VET4SCAPE

The first transnational project meeting was held in Ljubljana between 13th and 16th November 2017, with the purpose of familiarizing each other with the content, aims and goals of the project. Firstly, the three pillars of the project were defined and structured. On the first day we exchanged the information about the school and student profiles and talked about previous experience respective schools have with Erasmus+ projects in general. We then continued with sharing information about experience with Junior Achievement (JA) scheme, and concluded there are some differences about how JA companies are implemented at each country. We agreed to verify the exact terms and conditions of setting them up in each country. We also drafted a timetable for setting up JA companies in the course of further training events, as well as checked the timetable of the national JA fairs. We shared information about fields which we could establish JA companies in. Additionally, we verified whether any of the participating schools will include disadvantaged students, as well as agreed on the profile of the students involved (age group and language level).

 

On the second day the second pillar, Business English, was presented and discussed in detail. Our aim is, firstly, to familiarize students with the possibility of going in for LCCI exam at the end of the project and, secondly, to partially prepare them for the exam itself. We hope to achieve that by holding targeted specimen lessons on topics covered in this exam. That by itself will, of course, not be enough to prepare them entirely, but it will give them the oversight of the requirements of the exam, as well as already train them in certain aspects. The English teachers were informed about the book Market Leader and agreed on the topics and structure for Business English specimen lessons for the three upcoming training events based on this book. Teachers of commercial subjects discussed the content of the specimen lessons. Both groups decided on the structure of the testing and pretesting materials for the students.

 

We also distributed the tasks and responsibilities to respective schools:

• the Austrian team will be in charge of LCCI (Business English) preparations,

• the Slovak team will manage TwinSpace and project’s website,

• the Romanian team will cover tourist, catering and transcultural aspect of the project,

• the Portuguese team will be in charge of social media (Facebook Page and Facebook Group),

• the Czech team will look after the implementation of tasks related to JA,

• the Slovenian team will oversee the evaluation and quality control of the carried out activities during the project,

• the Bulgarian team will supervise the fulfilment of designated tasks during the project.

 

The timetable of the project was also decided on. We agreed on the dates for further meetings. We also talked about the budget aspect of the project and found out that some national agencies have already held seminars/webinars on the topic. We mentioned some possibilities how to take along more students to LTT.

 

On the second and third day, we finalized a plan for the first LTT activities in Vidin. We agreed on types of activities that will integrate the transcultural competences envisaged in the project. We prepared the task of do´s and don´ts questionnaire that is to be prepared for the first LTT. Furthermore, we spent considerable time discussing potential dissemination activities on a school, national and international level. We also drafted a checklist proposal, with the aim of ensuring the project will run according to the set timeline and that all tasks will be completed satisfactorily. On the final day, we looked at the Mobility Tool and agreed on trying to fill out the relevant fields after each meeting. We also discovered some national agencies have already held webinars on the topic, or some will do so in the near future. Another important topic we discussed was the follow-up project, which would be based on the VET4SCAPE and which we are planning to apply for, and the possibilities available to us regarding it. Moreover, we discussed the possibilities of seeing each other outside the project meetings, for example on different international conferences and elsewhere. We decided to register the domain name vet4scape.eu for the website and outlined its structure, while the exact content will be decided on at the first training event in Vidin. We verified whether all participating teachers are already subscribed to the project’s Twinspace and talked about adding the students as soon as the selection is made. We concluded the meeting with an evaluation session of the work done during the 1st Transnational meeting..