On the 19th January 2017 Nino Bergese hosted a dissemination session for the Unity in Diversity project addressed to all the modern languages teachers in the school.
Fifteen people attended the session (teachers of English, Spanish and French) and prof.ssa Rossella Canepa and prof.ssa Manuela Menolascina, who are currently working on the project, were responsible for organising and moderating the meeting.
First, the contents and results of the previous project (KeySkills4EUHotelStaff) were introduced and explained to the new colleagues who were also shown how to use the e-learning platform and the digital maps. A brief power point presentation was projected to highlight the various steps of the project and the results achieved.
Then, the current Unity in Diversity project was presented and the work, which has been done so far, was illustrated to the participants. Many interesting suggestions and questions emerged from the session and the feedback obtained was extremely positive and encouraging.
Manuela Menolascina
Project member of Italian team
On Wednesday, 18 January 2017, a study fair of higher education institutions took place in Kaunas. About 10000 students participated in the fair. Vilnius Business College was one of the participants. The information on studies in VBC was provided by the Head of the Communication and International Relations Office Deimantė Vilčinskaitė as well as a lot of VBC students.
During the fair the International project Unity in Diversity was also presented, where VBC participates together with 9 other partner countries. The project aims at creating an interactive blended learning language course „Unity in Diversity” comprising on-line learning materials available on the Moodle Learning platform and face-to-face interactive materials incorporating case studies, games, problem-solving tasks, videos, etc. targeted at developing learners’ language, intercultural and digital competences, creativity, problem-solving skills and flexibility.
The project outcomes will be useful to different education institutions, tourism and hospitality industry employees and anyone wishing to raise their intercultural language competence.
Deimantė Vilčinskaitė
Project manager of Lithuanian team
Lithuania
Without using the legendary fast train Prague – Opava, which is sung about in a Czech song, I managed to get to the meeting with the teachers from Střední škola hotelnictví a služeb a Vyšší odborná škola in Opava in time. I was awaited by the language teachers and deputy headmaster for VOŠ, who were interested by the flyer for our project “Language skills and intercultural issues in hospitality industry” and asked me for more detailed information.
In my lecture I introduced the target groups and objectives of the project. After that I showed the e-learning platform with its exercises and functions including the smartphone applications. I stressed that during the project period the platform will expand quantitatively and qualitatively. The new exercises, which will be created in compliance with the principles of blended learning, case studies and interactivity, will be added. The end of the seminar was devoted to the questions about the platform, but also to the exchange of experience about the European and national projects our schools have been involved in. The deputy headmaster of the Opava School presented me their OPVK project on the modules for distant study.
I hope that the meeting with the Opava colleagues, who were very nice and attentive audience, was not the last one. I will be very glad if we see each other at the multiplier event taken place at our school in the spring 2018 where I invited them.
Pavel Kluh
Project manager of Czech team,
Czech Republic
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.