Heroes and Cultural Identity Project

Project meeting: Istanbul, 1-6 April 2008

REPORT OF THE COMENIUS 'HEROES AND CULTURAL IDENTITY'
PROJECT MEETING HELD IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY, 1-6 APRIL, 2008

Participants arrived. The following teachers were in attendance during the week:

From Scotland	Donny Gluckstein	Penny Gower	John O'Neill
	Gordon Plews	David Bouttier
From Norway	Astrid Myskja	Ivar Sognli	Einar Stølevik
From Slovakia	Renáta Kelemenová	Henrieta Martincová	Andrea Macáková
	Silvia Miklisová
From Italy	Marzia Zabbatino	Cristina Fuga
From Turkey	Serkan Erenler	Serpil Doğanyiğit	Şenay Vanlı
	Sevcanur Özcan	Ahmet Gökçen
From Poland	Oktawia Gorzeńska	Ewa Wołowska

The following students were also in attendance:

From Poland	Daria Kałużna	Jessika Dzialo	Wiktoria Schoenborn
	Agata Szczodra
From Italy	Stefano France	Ivan Gianni	Maurizio Cirelli
From Slovakia	Jana Martišková	Kateřina Bereczová	Lucia Kobetičová
From Turkey	Batuhan Cingoz	Yagmur Kog	Buzra

Session 1

The meeting began with an address from the Headmaster of İstinye Lisesi welcoming all the guests - teachers and students. This was followed by a short concert of music provided by the students and teachers of the school.

The coordinator then introduced the aims and agenda of the meeting. Due to various technical difficulties the agenda had to be rearranged as some material which was on the internet could not be immediately accessed.

Students and teachers then presented the various nominated heroes. This included showing the films, PowerPoint slides and text that had been put up for voting internationally.

Later on the meeting split into groups to discuss progress so far.

All countries had been working on both heroes and cultural identity with success. Oktawia had noticed that as the project progressed the students' concept of heroes had advanced from the national heroes (kings, etc.) of the past towards the idea of ordinary people being heroes. Renáta agreed that previously heroes had tended to be 'celebrities', but that now heroes were seen in a more personal and thoughtful light, even if they were not so well known.
Although the discussion forum had not been used by all partners, it was of a very good quality and high level. Students talked about the things that influenced their lives in a practical sense.
Some of the problems people faced in working on the project were lack of access to computers and difficulties with logging on to the forum
The cultural identity element had been successful. Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and Norway had all produced films of different kinds.
Turkey had produced an extensive questionnaire on identity that would be presented in the next session.
Italy had used questionnaires to look at three generations experience covering the period from the Second World War until the present day. This had produced some very interesting results on the changing character of heroes and national identity between generations. There was also a difference in confidence - the old being more optimistic about the future than the young. Personal popularity was rated as unimportant.
Slovakia and Poland had tried to get the chatroom side of the project working. In spite of promising signs at the start, this initiative had failed. Perhaps the students were too young, and lacked the drive and inspiration needed to carry it through. If it is going to help, teachers will have to offer that.
It was generally agreed that the cultural identity questions had worked well and should be continued with. Globalisation had been discussed in its cultural aspects but interesting differences were noted. Scotland saw globalisation as negative, while Turkey and Poland took a more positive position. Slovakia saw it in more neutral terms.

Session 2

The main theme of this session was looking back at the work done so far. A paper submitted by Harry was used as a basis for structuring the meeting.

A discussion was held about the various elements of the project in general - the cultural identity area, the fun and games element and heroes section. Although only two partners made extensive use of the online voting system it was felt that it should be retained as it was a valuable resource for these schools.

Penny agreed to take the minutes.
A sheet for the names of teachers and students was circulated.
The Turkish school will be posting a record of all those who attended the meeting for presenting to the National Agencies.
Gordon would take pictures for use on the website.
Einar would count the votes.

The main work of the session was looking at new ideas for the project over the next year and a half.

The meeting split into three groups to look at this.

Group 1

It was agreed that the forum was underused, but there were often technical difficulties. Italy, for example had problems getting access to the language lab. There also needed to be a lot of teacher input and encouragement for it to work.
There could be work done on national categories which are available on the web but are not used in voting. This could include presentations of the partner countries by students from other countries. They would need to be short - perhaps 2 slides on cultural identity/literature/history and so on.
We should also ask the students for new ideas on how to run the project.

Group 2

This group agreed that it is difficult to evaluate presentations when they are so differently structured. While multimedia presentation (and this includes powerpoint) is good, there is still a role for text-based work, especially as a tool in teaching English.
Astrid agreed to provide questions for evaluating the project. This could be in addition to, or as an alternative to a questionnaire.
It was suggested that there should be a place on the website for students to present excursions which are project-related. If the students do individual presentations the teacher could pick the ones that are the best (and this would be the 'prize')
Serkan presented a very large questionnaire (over 300 questions) on identity which it was felt would be useful to make available widely.
Astrid's three evaluative questions on the project were agreed to:
- Describe the heroes project
- Describe your own working on the process and the product
- Did you like this project, and if so why; if not, why not?

Group 3

There should be an evaluation of the project by the students themselves. The Polish teachers suggested that parents be involved in the evaluation too.
For the international voting presentations should be either text-based or multimedia. The reason for this is that it is difficult to vote on very different kinds of presentations. It was pointed out that there might be technical difficulties with the multimedia aspect and that before taking a final decision on the form and character of the multimedia area, that Harry Kogon be consulted.
It was felt that there should be an opportunity for students to give a short presentation on what is important about their country - perhaps 5 or 6 lines of text, plus images. This would provide the basis for a list of words (for example 10 words per country, giving a list of 60 words in total). In the games area students could then take a test to see how many of the words can be correctly ascribed to the appropriate country.

Plenary discussion

We would consider having two kinds of material for voting on - 200 words on heroes and a separate area for multimedia (as long as this is technically possible.
Marzia raised the question of timing. It was too short a timescale to do this for Slovakia, so it would need to be prepared for the Rome meeting.
Maybe there would not be voting on the multimedia aspect.

It was agreed:

To have a multimedia area ready for Rome, but in Slovakia we would decide on whether this would be voted on.
The project would be evaluated by the students through text-based questions (Astrid to prepare)
Agreed that each country would make a presentation about itself from which 10 'typical' words could be identified. So there would be a 60 word test/quiz in the fun and games area where students matched 10 words to each country. This should be prepared from Slovakia and completed before Rome.
Agreed that Serkan's questionnaire be made available.
Area on website where material about student excursions could be presented (Harry to be consulted about viability)
An area for heroes past and present/ heroes public and private would be considered in Slovakia. This would be work done at local level rather than internationally, though the material might be accessible outside.
Students could be encouraged to work on heroes from other lands.
Students would be asked how they think the project could be developed.

Session 3

The results of the international voting were announced:

Country	Hero A	Votes	Hero B	Votes
Scotland	Hawking	166	Wallace	235
Poland	Władek	136	Curie-Skłodowska	285
Slovakia	Heroes of the Slovak tragedy	85	My father	77
Turkey	Gökçen	178	Terim	153
Norway	Carter	211	Your hero	128
Italy	Sordi	168	Senna	241

Winners are shown in bold

The prizes were given and the winners applauded.

Cultural identity presentations

Because of time difficulties cultural identity presentations were not possible for all countries. But excellent presentations were made by students and teachers from Slovakia, Poland, Norway and Turkey. It was agreed that on their return from Istanbul teachers would pick the best cultural identity entry on the forum for each country. The decision should be communicated to Donny or Harry. (Please note that a late addition from Norway could not be put on to the forum and so will be circulated separately - Donny to do this).

Technical questions raised in Harry's report

It was agreed that two out of the three forums were little used and therefore only the cultural identity forum would be continued with.

Email newsletter

It was agreed that in October we would discuss a newsletter which would be contributed to by all the different partners. This would be part of the 'final product' to be ready for presenting to the National Agencies after the Rome meeting.

In October we would also begin preparing the final report, this to include a diary of activities during the project, evaluations and so on.

Donny agreed to prepare questionnaires for schools/teachers/students.

In Slovakia we would look at developing both hard copy and CD materials for the 'final product', all to be ready for Rome.

Slovakia meeting

Dates of 21-26 October were confirmed.

Renáta asked partners to send full details of how many teachers and students would be attending as soon as possible.

For a shorter version of the report see the summary of decisions made