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Written by: Jacques van Beers Peter Beij Kees van der Zwart

For the third time the schools that  participate in the Comenius school development project, were meeting each other. This time in Pocking (Bavaria, Germany).

The participants are looking for better ways of learning and teaching and are exchanging experiences in their search for innovative strategies for improving education. They recognise the importance of the communication between teachers through IT and by exchanges.  

On Wednesday 6 April the Dutch arrived late because of problems with their plane. The rest of the group already had diner in the “Klostertaverne” in Vornbach. After a few more beers everyone went to the hotel to have a good nights’ sleep.  

On Thursday 7 april the conference started at Hauptschule Pocking with a word of welcome by Willy, Frieder and Jacques and a presentation of the (intended) programme. Then  followed a guided tour through the school and a visit to several lessons, where we could see good examples of cooperative learning, self responsible learning and learning with the use of IT. The lunch in the school Bistro was served by teachers and pupils of the school. In the afternoon we visited a famous park that belongs to castle “Freudenhain” near Passau. The guide told us interesting stories about the history of the park, but it took him two hours to do so. This caused some senior teachers to complain about aching backs and feet. Diner was in the “Hacklberger Bräustüberl”, belonging to the brewery, where Peter and Kees once again took the only thing they trusted: Wiener Schnitzel. When it was dark we went to Passau where we had a guided tour through the “innenstadt” by the same verbose guide we had that afternoon, but now dressed as a medieval night watch. He needed an assistant and Jacques pointed to Kees, but the guide immediately saw that Jacques had more (k)nightly qualities and appointed him to be his assistent. Every time the clock struck Jacques had to sing. Sometimes the guide seemed to forget this, but luckily Rolf reminded him of this omission. This tour was very interesting, but lasted for more than two hours and we were at the point of  alarming the Red Cross for some of our elderly participants.  

Friday 8 april we did continue the conference at eight o’clock with an energizer by Ute. We then visited a lesson of English by Beate Koch, where the social targets that she talked about with the pupils were remarkable. We also saw a handicraft project were the pupils had to construct a bridge and where Peter thought back of his boyhood and could play with a dinky toy again.

Two officials, the mayor Mr. Jacob and a deputy of the schoolboard Mr. Wolfer delivered speeches as did Willy and Rolf on behalve of the group. Then we all together gave a concert conducted by Ute.   

Because we were still exhausted because of the city tour the night before, we decided to change the program. We skipped the plans to visit the National Bavarian Forest (Wood?) and instead we continued with Frieder talking about “evaluation” for which he had prepared some papers (that will be placed on the community site). The discussion went in the direction of the problems of motivating teachers for innovation of their teaching. A point was made that we should try to get the teachers out of the isolation of the classroom and get them to more teamwork. We decided to continue the discussion during the next conference in Vienna.

After lunch Jacques showed a ppt. In which he proposed a new project in which pupils of the participating schools are going to communicate with each other with the use of webcams. He gave a life demonstration with some folks in Vlaardingen. A pity the sound didn’t work.

We agreed that we shall start with this project, but that first some tryouts shall take place between the members of the Comenius project. 

We then went to visit a lovely place in nearby Austria called Schärding, and after that we went to Passau to have dinner in restaurant Grüner Baum in the Höllgasse. We said goodbye to our friends from Moravska and went back to Pocking where we had a few drinks and discussions in the Krampfhenn.   

On Saturday 9 April we started at ten o’clock. We made appointments for the near future of the project:

·          As according to the regulations teacher exchanges must last at least eight days and we don’t want them to last more than five days (but also not less), we shall call them from now on “project meetings”. The visiting teachers will be giving some lessons using the German or English language and they shall write a short report that will be send to Vlaardingen to be put on the community. No more than 2 teachers shall be send abroad and we shall try to accommodate them not too expensive. We shall try to send more teachers to the other schools.

·          We shall start with video conferences, starting with the participants. Vlaardingen shall develop a plan for the use of webcams with pupils and will send a webcam to each school together with a description on how to install them.

·          In order to be able to compare the finances of the different schools concerning the project we shall inform each other by email of the amount of the Comenius grant for the standard amount and for mobility

·          Concerning the conference in Vienna those who want can arrive on Friday 2 December or Saturday 3 December in order to follow a leisure program. Those who only want to do serious business can arrive on Sunday 4 December. The program will be on Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 December. There will be no entertaining during those two days except during the evenings. Departure day for everyone  shall be Wednesday.

·          Subjects for the next conference:
* tour through the school and visits to some lessons and projects
* discussion on “motivation for (step by step) innovation” (separately by teachers and   headmasters) with the motto: “not everything new is good and not everything  old is bad”
* evaluation of the project (June report)
* school evaluation (papers Frieder)

·          The report on the first project year have to be send in in June or July 2005. Vlaardingen will send an example in English to each school.   

After the “weisswürsten” our friends from Vienna and Saarbrücken left for their homes and Jacques, Peter and Frieder continued working while Kees tried to buy some sexy nylons for his wife. In the evening the remaining crew had a nice dinner in the “Scharfrichterhaus”, where Peter and Kees had their 6^th  Wiener Schnitzel.

On Sunday the Flying Dutchmen had a good flight home without delays. 

The content and organization of the conference has been in good hands with our friends from Pocking, our complements: "Das war Super Klasse!! Sehr vielen Dank Hauptschule Pocking!!"