Comenius project “European Cities – yesterday, today, tomorrow”
Report of the Barcelona conference 18th-22nd May, 2010
Participating schools:
Carl Zeiss Oberschule. Berlin
Liceo Ginnasio Statale Augusto. Rome
Liceo Scientifico Michelangelo. Cagliari
Institut Joan Brossa. Barcelona
Participants:
Principals:
Margarida Gonzàlez
Ada Pinna
Administrative Principal:
Linda Foxi
Teachers:
Lourdes Bosch
Maria Teresa Ciaffaroni
Cati Dalmau
Christian Dünstch
Franca Giglio
Christine Hertel
Patricia Mateo
Carlo Panizon
Rita Pinna
Students:
Sara Bravo
Jacint Compte
Kilian Coronel
Andrea Costumato
Francesc Cuscó
Eduard Delmàs
Angel Gómez
Irene Gràcia
Martina Guiso
Stefano Ligia
Eleonora Lombardi
Livia Loprete
Laia Masdeu
Martina Milito
Sara Morgades
Filippo Mura
Mireia Nobau
Nadine Oehlmann
Federica Olivieri
Natalia Orellana
Ariadna Pidevall
Massimo Piga
Sabrina Ramünke
Vivian Ruck
Carla Sanahuja
Myriam Seyffarth
Paula Ten
Maria Torres
Neus Torres
Lorenzo Tosti
Anna Viladoms
Melanie Waligora
MINUTES OF ACTIVITIES
Tuesday 18th May
Berlin teachers and students arrive at Institut Joan Brossa when the afternoon classes are over. After the greetings and introductions host students take visiting students home.
Wednesday 19th May
Berlin students attend lessons at Institut Joan Brossa from 8:00 to 11:00. Cagliari teachers and students arrive at 11:00, and join the group of students and teachers from Berlin and the local students and teachers. From 11:00 to 13:00 they all take part in a tour of the neighbourhood visiting the anti-aircraft batteries site from the Spanish Civil War with breathtaking views of the city and the Parc Güell. Meanwhile the group from Rome arrives at school and is greeted by local teachers who show them the facilities.
Headmistress Mrs Gonzalez greets the participants, opens the conference and offers a light snack. Local students take guest students home to be accommodated.
In the afternoon host and visiting teachers and students are taken on a guided tour by a professional tour guide of the most outstanding Modernist buildings in the city. After the tour is finished students are given free time and teachers enjoy a drink together.
Thursday 20th May
The whole morning is devoted to build up the exhibition. First of all students from the different schools show the materials they have prepared on the different topics agreed in the Rome conference and after that they split in groups to compare the towns and make a new poster on each topic with the conclusions. At midmorning there is a coffee break, teachers and students can have a snack and relax a bit. At the end of the morning files with the new posters and pictures needed for the exhibition are sent to be printed and everybody starts building up the exhibition with the materials brought by each school.
After a fruitful morning teachers and students are offered a hot lunch at the school canteen.
In the afternoon there is a sightseeing tour of the Gothic quartier (historical centre of the city) prepared by local teachers Lourdes Bosch and Patricia Mateo where students are given a map with directions and have to find their way discovering significant buildings and landmarks. To finish the sightseeing tour teachers and students are offered a guided visit of the City Hall.
In the evening all teachers and students get together to enjoy a joint dinner in a traditional restaurant in the city centre.
Friday, 21st May
Early in the morning we go back to the task of building up the exhibition; the posters made by the students the previous days have been printed and are displayed together with all the materials which were made in the different schools. There is frentic work and excitement to have everything ready because we expect the imminent arrival of two guests for the opening of the exhibition. We are glad to welcome Mr. Luis Fernando Garcia Egea, Councillor of Education of the school’s district (Horta-Guinardo) and Ms. Joana Vidal from the International Office of the Department of Education who have kindly accepted our invitation to officially open the exhibition. Mr Garcia and Mr Vidal address the audience thanking headmistress Ms Gonzalez and Ms Mateo for invitating them to the event and they both congratulate all the participating schools in the effort made and the results obtained after the first year of the project and encourage them to go on. They point out the importance of Comenius projects in raising in participating students the awareness of a Europe without borders and the need of cooperation and understanding between the different peoples.
Students present their conclusions on the different topics they’ve been working on throughout this first year of the project and after that everybody is invited to visit the exhibition.
After the coffee break students and teachers split into two different groups, students accompanied by a couple of local teachers go to a computer room to discuss and write down their ideas on how the project should be continued next school year. Teachers get together too and discuss and reach the following agreements:
1. Evaluation of the project: Maria Teresa Ciaffaroni was in charge of finding a proper tool for evaluating the first part of the project. She explains that she had browsed the internet and had found different tools which she explained briefly. We decide which are the items we want to evaluate and list them down:
european citizenship
partnership
students work
teachers work
products
coordination
influence of school
Once we’ve established the items to be evaluated we discuss if it would be better to use online or paper questionaires and we eventually agree that for this first time we’ll use paper questionaires. M Teresa will send the questionaire and everybody will answer and use them for the intermediate report. Each school will fill in the questionnaire and send the results to Rome.
2. Next school year plans: Debate is started on what we’d like to do for the second year of the project. Bearing in mind that during the first year we’ve focused on the past and present of the cities the general opinion is that we should now deal with the future. One suggestion points out to find out about government urban plans for the future, for instance, in Berlin there are plans to build up the area of an old airport; students could put forward their own ideas and compare them to the government plans. Another suggestion is that students could develop ideas about their utopia town of the future but this is considered too abstract and difficult to relate to the work carried out during this first year. After some exchange of ideas there is agreement to work on the following topics:
How students would like their city to be like in the future?
Urban development (including architecture)
Mobility
School in the future
Culture (including entertainment) i.e. facilities
Me and Migration (for the last term)
3. Expected product at the end of the project: IT exhibition
4. Cagliari meeting: It had been initially agreed that next school year’s first meeting would be held in Cagliari at the end of October 2010. It is necessary to accord the objectives of the meeting and also the exact dates which are set as follows:
Build up the exhibition again and expand it somehow
Me and Migration initial discussions
Remodelling plans
Arrival day: Sun 24th Oct – Departure day: Wed 27th Oct
5. Students mobilities. Due to the fact that Berlin and Barcelona are organizing two conferences each while the Italian cities (Rome and Cagliari) only one each, there is an unfair consequence in the total number of students mobilities, being the Barcelona partner school the one which results in far less students mobilities. To balance the situation everybody agrees that although it was initially agreed that each visiting school would take five students to every conference, Barcelona will exceptionally be allowed to take eight students to the Cagliari meeting and six students to Berlin’s.
6. Itinerant exhibition: Each partner school will send two questions and two possible answers (quiz; multiple choice) to Cagliari, so students visiting the exhibition will have to study the exhibition more carefully. The questions and aswers should be sent by the end of September.
At the end of the morning teachers and students get together again in the main hall and students present their ideas and suggestions for next school year. As usual they show enthusiasm and initiative and produce beautiful power point presentations with great ideas:
• visit cities they haven’t visited this year
• meet people from other cities
• show the work they've done this year
• design the city of their dreams mixing the best of all the cities (build a new city)
• research plans for the cities (by the government)
• our perfect city:no pollution, multicultural, green, lots of pubs, ...
• ideas: future education, transport, new buildings, food, …
• new buildings, new ways of transportation (more ecological and easier than now)
• languages (will everyone speak the same language?)
• interview citizens about their opinion on the city hall plans
• things to change or keep (comparing partner cities)
• more contact with people on the street
Everybody is reluctant to admit it but it’s time to close the conference and say goodbye. Host teachers thank visiting and local students for their hard work and cooperation in all the activities carried out during the conference and also thank deeply all the visiting teachers for their support. Christian Dünstch as coordinator of the project also wants to address all the participants congratulating them on the good job done so far and thanks headmistress Ms Gonzalez and professor Patricia Mateo for organizing such a successful conference.
In behalf of the organizing school Patricia Mateo says goodbye to Berlin students and teachers who are departing that same afternoon and gives the final directions for the evening activity, remaining guests are invited to see the show of the Magic Fountain of Monjuïc 9pm.
Saturday, 22nd May
At 10am host and visiting students meet with visiting teachers who take their pupils under their care until the time of their flight back home to Cagliari and Rome.