The “expert team” of the EOL ECML project "Learning environments where modern languages flourish"
(www.ecml.at/learningenvironments) met for the last time at the ECML on the 25th and 26th of April 2019. The team members are Jonas Erin from France (the coordinator), Lea Štiberc from Slovenia, Silvia Minardi from Italy and Kristin Brogan from Ireland. This was an important opportunity to tidy up any work that still needed to be done for the project. On the other hand it was also very sad for all the team members to have their last meeting as cooperating together on this project changed the relationship from colleagues to friends and we always appreciated how well we operated as a team. Hard to believe that three and a half year have passed of our 4 year-long project.
The team had a productive two days meeting and worked on the following items:
- revising the 52 tools; including the Matrix;
- revisiting the 17 memos and the TrEOL game;
- restructuring the content of the project website;
- discussion and feedback on our network of partner schools and its future; the glossary, the final publication; the current status of the research as part of our project and looking at the resources from our schools: action plans and case studies;
- dividing all future tasks among the team members.
During the meeting we also created 17 videos by team members on the themes of our tools and also on the EOL process. The themes are: EOL’S HOLISTIC PHILOSOPHY, LEARNING & TEACHING, MANAGEMENT AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. These videos are explaining and summarizing the content of the tools and will be available on our EOL website.
The project team also looked at the feedback by the participants from the EOL workshop on the 7th and 8th of March with 28 participants from 28 countries. 75% of the participants were fully satisfied with the event, 63% of the participants strongly agree that the materials and approaches discussed at the event will help them to promote plurilingual, intercultural and inclusive learning, 56% of the participants think that the event is relevant for their country as it addresses current needs in language education. The participants pointed out, that it was very useful and interesting to communicate with colleagues from other European and non-European countries, to collaborate and to share experience about schools and educational systems and that the workshop was an excellent and inspiring event/training.
The team is considering the ECML’s Training and Consultancy programme as workshops to participants would be a very exciting opportunity for future cooperation and would be of great benefit to the EOL project’s dissemination.
The team would also like to thank all ECML staff members for their ongoing vital support for this project during the last three and a half year. It has always been a pleasure to come to the ECML for a meeting and we were always welcomed by smiles and perfect organization. Hopefully our EOL project will have met the key challenge to give a vision of a language friendly environment, encourage a strategic approach to language teaching and learning and to provide tools and resources to all those who want to change their school into a place where languages can flourish.
The project team:
Jonas Erin (coordinator), Kristin Brogan, Silvia Minardi, Lea Štiberc