Absolutely Educational The main part of this show is devoted to the impressions of two of the teachers who facilitated workshops as part of the ‘Borrowed Identities’ project which brought over 30 students together from Hungary, Germany, the UK, Spain and Lithuania on the west coast island of Achill in Ireland. How did the teachers manage these multi-cultural groups? Were there language problems? Listen as Scott de Francesco from the USA and Dainora Maumevičienė from Lithuania describe the progress of the groups as the week wears on. You can find out more about the project and what went on by reading the online travelogue produced by another of the project workshops.
Absolutely Musical A feature of island life is that people are multi-talented. One outstanding example of this is Kate O’Malley who works at the Achill Cliff House Hotel who also has a magnificent singing voice. She was persuaded to sing on our last night on Achill so we have included an extract from the haunting song ‘The Island’ which really made the hairs on the back of our necks stand on end.
The next show will be coming to you on 21 March from Dr. Laurent Borgmann.
So long…stay tuned!
The host of this show is:Anne Fox in Denmark
Dear Anne,
Once again congrats for the wonderful podcast. I still haven’t set up the itunes feed in my new computer. Must do so today, otherwise I keep missing the interesting talks.
This must have been a great experience indeed! A lot of hands-on activities!
I especially liked the fact the students are put into a non-academic environment, where they can learn more about real situations as they become part of one. Talk about situated learning and community of practice!!! It looks like it can’t get better than this.
I really liked Dainora’s statement. As a teacher I always find it very useful to recall my experiences, anxieties and expectations in my past role as a student to try to meet the ones from my students. It gives me a better understanding of the students and their reactions.
Using the students’ background knowledge and applying what they know to a real context is very important. I took part in something similar back in the 90s in Germany. It was a Lion Clubs Forum on European Community issues. It was really interesting to meet people from other countries and understand their backgrounds and motivations. We weren’t asked to be as active as the students in Achill, where the organization of the events were concerned. Still we had to do group work, collaborate in tasks, share rooms, create artifacts, etc… we were transferring the concepts learnt in school to the real world. This seems to have been the case with the Achill Students too. Personally, I think that that is when what we learnt on the school benches is articulated with the real world and when the individuals’ capacity to adjust and cope with situations is put to practice. That is also when creative and critical thinking skills are tested and individuals have the opportunity to excel and show what they can really do. That is indeed a better way of examining people’s skills. … Much better than any written exam, if you ask me! As a student I was never fond of those.
I visit the travelogue! It is really interesting and curious to know what went on during those 2 weeks. It is only a shame it doesn’t allow comments. It would also have been nice to have some video clips about the experience…
You might want to consider the new audio/video comment plug-in from wordpress.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/riffly/
I think it is a cool plug-in…
just sharing! 😉
Hi Cristina and thanks for stopping by. There will be a video available soon. It is being produced even as we speak.
I share your wish about being able to add comments to the travelogue but the thing is that when we are short term visitors to Achill our Internet access is restricted and this is why we choose to prepare it beforehand as a webpage so that it can be emailed and uploaded.
Just heard your podcast today……Very strange to hear myself this way and usually I don’t start singing till after at least 2 vodka…..counting down the days to February already and see what the next group of students have instore for us islanders!!! Thanks and hello to all who read this.
Kate