• Coming soon: E-CoP round table (final event)                                           
  

Brussels, Tuesday January 18th, 2011  
Which learning models for the future? Starting from    European learning shared experiences, practical guidelines in designing innovative learning paths
To subscribe or for additional information: see the round table agenda

• Online conference in late November 2010

• Intemediate workshop 2: Cham, Germany October 25th - October 26th, 2010

• Intemediate workshop 1: Umea, Sweden June 21st - June 22nd, 2010

• Kick-off meeting: Milan, Italy February 25th - February 26th, 2010

In late November 2010 we proceeded with our online conference and tried to define a list of golden rules for a successful network keeping in mind the E-CoP aims. Given topics had to be valuated and put in logical order.

Following results were defined:

1. Have a coordinator responsible of everything;
2. Knowing well your needs as a result of questionnaires (feedbacks and requests from outside and prospect users);
   
3. Collecting the needs (to be done by the coordinator), being a reference point for requests and complaints;
   
4. Knowing partners before first contact;
   
5. Build network with labour market, at local and national level: businesses could be active partners in the didactical process (offering experts and/or real laboratories) as well as partner able to involve directly students in the labour market;
   
6. Planning a strong time investment to feed and monitor the network before the project starts, as well as during its lifetime;
   
7. Build more personal relationships: invest in personal visits, meetings, phone calls, etc...;
   
8. Involve families as much as possible in order to: make them aware of what’s going on; help to disseminate results in the local society; have their support (practical and financial);
   
9. Good connections with local companies with whom it's necessary to stress benefits: BE A GOOD SALESMAN!
   
10. Ask for a feedback from students and the firm are satisfied about the project (if it is satisfying you can go ahead, if it is not, then you     have to change something);
    
11. Being ready to answer immediately to changes in the network;
    
12. If the project went as expected (and also better than expected, eventually :-)) you can add it to the list of usual offers of your institution;
    
13. Starting from needs' collection and results of the present project, make further proposals to the same network and evaluate if it needs to be enlarged;
    
14. Let people know about the network and it's results (dissemination)

Intemediate workshop 2: Cham, Germany October 25th - October 26th, 2010

In late October 2010 our second workshop was held in Cham/Germany. The aim of this workshop was to discuss about organizational and funding issues in educational (extracurricular) projects.

We chose to work with the same technique we used in the previous workshop: Starting from a local national level and then collaboratively building a shared set of practical suggestions to be inserted into the guidelines which will be a main result of E-CoP project. If you are interested in further information, read more at http://www.ecop-project.eu/weg/guest/about-the-project

This time we changed the tool, so we chose Prezi (www.prezi.com) and not Cmap as we did in the previous workshop, in order to give participants the chance to come in touch with new software they can use collaboratively for different aims, also with didactical objectives.

Each national group of participants had to work together answering few questions that would guide the small group quickly into a representative analysis of the experience considered from an organizational point of view. Each group worked directly in a shared file (see http://prezi.com/_dietu6jfpg_/charming-cham-workshop/ ) so that they could see synchronously the results of other groups and eventually use them in order to improve the own activity.

The second workshop activity “Timeline related to didactical projects” was also organized as shared file activity in order to find out which were the whole group’s suggestions about practical issues to be considered before, during and after a didactical project goes live? The activity ended with a first part done, all in the area related to the moment before the project has to start. Now we are going to work further on it in the next online activities.

Intemediate workshop 1: Umea, Sweden June 21st - June 22nd, 2010

After the first online activities, the time of the first face to face workshop has finally come! We then had the opportunity to personally meet the participants and the project partners already known at the kickoff meeting in Milan. Participants who came arrive from the four nations directly involved in the project: Italy, Sweden, Germany and Belgium, and play different roles in the field of vocational training: they are high school teachers, practitioners and managers in public and private training companies. So we were all together, as you can see in the pictures on Flickr.
The climate built at a distance, both in terms of collaboration between partners and between participants, helped to gather unexpected results. The level of cooperation has proved to be very high during the project meetings and during the activities due to a high involvement of all participants. The choice to enforce informal dialogue during previous months resulted in making the interaction strongly effective, and the attitude to work remotely to find solutions to any problems encountered, and the desire to take the best from this experience proved to be key instruments of mutual motivation and the basis for future project activities.

The pictures show groups at work and the draft result (the online work is going on in order to complete it) of one of the main project activities. It was aimed at highlighting the main issues about methodology and content in extra-curricular activities, designed to retain control over dropouts and how they must be managed.

Figure 1 – participants at work                                                      

Starting from these first good results, the discussion continues online, in order to refine the analysis and to focus the research of shared guidelines, and then shifts on financial and organizational aspects, which are going to be the subject matter of next workshop, scheduled in Cham (Germany) for 25 and 26 October 2010.

The next activities which are going to be proposed will be developed mostly during live conferences, in order to foster interaction among many participants by reducing the time required for individual activities. Asynchronous online activities will be useful, anyway, to complete the details of synchronous sessions’ results, so that everyone can work on E-CoP contents choosing their best moment, according to personal and professional activities.

 
Figure 2 – the design of the shared map

The project is reaching the desired goals and, despite the difficulties encountered till now, we trust with all partners in a successful prosecution of online collaboration; the network created is already considering whether to cooperate on new projects, a sign that the collaboration is consistent with the objective of creating a network, of sharing practices and objectives, even after the end of E-CoP.