Short-term exchanges of groups of pupils – Google tools and their use in the classroom

Prior to the trade, educators prepared exercises in accordance with classroom utilization of Google tools (Google Forms, Google e-class, Google Classroom, Google Earth and so on). They first experimented with these with students in their own particular school in order to get the first criticism and enhance them for the exchange that is based on these activities. Something else that groups of students should get ready for, is an innovative introduction of their school and of their town.
Amid the exchange, all accomplices participate in activities with members, who are assembled in blended nationalities. There were 5 exercises generally related to the subject.
The week’s program was the following:
Day 1 – host families welcomed the foreign students
Day 2 – the welcoming ceremony was held in school where all members of the exchange (students, guardians, teachers) participated; guided tour through the school; introductions of visitor organizations; introduction of the week’s timetable; a guided tour through the town
Day 3 – going to customary classes; Activity 1. After the end of classes, visits to spots of interest.
Day 4 – Activity 2 and following feedback; Activity 3 and following feedback; between meetings instructors examined and discussed feedback; traditional evening for teachers and students
Day 5 – Activity 4 and following feedback; Activity 5 and following feedback; social events toward the evening
Day 6 – deductions of the week; assessment of the exchange; everybody completed feedback papers; credentials were given in the closing celebration.
Day 7 – leaving of visitors.

The training took place on 12, 13 and 14 February 2019. Teachers and students received
separate training, but of the same application and complementary to each other. Teachers
were divided into groups by country and had a trainer personalized according to their needs.
Students were divided into heterogeneous groups from different countries and had two
students from the host school as trainers for each group, one with a more technical profile
(computers knowledge) and the other with a more academic profile (English language
knowledge).

You can find the full programme here

The outcomes we hoped to accomplish are school presentations, towns, 5 particular exercises proposed by accomplices, outcomes of the exercises, detailed recording of exercises, materials for the DIGI-stories magazine issue no. 1, evaluation and feedback papers, credentials.
Plus, we intended to achieve a change in students’ cooperation aptitudes, the advancement of communication and interpersonal abilities, enhanced social mindfulness. And in addition, digital aptitudes were be progressed. As for the teachers, we needed to enhance their capability in managing multicultural gatherings of students and enhancing their skills to use Google tools in their lesson.

Teachers practiced their subject through Google apps to multicultural students, which built their adaptability and versatility. They got prompt input and consequently, they could make safe conclusions as to their action and execution. They turned out to be more self-assured and more positive about managing new instructing strategies.
Students advantaged from the exercises proposed, participating in connection with different students, with instructors from foreign countries. They made bonds with these students and will turn out to be more adaptable in new learning situations. They enhanced their insight into various subjects during this process.
Both of them enhanced their collaboration skills and teamwork aptitudes, their communication and interpersonal abilities. They found out about the way of life of their hosts in person, which influenced them to minimize racist behaviours and to enhance their intercultural adequacy. The level of English likewise improved, as all members talked to each other in English consistently. They had the capacity to share encounters and practices which they can later incorporate into their own particular educational system. The educators ameliorated organisation and group management aptitudes, critical thinking capacities. They expanded their ability in sorting out transnational events and now are better prepared to manage matters that may emerge simultaneously.

Here are the results from the Evaluation Questionnaire

Here you can find the meeting minutes.

Itinerary in Seville – 14th February

1) Plaza de España

The Plaza de España (“Spain Square”, in English) is a plaza in the Parque de María Luisa (Maria Luisa Park), in Seville, built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. It is a landmark example of the Regionalism Architecture, mixing elements of the Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival (Neo-Mudéjar) styles of Spanish architecture.

The Plaza de España complex is a huge half-circle with buildings continually running around the edge accessible over the moat by numerous bridges representing the four ancient kingdoms of Spain. In the centre is the Vicente Traver fountain. By the walls of the Plaza are many tiled alcoves, each representing a different province of Spain. Each alcove is flanked by a pair of covered bookshelves, said to be used by visitors in the manner of “Little Free Library”.

Today the Plaza de España mainly consists of Government buildings. The central government departments, with sensitive adaptive redesign, are located within it. Towards the end of the park, the grandest mansions from the fair have been adapted as museums. The farthest contains the city’s archaeology collections. The main exhibits are Roman mosaics and artifacts from nearby Italica.

The Plaza de España has been used as a filming location, including scenes for the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. The building was used as a location in the Star Wars movie series Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) — in which it featured in exterior shots of the City of Theed on the Planet Naboo.[5] It also featured in the 2012 film The Dictator.

The plaza was used as a set for the video of Simply Red‘s song Something Got Me Started.

2) Costurero de la Reina

The Costurero de la Reina (literally, the Queen’s sewing box) is a building constructed in the late nineteenth century in the gardens of the Palace of San Telmo, now the Maria Luisa Park in Seville, Spain. This unique building takes the form of a small hexagonal castle with turrets at the corners.

The building was the guard house or garden retreat. It is the oldest building in Seville in the neomudéjar style. The name comes from a popular tradition that Mercedes of Orléans, the future wife of King Alfonso XII of Spain, retired to the pavilion where she passed her time sewing. The reality is more prosaic. The formal name is the “Pavilion of San Telmo”. Mercedes died of typhus about fifteen years before the building was erected in 1893.

Nowadays the Costurero de la Reina lodges the tourist information office on the ground floor. The opening times are 9-2 pm and 3.30 to 7.30 pm, on weekdays and 10-2pm during weekends and bank holidays. The building was restored in the spring of 2007 to repair the main structure and to arrange the interior in order to make it more functional. The first floor was refurbished recently and it is used as meetings and events room of the local government.

3) Royal Tobacco Factory

The Royal Tobacco Factory (Spanish: Real Fábrica de Tabacos) is an 18th-century stone building in Seville, southern Spain. Since the 1950s it has been the seat of the rectorate of the University of Seville. Prior to that, it was, as its name indicates, a tobacco factory: the most prominent such institution in Europe, and a lineal descendant of Europe’s first tobacco factory, which was located nearby. It is one of the most notable and splendid examples of industrial architecture from the era of Spain’s Antiguo Régimen.

4) Jardines Murillo

The Jardines de Murillo are the result of a 1911 gift from the Huerta del Retiro del Alcázar.  Its final design is the work of architect Juan Talavera y Heredia. The gardens present a composition based on grid paths formed by hedges and sidewalks which create octagonal roundabouts where they meet, with fountains in the centres and benches covered with tiles.  The flowerbeds are filled with dense masses of vegetation, giving the park an intimate atmosphere.  The gardens end at the Plaza de Refinadores, presided over by a statue dedicated to Don Juan Tenorio.

5) Patio Banderas

During the Muslim era of the city, while they lived in the fortress, Abderramán III ordered this space to be built as a palace during the 10th century. It came to be known as the Dar Al-Imara or Prince’s house, or the house of the Governor which was accessed by another door, currently blocked off. In the time of Felipe V, while he was in Seville, in 1729, he ordered the place to be used as an armory (as indicated by a memorial tombstone), thus fulfilling the function for which it was intended. In 1816, benches and a fountain were installed, surrounded by trees. In 1857, the benches were dismantled, leaving only the trees and the fountain, after a few years, the trees were replaced with orange trees, which remain today. The centre was remodeled again for the 1929 Ibero-American Expo, where the fountain was found totally destroyed, and a new one was installed, adding a sandy area around it to let vehicles pass through its surroundings. Horse-riding paths were also installed as it was so close to the station. Today, it is the exit from the Alcázar, with an area of 1441 m².

6) Seville Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See (Spanish: Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville (Andalusia, Spain). It was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the adjoining Alcázar palace complex and the General Archive of the Indies.

After its completion in the early 16th century, Seville Cathedral supplanted Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral in the world, a title the Byzantine church had held for nearly a thousand years. The total area occupied by the building is 23,500 square meters. The Gothic section alone has a length of 126 meters, a width of 83 meters and its maximum height in the center of the transept is 37 meters. The total height of the Giralda tower from the ground to the weather vane is 96 meters. Since the world’s two largest churches (the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida and St. Peter’s Basilica) are not the seats of bishops, Seville Cathedral is still the largest cathedral in the world.

Seville Cathedral was the site of the baptism of Infant Juan of Aragon in 1478, only son of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Its royal chapel holds the remains of the city’s conqueror Ferdinand III of Castile, his son and heir Alfonso the Wise and their descendant king Peter the Cruel. The funerary monuments for cardinals Juan de Cervantes and Pedro González de Mendoza Quiñones are located among its chapels. Christopher Columbus and his son Diego are also buried in the cathedral.

7) Giralda

The Giralda (Spanish: La Giralda) is the bell tower of the Seville Cathedral in Seville, Spain.It was originally built as the minaret for the Great Mosque of Seville in al-Andalus, Moorish Spain, during the reign of the Almohad dynasty, with a Renaissance-style top subsequently added by the Catholics after the expulsion of the Muslims from the area. The Giralda was registered in 1987 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, along with the Alcázar and the General Archive of the Indies. The tower is 104.1 m (342 ft) in height and remains one of the most important symbols of the city, as it has been since the Middle Ages.

8) Metropol Parasol

The Metropol Parasol, popularly known as the Mushrooms of the Incarnation, is a wooden structure with 2 concrete columns that hold the access elevators to the viewpoint and is located in the central Plaza de la Encarnación in the city of Seville. It measures 150 x 70 metres and is approximately 26 metres high. It was the winning project in the competition opened by the Seville City Council to carry out the renovation of the square in which it is located; its designer was the architect from Berlin, Jürgen Mayer. The structure consists of six large, mushroom-shaped parasols, whose design is inspired by the arches of Seville’s cathedral and the ¨ficus¨ of nearby Plaza del Cristo de Burgos. All in all, it has five levels. The upper level contains a lookout point and a panoramic route that covers most of the area.

Inside the central parasols, at a height of 22 metres, there is a tapas restaurant and space for events. Under the parasols is an elevated, shady and diaphanous square (Plaza Mayor) designed to host events of different character. At ground level is the current Mercado de la Encarnación market, along with commercial and catering spaces. Finally, the basement hosts the Antiquarium Museum, which displays the archaeological remains found there. This Antiquarium was designed by the Sevillian architect Felipe Palomino González, who participated in the entire construction management of the major project.

9) Triana

Triana is a neighbourhood and administrative district on the west bank of the Guadalquivir River in the city of Seville, Spain. Like other neighborhoods that were historically separated from the main city, it was known as an arrabal. Triana is located on a peninsula between two branches of the Guadalquivir, narrowly linked to the mainland in the north. Two other districts are also usually included in this area, Los Remedios to the south and La Cartuja to the north.

Residents of Triana have traditionally been called trianeros; they identify strongly with the neighborhood and consider it different in character from the rest of Seville. Triana has a traditional pottery and tile industry, a vibrant flamenco culture, and its own festivals; it has played an important role in the development of Sevillan culture and tradition.

10) The Guadalquivir River

The only river in Spain with considerable river traffic. Although, currently it is only navigable from the sea to Seville, in the Roman period it was navigable up to Córdoba and when the river was high, the ships could even reach Andújar.

The river’s upper course is at 1350 metres above sea level in Sierra de Cazorla, a mountain range where, in summer, many sporadic streams converge. Its source is located in Cañada de las Fuentes, a borough of Quesada. Before the river flows from this source, its natural spring, the Guadalquivir River receives water from the highest points of two mountain ranges, Sierra de Cazorla and El Pozo. Seville is where the river gains importance and, to facilitate its navigation towards its mouth, its course has been modified through the construction of canals, locks, and by dredging its depths. After passing the towns of Coria and La Puebla del Río, the river is divided in two branches and marshy zones, called Marismas del Guadalquivir, from which the river reaches its end in the Atlantic Ocean, next to Sanlúcar de Barrameda and always in presence of the breathtaking National Park of Doñana National Park. The Guadalquivir River is the most important river in Andalusia and one of Spain’s most important rivers, but here in Seville, the Guadalquivir is much more than a river: it is life and history of the city and it is present in all its artistic manifestations.