It’s Sunday night, 10 pm and I am typing this from my hotel room in Duren, Germany, but I will probably not be able to post this before some time tomorrow. I arrived at Duren late today, with a group of 14 students and a colleague for a one-week return visit to our German partners in the International Student Exchange Project.
The project started in fall 2009, and
resulted in a successful partnership
between Gimnazija "Mustafa Novalić", Gradačac
and Gymnasium am Wirteltor, Duren. The aim is to bring together groups of
students from both schools to learn about other culture and every-day life,
practice using English and German, and above all
make long-lasting friendships. The team of two teacher-coordinators from Germany -Michaela Berard and Haris Zahirović and the Bosnian team - my colleague, Raif Omeragić and I, have put
a great effort to keep the Project and the partnership going. In 2014, the
project will be officially funded by the German Embassy in Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
I haven’t slept at
all last night, since the trip from Bosnia to Germany was quite long. First, we had to start
off at 2 am local time and then take a 4-hour bus ride to the International
Airport in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. We got there around 6 am, and boarded
the plane at 8:30 am. The fog at the Cologne International Airport made us
hover in the air for some time, before finally arriving safely to the arms of
our German hosts. We’ll be staying here until Friday with a quite busy schedule
– we’ll be attending classes in the school, have a meeting with the principal, then the
official reception at the Office of the Mayor of the City of Duren, and in
between these activities, we’ll go sightseeing in Duren, Cologne and Aachen. However,
the aim is also for the students to have fun and enjoy their stay at the host
families.
I am quite worried
that this tight schedule will affect my assignments for the Webskills Course
Week 2. I have encountered some problems so far, although I thought that
I could manage pretty well.
The first bad thing
is that I do not have an internet connection in my room. It seems strange, but
this is some kind of old-people’s home and I still haven’t figured out the way
where to get online while staying here. I’ll try to look for a place in the morning and probably
go online in the school, hoping that this will not disturb the schedule my
colleagues already made.
To reflect on the Week 1 I must admit that it was rather
demanding for me. I have no experience in e-learning, and getting familiar with
the use of the proposed tools was interesting and yet at times stressful.
I like the idea of
using Nicenet where all the participants in the course can interact and discuss
the topics we’re introduced by our webskills instructor Sean McCelland. It was
nice to learn who are the people behind the names in the class by visiting
their newly created blogs and introductions they posted in our class Nicenet
conferencing.
The only issue I couldn’t
deal with, and in a way still can't, is posting my name and a blog link to the
class wiki page. I have tried contacting the instructor and doing the
suggestions that other class participants recommended (i.e. to sign out
completely from the wiki page and gmail account and log back in again) but
nothing seemed to work.
Can it be that difficult?
Hi Maida! The project you're undergoing seems very interesting. Students are learning about other cultures and using the English language to communicate. I've also heard about Connecting classrooms and schools links projects. In those cases you can use technology to connect distant classrooms and keep on communciating. Are you going to work with this group for the final project or choose another one? Hope you're enjoying your stay.
ReplyDeleteHi Maria Laura!
DeleteIt’s so nice to see you here, too. Thank you for your comment. In 2011 the schools from my country participating in the Connecting Classrooms project did use ICT to correspond and work closely with schools from Scotland, Spain and Poland. They mostly used e-twinning (http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm) as the common platform. At the moment, in the project there are 10 pairs of partner schools, cooperating on a national level. However, the students and the teachers are using a (closed) Facebook group named Connecting Classrooms BiH (https://www.facebook.com/groups/129318067142489/) in order to communicate, share ideas and do tasks related to the projects within their local communities. Unfortunately, I will not be able to work with the German student exchange group for the final project in our webskills class, since only half of the students share the same EFL level – some are beginner in English, but intermediate in German language, while the others are exactly the opposite. I might take a class I started teaching last year.
Hi Maida,
ReplyDeleteThe students exchange program you are involved is interesting. It gives both you as the coordinators and teachers and the students from both countries opportunities to learn each other's culture. Yes, I can imagine how stressful it was living without internet connection as this class has begun. I felt the same on the first day of our online course since I was out of town and had a very limited access to the internet.
BTW, what are you going to do for your final project? Are you going to work with the students of this program?
Hi Rina!
DeleteThank you so much for your comment. It's a relief to know that I am not the only one being in this class with a temporarily limited internet connection while away from home. I got back last night only to find out I'd be away again on Monday and Tuesday. I guess it means some more stress during Week 3. As for the final project, there are a few ideas I have. To begin with, I might take a class I started teaching last year. Even though this is a rather big class with 29 students, I know them quite well, which could be an advantage. It would be nice to work with the German student exchange group, but unfortunately, not all of them are in my class nor are they at the same EFL level.