Dear all,

I have uploaded your videos with your learners on the website - see Learners corner. Hope that this will inspire other possabale learners as well. Under the Learners corne session you can also find some of yhe films made by the Romanian learners during the Learning Week(end).

Best regards,

Tina

Dear all,

Before leaving to visite her mother, Lili wanted to share with you some of her thoughts regarding the Learning weekend:

"Hi

During May 24/28, I was in Wales, Llangollen town, into an international project - Doing2learn. I was also together with other four ladies and we were staying in a hotel colled - Wild pheasant. Two times we went to the pool to relax. The food was excelent and I really liked it. I did the first day courses and in the afternone I visited some sheeps, CWLWM - wedding service with dressing for wedding and I tried very beautiful hats and I ate cookies. At the end of the day we visited the ruins of Valley Crucis Abby and I took pictures. The next day we visited Chirk Castel and we had lunch in the Margaret Tea Rooms. What most impressed me was a park behind the castel, with trees living between 500-1000 years. After this cultural visit was a boat on the river, very intersting and exciting. Last day srarted with courses. Was also our team to present - How to, and I think it was good. Evening concluded with a banquet. Anyway it was a beautiful experience, I meet new friends, I learned intersting things, I practiced knowledge of English and this way I want to thank you our teacher Mihaela. I/m glad I was part of this team. Keep in touch! Lili"

All the best,

Tina

Here are photos from the learning weekend.

All of us are very enthusiastic about the trip to Wales and hardly can wait to meet all of the other learners. Thank you also Shan for uploading the video. We will show it to our learners before leaving. We are now making the last preparation for our trip. Busy, busy, busy!!!

Lots of hugs,

Tina

The Romanian version of our 4 How to courses is now available on the website. Hopefully we will have them in EN by tomorrow. It was quite a long and very educative journey for all of us. Each of our learners had a lot of thinks to learn - taking photos, videos, uploading the course on the website, translate the course in EN and use the computer in order to writ all their materials.

See you soon!

Tina

Sorry, I forgot to tell you that the text content of the ICT learning modules it is now ready to be translated. Also the slideshares are ready.

With Nicolas we are finalizing the videos (subtitles) and we will slowly put, once ready, all the videos in the right locations.

For the english speakers, please let me know about the language mistakes, because I will record the voice of every text part and upload it on line. But I prefer to do it when sure about the english part.

We have changed the contents for the 4th time. I hope you agree with it.

Thanks for all your contributions.  Sara and Nicolas

Hi everybody,

On Saturday we had a very good meeting with our learners. We talked about the "how to" courses and search on the web information about - guess what? - Llangollen. So we have found out that on Saturday in Llongollen were 5 degrees and it rained

We also have some general remarks about the group dynamic of our learners:

Learning behavior

Most of our learners declared at the biginning of the learning program that they learn better if they are together with other persons. After four months of weekly meetings, the learners became more engaged into learning activities and more attached to each other.

They have formed specific expectations about this experience - at the biginning of the lesson: they arrive early on purpose in order to spend some more time together and talk about their recent activitites, usually they do not enter in the training room; - during the lesson: they start the program and at a certain point they need to tack a short break and at this point they enjoy very much a cup of coffee or tea and some small snakes. This is also the moment when the group is complete (biginners and intermediate); - at the end of the lesson: they spend just a little more time to share impressions and ideas.

The weekly meetings have become an important point in their personal agenda and they prepare for each meeting. On Saturday for exemple Mariana was at a training course all day. Even so, she attended the meeting. She took advantage of the fact that lunch was between 13.00-14.00 and came to the English lesson. For Neli Saturday was also an important day. She received an award from the Faculty of Physics for her contribution to science. After the ceremony she came directly to the organisation and shared with with us her joy. The only regret that she had was that she had forgotten her learning book at home. Lili is also one of the members of the group that makes a lot of sacrifices in order to attend the meetins. Each Saturday she's working with her team of handball players and after the practice she comes from Buzias, eats something very quickly and joins the rest of the group. Eli is in the same situation. She comes from Mosnita each Saturday and she is the person that never missed a meeting.

This seems to be a result of informal learning. Each member of the group is responsible for the learning process. They know that if they miss one meeting they are the ones that ask for the materials. They even meet with other members of the group in order to recover the class. They know that the program established at the biginning can be negotiated in a way in which the learning objectives are still accomplished.

Learner's motivation

So far the English courses were their main motivation to follow the learning program. At the biginning of the learning program the learners have declared that they want to learn English in order to communicate with others.

At old age people feel the need to be independent and to be able to manage by themselves in different life situations. For the Romanian elders this means involving in different activities. one of the members of the group for example refuses to change her living conditions because this means that she has to move in a house faraway from the city. For her this means that she will not be able to visit her friends or participate in other activities becouse she will constantly ne asking her daughter to bring her in the city.

Since we have started to plan the Learning week we have notice that each of our learners had became more motivated to surf the Internet. It seams that they have started to see the use of Internet once they found a personal reason.

ICT difficulties

In order to realize the "how to" courses our learners started to describe and structured the course. They have a lot of ideas. Some of them are not yet accustomed to searching information on Internet. The main difficulty is when they introduce a certain word, the computer gives them a million results and they don't know which one is the good one. We will work on how to use Internet in our own advantage.

Keep in touch and wish you all a great week.

Regards,

Tina

Hello everyone,

Ce mai faceti?

On Saturday we had a lovely meeting with the Romanian learners at our organisation. We have learned some more English and discussed about the program for the next period of time, the departure to Wales and the "How to" courses.

1. Learning program - we have planned the next 8 English courses and 10 ICT courses;

2. Departure to Wales - we had the travel contracts signed by the persons that will join us at the Learning weekend; discussed about the area and the learning program;

3. "How to" courses - Lili, Neli and Valeria have started to collect information regagarding some of their favourite activities - knitting (Lili), cooking (Neli) and History (Valeria). They will work on the "How to" courses that they will produce.

Wish you all a great week!

Tina