Accommodation: Delphi Art Hotel****, Agiou Konstantinou, Athens
Thursday, Feb 15th: Arrival, Check in at Delphi Art Hotel, Introduction and Welcome Dinner at 8 p.m.
Friday, Feb 16th: Visit to school, Working session: Introducing the schools - The structure of Comenius LLP - Ideas for a project - Project organisation; Visit to Plaka
Saturday, Feb 17th: Working session: Project and activies plan - Conclusion - What next? - Administrative matters (certificates, forms to be filled in); Visit and tour of Akropolis
Sunday, Feb 18th: Summary of meeting, farewell breakfast, optional additional sightseeing
Monday Feb 19th: return flights
1. The participating schools understand their network for a (future) school project as a learning community. This community provides multiple opportunities for the members of the individual school communities to explore the cultural diversity and richness of the EU and thus supports creating a European awareness and a deeper insight about how the EU will develop in the future.
2. The participating schools are aware of the school and personal development processes they are going to initiate in their own institutions and will assist each other to evaluate these processes. The overall aims are to improve the quality of teaching and the quality of learning.
3. The participating schools want to improve their school programmes, encourage teachers and students to use the options of COMENIUS LLP and involve parents and external partners of their school communities in a continuous process of development that prepares their students to become competent citizens in a knowledge based, open and multicultural Europe. The activities in "EU [ju:] can communicate" follow the aim to develop the students, the teachers and the organisations/institutions (schools) in parallel channels.
4. Activity 1 - Writing a book: ODYSSEUS MODERN ADVENTURES - Odysseus travels from school to school, tells students about his adventures, identity and aims and writes chapters (legends, school stories, poems etc) with the students for a book which will be published in spring 2009. Odysseus has to pass a test at each school (What has he learnt?) before he can continue his journey.
ODYSSEUS IS THE SYMBOL of the network and the project: he is curious, clever and cunning, always searching more knowledge and gaining experience, he succesfully meets all challenges although on his journey and in his development process he is threatened by natural disasters and must suffer from many influences before he is allowed to return to himself. ODYSSEUS is the symbol emigration, crossing borders and progress through education.
5. Activity 2 - MUSIC, TRADITIONS, TALES AND LEGENDS: the products may vary from videos/DVD to wallcharts, paintings, sculptures, music and dance presentations, recipe book, scrapbook etc. These products will be presented at project meetings.
6. Activity 3 - ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE: the network itself is quite heterogeneous with city, country and mountain schools, continental and Mediterranean schools. This determines the way people live, eat, work, spend their free time, think about the future. Food, use of water, fresh air, geographical forms of the country, farming methods, forms of transport, education, learning from history, free time activities will be items to describe the diversity of this project network. This activity allows the students/teachers to decide about the forms of their contribution. The final product will be a kaleidoscope.
7. Activity 4 - CALENDAR 2008: each school selects photos, pictures, pieces of art of students. Provided all 8 institutions will be accepted in the application process there could be 2 pictures fromm each school in the calendar (4 on coverpage, 12 inside on months pages). Maria Hinze and Veronika Lusconova will check options in their cities and make proposals until October 2007. The calendar should be available by Mid-November.
8. Activity 5 - TEACHER TRAINING and PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: the project network offers a wide range of professional experience to its members. This experience may be shared among the members of the participating schools. Offers include "Shadowing teacher colleagues", "Teaching of German as a foreign language", "Student-centred methods of teaching", "Holistic approach of teaching", "Teaching history", "Team-based participation and decision-making". There are detailed offers to use the COMENIUS Lifelong Learning modules in the area of teacher mobility. Two teachers from Gesamtschule Orscholz offer accommodation to school and COMENIUS visitors.
9. MEETINGS/preliminary plan: First meeting in November 2007 in Zawiercie/Poland, 2nd meeting in Tux/Austria after Easter holidays in 2008, 3rd meeting in Hodmezövasarhely/Hungary in autumn 2008, final presentation in Orscholz/germany in first week of May 2009. Other "mobilities" (bilateral and multilateral) may be arranged in between.
10. Gimnazjum Nr3 Zawiercie/Poland will be the coordinating school. The coordination of the application (collect data from schools, write an English version of the application, allocate necessary information to prospective partners, maintain the project website until October 2007) will be done by Gesamtschule Orscholz/Germany.
