparo Vázquez Vivas
Bremen (GER): Andrea Holzinger, Christian Braun , Christel Spielhoff, Irene Janoschek
Portugal: Eléuterio Santos

AGENDA

Ø meeting in Spain

Ø next activities

MEETING IN SPAIN
Elisa Alvarez pointed out that 19 March 2010 will this year be holiday in Spain. This usually means that most families spend the weekend with their family in the countryside. This might cause problems. The host families will be informed. Belgium can arrive on 17 March and can stay until 21 March. Germany and France are easy on arrival dates and will arrive on Tuesday. Elisa explained the advantages of the airports Madrid and Porto and said it would be possible to arrange a minibus from Porto and back when contacting her before.
The number of travelling students is fixed (4 students by partner), not so the number of teachers.

NEXT ACTIVITIES

Belgium
is going to research production of «tools» for leisure activities (like musical instruments or sports equipment), looking as well for older local productions.
France
will focus on the subject “dancing”. Within that they plan to research history of dances and regional aspects.
The positive aspects, such as basketball, horse riding, swimming, dancing, going out and shopping, will appear in a photo report.
They ask for a comparative with the other partners.
Spain
School has just started and further proceedings have to be worked out, but they plan to work on local festivities as magosto, carnival etc.
Germany
The participating German students are now in their courses for their final exam (Abitur). The project has to be organised as an extra-curricular activity which cause troubles as students have different timetables and already many afternoon lessons. Some students still work out a questionnaire on computer use, others a personal insight into their leisure time. Problem is furthermore that most students are not in the participating teachers’ classes any longer. So future results can not be safely promised.

Thinking of the presentation of a collective work or final product, for the meeting in Spain the partners arranged that the travelling students will prepare 2 to 3 regional activities (dance or games) that they will have to explain so that they can be practised by all, and presented to the others as different workshops.

Furthermore we decided on an exchange of handmade Christmas cards. Teachers and students are asked to send them to a partner.

Referring to the final report, Andrea Holzinger remarks that there is a common part that we should work out together. She points out as well that we should not forget to mention the item of “evaluation”, e.g. how was evaluated?, feedback from pupils, opinion polls, written communication of personal experience, etc.

by Andrea Holzinger and Elisa Álvarez

PS: Germany will ask students to send at least one to a partner and one to the German coordinator to check their work. The Christmas cards could as well be displayed in the meeting in Spain.