Welcome, Europe!

Yes, today is the long-awaited day for Croatia - today we're voting in a referendum on whether to join the European Union and I do hope the Croatian citizens say yes.

But no, this post is not about the referendum. This post is my way to extend a warm welcome to the participants of the Comenius project Imaging Europe. My school is one of the 8  participants of this project financed by the European Comission and I'm the coordinator of the Croatian team. 50 people are coming to Zagreb today and they are going to be our guests over the next five days.

31 students from Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Greece and Spain will be hosted by the students from my school while 19 teachers will be staying at a hotel. Over the next week we plan to show our guests all the sights of Zagreb and the surroundings, visit several muesum, go to a musical, learn how to make movies and actually make them, eat delicious Croatian food, speak English and most importantly, get to know each other, learn from each other, learn to respect each other no matter how different we are, recognize prejudices and sterotypes and hopefully eliminate them. This is my vision of the Europe I want to live in.

Virtual TeachMeets and StudentsMeets - yes, we can!

On March 3, the TeachMeet Int'l Team (Sonja, Bart and I)  will be hosting another virtual TeachMeet. I think it's not an overstatement to say that  the first one, held in December 2011, was a great success. There are two reasons for its success. Firstly, the teachers were given the floor! They had a chance to talk about practical matters and ideas that worked in their classroooms and they embraced this opportunity with burning and contagious enthusiasm. Secondly, all the participants, be it presenters or the audience, were given  a wonderful opportunity to connect with educators from all over the world without leaving their home.

I  believe that the same can be done for students as well, so we'll be hosting our first StudentsMeet on Feburary 7. We are eager to bring together all the students (and their teachers) who want to share their ideas and their creativity with the rest of the world, no matter where they live, what language they speak or what school they attend.  What matters is willingness to share and to learn from peers.

I think it's time to give the floor to students! Let's switch the roles. Let's give the students the opportunity to teach the teachers. I'm ready, are you?