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from Godalming, EN: Jill Turner
from Heilbronn, DE : Waltraud Ibold
from Nice, FR : Michèle Matringe, Hélène Ceccarelli, Jean Bernard Pharamond<
from Siena IT : Fiora Pianigiani, Danielle Ballay, Dagmar Di Simplicio Silhankova
from Sortland, NO : Inga Wåhlberg, Tim Challman, Arnfinn Paus,.

Pre-meeting activities:

Most visitors arrived 15 or 16 May and joined their hosts for the Constitution Day celebrations on the 17th. They all took part in the children’s parade. One of our guests had the privilege to see the parade on warm & sunny Karl Johansgate in Oslo!

The delegates were welcomed by our principal Roy-Åge Gabrielsen. On behalf of the school he received gifts from Mme Matringe. Generous gifts from visiting schools to the host committee from Sortland.

(Semi)-chaotic start due to Arnfinn’s and Inga’s strong wish to have visiting English- and German teachers meet their students who had the two first lessons.

Short guided tour of the school ( library, music dep., social care, computer room etc).

Then presentations of project activities at our schools since the Nice meeting Oct.97:

The Lycée P.R.G. Apollinaire work presented by Jean-Bernard + student video.The work based on their tourist questionaire earlier this year. Successful job, but lack of student feedback from all schools. Major threat to our project is lack of regular contact student - student. -Can we have a final student conference? Student report distributed during the meeting.

Istituto T. C. S. Bandini’s work presented jointly by Danielle & Dagmar: Agricultural tourism + "intelligent" vacations. Very colourful and appealing reports distributed during the meeting. One obstacle seems to be access to computers / networks.

Godalming College has had a quiet year due to Jill’s illness and her substitute project colleague Pamela has only worked part time. Jill presented plans for the near future ("Quality, safety & the environment"). This will be done in June and will be ready for distribution to the other schools in the early autumn.

Waltraud Ibold presented Gustav-von Schmoller-Schule’s work with energy. This was an integrated process which involved geography and English, visits to both nuclear and conventional powerstations and solid reports to the other schools. Some class room problems + technical obstacles ( lack of access to IT, fax etc.). High hopes for next year when they involve a new class and plan to focus more on ecology, allergies, waste and also waste disposal policies in the local comunity.

Finally the Sortland trio presented the project at Sortland Videregående Skole. We seem to benefit greatly from our freedom to cancel normal time tables for several days for all academic 2nd year students. Our students also enjoy easier access to IT equipment than the continental schools. Our project days were organised in two phases: a natural science + Norwegian part where all the material and the results were acheived; then a second phase where some of the more relevant results were translated into English, German and French. These translated reports were in turn copied and sent to the other schools in January -98.

These presentations led up to the next point in our programme:

Jean-Bernard suggested a newsletter / bulletin to be produced regularily and that all 5 schools should contact each other at regular intervals, e.g every month, regardless of active project periods or not. This was generally agreed upon around the table. First bulletin to be published in October.

Some discussion and disagreement around the need to harmonize our efforts so that we go in the same direction ( and if possible at the same time).

We seem to enjoy the various aspects of our rather open topics for our project, and Dagmar’s "conglomerate" style of work at the different schools is probably the way it has to be.

Heilbronn and Sortland have dealt with energy, Siena and Nice with various aspects of green and intelligent tourism and Godalming will finish this year with business & environment.

One flexible way of harmonizing our work is to "swap" sub-themes, so that we all have dealt with tourism, energy and business & environment by the end of this project year. This solution was generally agreed upon.

In the afternoon we all went out to Sigerfjord Sjøbruk to get an orientation of their production and to observe their new instalations. The new nets and machines were less than a week old and impressed everybody. The excursion also included a short boat trip out to the site in the middle of Sigerfjord.

Nicely rounded off in the fish shop where we all bought smoked salmon, arctic charr and other specialties!

We started today’s session by rewinding to the main points from the day before and to present what we would like to work with from the autumn of -98.

Nice: from tourism on to culture --> dialect / language --> food (trad.) ...

Sortland: local cultural activities (private cultural organisations) --> history / culture / dialects (+ perhaps even "intelligent" tourism!)

Godalming: EU structure, logistics / production

Heilbronn: Allergies, pollution / environment

Siena: Saving energy on the local scale ( water, electricity, traffic reduction ...).

After this we all split into groups to discuss

- share information between schools in different languages
- investigate common problems
- study legal and political institutions
- regional autonomy / - developement / - protection of the environment etc.
- EURO / ECU
- unemployment, retirement
- enlargement of the EU + reasons why Norway rejected the EU / Norwegian sentiments...

- on the practical level: export/import --> Sally the Salmon’s journey from hatchery in Vesterålen to restaurant in Nice!

- study local electricity production in an environmental perspective
- conventional production: hydroelectric / coal or petrol based production
- "new" technology: windmills, "wave power"/ tidal powestations, burning of waste, solar panels and geothermal energy
- nuclear powerplants
- focus on local production and local environmental consequences

- debates and local energy politics

School subjects where this could be part of the curriculum are geography, economics, natural science and foreign languages. The ideal situation would be to set student discussion groups on this topic and to communicate regularly between all five schools.

C: Culture, tourism, economics:

Inspired by Nice studies: a first phase of identifying status quo

Then develop further on a non-polluting green & intelligent basis. On the practical level this could imply studies of local aspects:

- folk music / folk dance
- outdoors activities such as mountain walks, horse riding, (water-)skiing, etc. etc...
- from Arctic to Mediterranean cuisine
- marketing (What do we do to atract tourists?)
- comparative studies
- what we do wrong and need to change

Finally we need to emphasize what the project has done to our mentality ( Our common European identity!)

This is a practical question that has to be dealt with at every school. We agreed to work with these topics so that all schools have covered (most of) them by the end of this project year(1 March 1998 - 28 Feb. 1999).

Before the lunch break we had a splendid introduction to The Norwegian Coast Guard’s work and duties at the Coast Guard Base in Sortland. We also enjoyed a highly interesting guided walk inside the "Tromsø" , - their newest vessel.

A possible 3rd project year:

It was generally agreed that this was the thing to go for! If we can get a new year of Comenius funding it will be of great benefit to our continued cooperation. The coordinating school, Sortland, will send out a suggested application to all schools. Application date is 15 October 1998.

Some discussion on where & when to have the next committee meeting. Next in line is Siena and Heilbronn. Siena agreed to host the meeting if all practical hindrances could be overcome. A suitable period of time seems to be late September or October 1999.

Meeting closed 15.35.

In the evening we all went to "Spisestuen" Restaurant for our sea food dinner.

Tour of Vesterålen, - Bø (Haugen and Malnes kirke) & Øksnes (Myre / Myregruppen Fish industries and Stø / Gunnar Klo Fish Industry). Due to heavy snowfall in the morning and also during the afternoon we had to make a short version. We did not make it to our school department in Bø and we also had to leave out The Ghost Town Nyksund.

Farewell dinner at Tim’s house for all visitors and hosts. (Absolutely wonderful: we went from seafood for slimmers on Tuesday to lots & lots of juicy reindeer on Wednesday!!!)

(21 May.: 3 privileged guests from England, France & Germany enjoyed an extra day out with their hosts and Principal Gabrielsen in Lofoten ( Kabelvåg / Lofoten aquarium and Henningsvær).

Sortland, 20 May 1998:

Arnfinn Paus.