We were taken to the Art School by Laticia and Laia and there we met with Vanessa and Cristina. The Art School caters for people of all ages who wish to have a place where they can develop their skills and their love of art. During our visit, we witnessed a wide range of skills and talents. One group was made up of adults who were learning a range of painting techniques at many levels of competence. We also saw professional artists receiving guidance and support as part of a masterclass provided by an elderly local artist. Cristina was working with a group of young children using mixed techniques of pastel and collage to produce work on a jungle theme. They were totally focused on what they were doing and the high level of enjoyment was evident. The art school is subsidised and students pay a small fee for the courses some of which run from October to May and others which run during the summer. Cristina Martin is reponsible for the design of the characters and artwork in the story about Peter.
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Our Visit to Istitut Ribera Baixa
We arrived at Istitut Riberra Baixa which is a Secondary School in El Prat de Llobregat and were welcomed by Miquel de la Torre (Head Teacher), Angels Chover (Principal Teacher of Computing) and Iñaki Garay (Principal Teacher of English). We were told about the background of the school and the fact that it caters for three levels of education within the one establishment. It has standard secondary provision but it also has a considerable vocational element for over eighteens mainly delivering courses in Computing Science, Business and Logistics. It also has a special unit supporting pupils and families who are new to the country and don’t have Catalan or Spanish as their native language. We were taken on a guided tour of the school and saw some of the the Computing and Logistics classes.
The classes in the secondary school were noot purpose-built for specific subjects the way they would be in Scotland. Technical and Science classes were normal rooms which had some additional benching and machinery added. It was also noticeable that there was not the same attention to health and safety with equipment not meeting low voltage and security shut-off requirenments and there was no attempt to provide additional ventillation or dust removal.
In Computing, teachers had greater scope in the range of content they could teach (Java, PHP, Android etc) but there was no formal official qualification being offered. This would only happen at University level. They also didn’t have the security measures in place which we have in our schools and although they were happy to access Skype, Facebook, Twitter and youtube, they have had serious problems with viruses and hackers. On one occasion a hacker had wiped their entire online content platform.
The main input from the secondary school in supporting the Comenius Project is from Angels who is currently creating on-line content delivery to support the other materials already developed for the primary school. We should be given access to these materials when they go live. Next week, Angels will start training primary teachers on how to create content using authoring tools called JClick.
Our visit to Charles Darwin Primary School
This morning we met with Leticia Marfil (Government Officer) and Laia Campaña (Teacher from the Art School) and then went on to visit the staff and pupils of Charles Darwin Primary School. We were welcomed by Vanessa Rubio and Judith Martinez who both work as English specialists in the school. We had a very rewarding experience as we travelled round classrooms observing the work of the pupils and taking part in discussions with the staff who outlined the progression which had taken place during the life of the project so far. Much of the artwork in evidence throughout the school celebrated the traditional Autumn festival of Castanyada which takes place on the same day as Hallowe’en. We sampled some of the traditional food served at this special time of year and were priveleged to be entertained by the pupils who performed two Scottish dances and then sang for us. We also viewed the Lip Dub videos created by classes of pupils in their final year in the primary school. On returning to Scotland, photographs and videos of today’s events will be uploaded to the Comenius Glow Group. (Videos of the dancing and singing are now on this blog – under ‘Category’ on the right-hand side of this page, choose either music or Charles Darwin Primary)
