Mobility / Visits

Please choose one of the following documentation sections:

4.1.	SEFES Meetings	4.1.1.	Meeting I Hamburg
		4.1.2.	Meeting II Kaunas
		4.1.3.	Meeting III Rzeszow
		4.1.4.	Meeting IV Reykjavik
		4.1.5.	Meeting V Rovaniemi
		4.1.6	Meeting VI Hamburg

4.2.	Individual Visits	4.2.1.	Asta and Rima visit to Rzeszow
		4.2.2.	Rima visit to Reykjavik
		4.2.3.	Sabine visit to Rzeszow

4.3.	Courses And Conferences	4.3.1.	Sequals Course
		4.3.2.	Synevanet conference in Hall 2005 (PPT)
		4.3.3.	Synevanet conference in Talinn 2006
		4.3.5.	Action Research (PPT)

SEFES meeting V - Rovaniemi

Minutes of our 5^th meeting in Rovaniemi

Oct. 26.-30, 2005

schedule

Oct. 26: arrival of all foreign participants

Oct. 27: guided tour around the school
working on photo-evaluation
sight-seeing

Oct. 28: working on photo-evaluation
            report on other evaluation projects
            planning the final product of the project
            lecture on quality management in Rovaniemi

working on implementation at schools
Finnish culture at Marja’s home

Oct. 29: sight-seeing tour guided by Finnish students

Oct. 30: departure of most foreign participants

Every day: getting to know traditional Finnish food and drinks

detailed information

participants:

Country	Students	teachers
Finland	Jennifer, Nina (parttime)	Liisa, Marja
Germany	Elias, Fiona, Jovana	Angelika, Ralph, Sabine, Werner
Island	Dagny, Thorunn	Armann, Sigrithur
Lithuania		Daina, Irina, Rima
Poland		Barbara, Gosia

The Finnish school:

Some impressions of our guided tour around the school:

- a lot of classrooms are equipped with modern media (PC, TV, OHP)
and material for the professions (bartenders, cleaners)

- every (?) teacher has his own work place and cupboard

- gymnasium, library and canteen are open for all students and teachers, a free meal is available for all students

information: the school has recently been renovated

The foreign students did a photo-evaluation of the school.

They saw even more than the teachers, because they visited the second school building (for the administration classes), which seems to be even better equipped.

Lessons

The foreign students attended some lessons on Thursday and Friday.

Angelika, Barbara and Gosia attended an English lesson.

Photo-evaluation

Every school presented their photo-evaluation (Oct. 27.-28.)

The Icelandic students presented their results (Oct. 27).

Country	Groups that took photos	Follow-up/exhibitions
Finland	Students of one class Teachers	Exhibition in the entrance hall of the school
Germany	Three groups of students (different grades) Teachers Administration Secretaries & caretaker + wife	Official opening of exhibition with all participants, speeches on evaluation, lecture of arts teacher, discussions, strong points and ideas for solutions oas to weak points collected. Exhibition in the entrance hall with a book for comments
Iceland	Some students of one class Three teachers
Lithuania	Students Teachers Adminstration	Exhibition in the entrance hall with a box to put in comments
Poland	Students of one class Teachers

It was noticeable that some aspects occured often, they seem to be international and probably typical of secondary schools and of every human

Topic	Strong J or week L aspect in the schools
Furniture / common rooms, enough space	J / L
Having to climb stairs (no elevators)	L
Canteen for students	J (when missing: L)
Social activities (students, staff)	J
Computer-equipment	J / L
Friendly teachers	J
Problems with non-smoking & smoking areas	L

The quality management system in Rovaniemi College of Services

The quality manager of the school, Anu Rönkkö, informed us on the following topics (Oct. 28):

- the values of the school

- the college’s success and development strategies and critical success makers

- customer feedback

- questionnaires filled in by students (examples and how they are filled in at computers)
what the results look like
how the results are shown on the I-Net
the difficulties, development and advantages for example of the written comments

In the SEFES group we had a short discussion on how values schould be found for each school.

All of us were in favour of a democratic way: the staff should actively take part in the development process.

The Finnish school was a good example.

Other evaluation activities , carried out by the participating schools

Using the dartboard method various activities of the participants that had taken place in the interim between the meeting in Iceland and this meeting were displayed:

New evaluation-activities:

“The Polish way” combining peer-evaluation with students’ feedback:

bilateral feedback in oral mock exams
(class A and B; teacher A examines students B, teacher B gives a feedback to student B, students A give a feedback to teacher A – and vice versa)

students’ feedback

Iceland : 1. lap-top survey – some students criticized usage in lessons

2. Do a quiz and at the end: what do you think of the quiz, easy, difficult? Why? Did you learn better/worse than you expected? Why?

Poland : graduate meeting: ex-students were asked for weak and strong points of the school (as they are now at university they can judge whether the school prepared them well, they can compare it with the experience of other students),

conclusions were drawn and it helped to improve the system

Germany :
1. to show the best and the worst points on a dart-board you can draw a line around the best and another line around the worst points. Used to demonstrate the knowledge in different topics in one course.
2. At the beginning of a unit hand out a test with 10 questions concerning the topics to study. The students should then mark on a line from 0-10 how many of the questions they can already answer. At the end of the unit they can check their progress when answering the same questions

3. “headstand”-method

Ask the students what should be done to make the lessons a disaster. Collect answers and then turn it into positive agreements (= a different approach, can be motivating for students)

Lithuania :

1. open questions in order to improve teaching

2. 4 different methods in language teaching. Which was the most interesting method?.

Peer-evaluation:

Germany : external leaders of a further education taught us:

- three persons should work together agreeing on the dates, focus of attention, and special wishes for the feedback process, this should be written down on a special form sheet,
one teaches, two observe the lesson,

afterwards: one gives feedback only on topics agreed upon beforehand and according to feedback rules, the third person observes feedback process and comments on it later, the purpose is to do the feedback in a more professional way

- to practise this, we did a role play beforehand

Lithuania : peer evaluation in language teaching on listening-writing-reading-discussion

Other evaluation activities

Finland : carrying out photo-evaluation

On the job learning

Translation of quality work

Iceland : Creating portfolios

Final product of the project

As the SEFES project will be officially ended, the product(s) were discussed,
a form sheet was created and
an action-plan fixed:

Product(s)

a report for the agencies should be written and all documents should be published on the project website
link the SEFES – website to school-homepages to agency-homepages

Regarding the documents for the website: We should keep a record of what we are doing, write a report and add files/forms/ documents/instructions/appendices, commenting on advantages and disadvantages of each method

This should be done in a standardized way :

Form sheet for every document

objective

method

when, who, where

description /step by step

results

development / consequences

forms

examples

Please don’t forget to mention the source for the method, especially if you got the idea by someone from the project – especially international partners to illustrate the beneficial cooperation.

Tasks for each participant:

Country	Person	Topic of the document
Finland	Marja	Annual feedback Course feedback Photo-evaluation
Germany	Sabine Werner Angelika	Dartboard Photo-eval. Peer-evaluation & further education
Iceland	Armann Sigrithur	Laptop-eval. Peer-eval. Photo-eval. Students’ feedback
Lithuania	Rima & Daina	Photo-eval. Feedback Peer-eval.
Poland	Barbara & Gosia	Cooperation with teacher trainees Feedback from graduates Mock exams Photo-eval.

Language: English, later it could be translated into national languages

General text at the end: How has SEFES changed our schools?

Deadline: All documents have to be ready and sent to Armann by March 1, 2006

Implementation of self-evaluation at the project-schools

In two international groups we collected ideas concerning the question
”What can we do to improve implementation of self-evaluation?”

Some ideas:

- evaluation should be accepted as further education (no additional work)

- make methods and results visible for the staff / whole school

- show that the methods are really helpful (not only ‘going through the motions’)

- convince the head

Important for all the groups: Consequences of photo-evaluation have to follow and to be made visible at the schools.

Arman draw our attention to an interesting book: “Schools that Learn” by Peter Senge

Next meeting

The next meeting will take place in Hamburg , April, 5-9, 2006

Culture & country

As the school qualifies cooks and waitresses we were served a lot of tasty different, typical meals like reindeer-stew.

Marja invited us to her home and we had a fantastic meal and drinks.
We crossed the polar circle and met Santa Claus (of course, we had all behaved well and can now expect loads of presents).

A student of tourism could impress us with her skills by doing an interesting guided tour in English in the Arctic Museum .

And one student did her practical exam planning and guiding a day trip on October 30. She told us about the people of Lapland , the country and legends and did a very good job, being well-informed and entertaining at the same time (teachers, please reward her with a good grade!). Part of the programme was a scientist introducing us to legends and facts about the polar lights. It was interesting to see how enthusiastic he was about his work and we could imagine very well how he can pass this on to his students (he sometimes also teaches at schools). Later an expert in mining told us everything about amethysts and everyone found his lucky stone in the mine. On the road we saw a lot of reindeer. In the evening two students performed a very funny show with and for us before dinner. It was an excellent day-trip and a proof of the efficiency of the Finnish school system (the students learning and being examined on the job and us having a good time and simultaneously observing an exam).

Sabine Ott & Angelika Wollermann