Student evaluations of social media courses

In January 2011, students evaluated the social media courses they were participating in. Below you will find links to the questionnaires and summaries.

Finland
Italy
Portugal
Spain

Torredonjimeno, my town.

Torredonjimeno is an Andalucian Town near the City of Jaen.
Its 14,000 inhabitants are mainly farmers: Torredonjimeno is one of the most prolific olive oil producers in the world.
The Town Hall was built in the 17th century. It is located in the old part of the town and near it you can visit the Castle. There, you can admire a duplicate of a Visigothic treasure found in Torredonjimeno in 1926.
The population is mainly Catholic and there are two parishes: Saint Peter´s and Saint Mary´s. There are also two small churches, two convents and in the outskirts of the city, you can visit the Chapel of the Patron Saints, Saint Cosme and Saint Damian, and the Chapel of our Lady of Consolacion.

If you are up for a walk, there are many parks, gardens and squares.
And if what you want is to enjoy the local festivities, there are plenty to choose: Holy Week (which has been declared a Festival of National Traditional Interest) in
March/April, "Las Cruces" festival in May, the funfair in honour of St Peter and St Paul in June, the pilgrimage to the Chapel our Lady of Consolacion in September and the festivities and fireworks in honour of Saint Cosme and Saint Damian also in September.
So, come to Torredonjimeno and you will enjoy its architecture, its people and its traditions.

STUDENTS OPINIONS ABOUT THE MEETING IN LEIRIA (PORTUGAL)

Our experience has been unforgettable, We visited some cities that were worth visiting. The time we spent together with the Spanish and foreing students who took part in the meeting and with the teachers themselves was very good.The Portuguesse people were very friendly, they told us legends and stories about their country and we did the same. They have been very exciting days. We felt young again like when we were in school and University. Now, we have a certificate that says we have been part of an European project, not everybody has one!The only problem with the trip was the time, we wish that we could have stayed a bit longer.

Let's get social in Finland

Our English group has started its Christmas holiday, which means that we don´t have any contact lessons before January, but we keep in touch by email and the students will be working on a mutual assignment on the group blog. Have you watched our Christmas party video yet? We invited a few students from the group "Finnish for foreigners" to join us over a cup of mulled wine and Finnish Christmas goodies.

The experiences from our trip to Portugal inspired us and our students so much that we are nine people going to Italy in February, six students and three teachers. We are also looking forward to getting in contact with students in our partner organizations and, of course, looking forward to meeting some of them in Italy, too.

For now, we would like to wish you a very merry Christmas.

IMPRESSIONS OF THE MEETING IN LEIRIA

We, all the teachers, have got together to evaluate how the meeting in Leiria went, and all of us have reached the same conclusion: that it has been a very good one. These are the reasons for this evaluation:

The working atmosphere has been the appropriate one to be able to reach the objectives we all had in mind: Johanna, with her smiling face, has directed the working sessions very well and we have tackled the objectives and prepared efficiently each one's tasks in anticipation for the next meeting in Italy.

We have to point out the good job the hosts have done towards us. They fulfilled the needs we had and they tried to follow through the timetables, didn't you, Pedro?

As we visited some of the IPL's schools, we were able to visit different places and this has been a very good experience. As far as the attention paid to our students by the IPL members, our impression is that they have done an outstanding job and for this reason, our students have an excellent impression of the meeting, specially living together with the Portuguese people. Apart from this, they have had the opportunity to visit some cities: Lisbon, Bathalla, Leiria and due to this they have got more cultural information and learnt different cultures.

The students are also working on this topic and once they have finished it, we will post it to the blog. Apart from this, the new technologies students, some of them took part in the meeting in Leiria, are preparing another work with some photographs of the meeting , and we will show you soon.

Pictures from Christmas Party

Here are some pictures from an early Christmas party that the "Let's Get Social" group arranged in Valkeakoski. We invited some international guests from a Finnish for Foreigners course to join us and talk about Christmas traditions around the world.

Let's Get Social Christmas Party

Real collaboration

When starting this project, we hoped that it would help create some real-life interaction between students in various countries. For us, it is important that our students can practice their English and communication skills in real contexts with real people.

Now, we believe that this will be achieved on two levels. Firstly, the students who came to Portugal with us got to practice their speaking skills with the Portuguese and Spanish students. They were "thrown in at the deep end" and had to manage by themselves, without one of us teachers by their sides at all times. This way, they got a positive experience that they could manage with the language skills they have. It is important for them to realize that you don't have to be perfect in order to get by in English. This idea worked well in Portugal, and after this first visit we have many more students who are excited about the upcoming visits to Italy and Spain!

Secondly, the students on the "Let's Get Social" course are excited about communicating with their counterparts in the other partner organisations. They really hope that their blog will be interesting to students in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland. They are also looking forward to seeing what other students in the other countries are doing.

As to increasing online communication, the meeting in Portugal showed concretely what we have already thought to ourselves: that in order to encourage online collaboration, two requirements must be met. First of all, the themes must be authenticl, and really interesting to the students. They need to be such that the students can relate to them, and that they have a real reason to do what they are required to do. Secondly, although we hope that real, authentic interaction will grow out of this, initially a structure needs to be created with set themes and a preliminary schedule.

After doing all this, we hope that this project will encourage our students to reach out to the other students and that they will all share things with each other, be it in the form of stories, pictures, music, or whatever else they can think of.