Altogether eight schools contacted us about this project: one from Norway, one from Sweden, two from Estonia, and four from Latvia. Initially we thought that it would be difficult to find schools to work with and we were really surprised that we got so many messages. We are constantly looking for schools to work with, so we are hoping that all the people who wrote to us would keep in touch with us and work with us in our other projects. Here are some examples of what we are working on at the moment:
English Club 8 Theme Traveling (travelblogs, postcards etc. – we are going to start in March)- English Club 9 Theme Occupations & Society (photostories about jobs, my country articles, we are going to do commercials and news and articles about social media in the spring)
- Creative Writing e.g. Storytellers: pick a picture > write a story
- Svenska sidor t. ex. Frågor om livet i …
The idea in these projects is that students post similar works, and comment on each others’ posts. That way they feel that there are people who are interested in what they do, not only their teachers sees what they do. My students have found this very motivating, they like to think of themselves as journalists and want to write more when they get comments on their posts. This could well be done for any kind of essay writing instead of notebook work, the teacher can still grade and correct the works even though they are online.
For the Can I Help You Project we have decided to work with Zvejniekciema vidusskola, Saulkrasti, Latvia and Liljeborgsskolan, Trelleborg, Sweden. We were thinking of adding a fourth school here but we’re not sure if it would be too much. If the idea is that everyone gets a trip to one of the partner schools, it would be easier to arrange with four collaborating schools. However, we feel that it might become too impersonal with such a large group, the students might not remember all the people involved and we would not have a meeting where all the schools get together. With three there is always the problem that one of the schools does not have anyone to host. Say if we all first meet in Sweden, Swedes host both Latvians and Finns, and then Swedes travel to Latvia, then we Finns don’t have anyone to host.
We talked about continuity before and we agree, we would like to continue this project in the upcoming years. We have one problem though. Katriina who is the special education teacher for our eighth-graders this year can be part of this only once in three years. Our seventh-graders do not have optional subjects and our eighth-graders are too much in the turmoils of puberty to travel anywhere (in general), so it is only when she has ninth-graders that she can participate. There are two solutions for this. I offer the course on my own during the two years in between or we do this project only every third year. I have also arranged my teaching so that I focus on one age group at a time, so if we go with the first option, I will have a group of students I don’t know personally and it might create problems. If we go with the second option, we will really have to commit to this project in a long run, which we are willing to do. Naturally no one can say for sure where we are in three years time, or at the end of this decade, but as far as nothing prevents us to stay with this project, we would like to do so.
So, if we are going to have an exchange program every third year and one school coordinates it, like we do now, I suggest that we would take turns coordinating, so that 2015 it would be either Sweden or Latvia who would coordinate the project, and 2018 the remaining third partner. Coordinating involves getting everyone together, for example in a blog like this, filling in the application for funding, suggesting a theme and tasks for everyone to do. That can all be done the way we do this year, so basically you can just copy the old application and suggest the same theme and tasks if you are happy with what we have done previously. There just needs to be someone to take care of it. It is a bit of extra work but in turn the coordinating country would get a hosting free year that year. Does that sound fair to you?
Now, I am going to invite Gaida and Catrin to write to this blog and I will send you invitations today. Please let me know if you don’t receive them and I will redo it. I will need to know your opinion on these plans so you can leave a comment here below and then write a post of your own if you feel like you want to present yourself, your school, your town or the previous projects that you have been involved in. Then I will finish filling in the Nordplus Junior application for funding. For that application I need to state our travel plans, so would you please let me know if you are able to host, and would you be able to host two schools in the spring 2013. We will have about 10 students, and I’m sure not all of them are able to travel. We won’t allow students to travel if they have behavioral problems or problems with taking care of their schoolwork, and there are always some students who can’t travel because they have other plans for the same time period or they don’t feel comfortable staying in a host family. I also need to know where you would prefer to travel. If we are sticking into the plan that the coordinating country does not host, you will have to exclude us, but we don’t need to go with that plan if you don’t want to. Just let me know, now is the time to discuss this so that I will be able to send you the agreements to sign as soon as possible.
Can I Help You? - Teacher Blog 
Dear Annika,
I’m glad to look at your plans and the way you have worked it out. There is no problem for us to host 20 students, we’ve done it before with Danish and German students.
It’s quite reasonable if you are coordinators then we host the students’ exchange.
When you fill in the application, is there a part that every partner fills in the information like in Comenius? Or is there any certain info you need for this?
How about F2F meeting of teachers at the beginning of the project? Is it possible to plan one? In my opinion for successful project is it quite important, I think.
Dear Gaida,
I’m glad that our plans suit you. There are no preparatory visits, I’m afraid. That is why coordinator’s role is important and that is why I have opened this blog for us, we can always come back to what we’ve said when everything is here in the blog. I only need your school address, the name of the legal person etc. I will send you a message about this. There will be something for your principal to sign and I will need to attach an digital copy of that agreement in the application. I will send you a copy of the application at some point.
Best regards Annika
Dear Annika, thanks for quick response. email is really one of the best inventions of the 20th century. And we can use skype to know each other better if the project goes on.
My school:
Zvejniekciema vidusskola/ Zvejniekciems Secondary School
1a Atputas Street,
Zvejniekciems, LV2161
headmaster: Andris Dulpiņš (in English Dulpins)
there are 291 student in our school)
Let’s keep in touch,
Gaida
I think it is very important that we try to establish a co-operation over the years, in this way every participating school get the opportunity to travel, to visit the other country/ies, and see with their own eyes that we are not so different, no matter where we live and , on the other hand, we should be proud of our country, our growing knowledge.
I would suggest that – because we don’t have a preparatory visit- we use Adobe Connect Pro ( Sweden has a licence for it) for the communication. We could fix a convenient time where all the involved teachers could participate and talk “face-to-face with each other. The stronger our relationship will become, the stronger will our students work together, because we are the locomotives!
An other thought:
Given the fact that no matter how poorly our students speak English they are “digital natives” ( I am up- to- date with the terminology because studying right now at the university the ” usage of IT in a foreign language classroom:) ), that also means that they like (in average) to use modern technology and social networking. Taking advantage of these facts we can use their curiosity, their wish for using modern tools for communication to make them more aware of the necessity of better language skills, not only in English but also in their mother tongue. Nobody can ignore the IT development and specially those students with special need will benefit from our projekt- for life-time.