As the co-ordinator of the Comenius network WiMi - Wide Minds, I am very pleased to welcome you to our Kaleidoscope online magazine. I hope you will enjoy reading the contents and that you will feel inspired to contribute to future editions.

WiMi is one of only three Comenius networks to be funded by the European Commission this year and is co-ordinated by the Department of Education and Community Services, Ceredigion County Council which is located in West Wales.

WiMi evolved from a team of educational professionals from 7 EU countries previously involved in the highly successful Roots & Wings network, whose strong working relationship had been built up over more than a decade. We have now more than doubled the number of countries to 15 involving universities, schools and training centres from eastern Europe (Cyprus, Turkey), from the more recent member states (Poland) as well as from the traditionally influential countries (France, Spain, Germany).

WiMi is developing as a pan-European forum for innovation and best practice in the area of digital learning. Its partners share the conviction of the benefits of engaging whole school communities in meaningful international projects and believe that providing locally-based training and support as well as holding international conferences will be key to the success of this network.

Through promoting the human face of digital learning, intercultural dialogue and the learning of other languages our school communities now have opportunities to have real experiences of what it is like to be global citizens, thus contributing towards combating prejudice through sharing similarities and respecting and enjoying differences.

 

The first WiMi conference was held in Elblag, Poland , and was attended by over 70 participants and partners including representatives from 15 Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire schools. This event entitled – “The human face of digital learning” – focused on teachers and headteachers collaborating on creating European projects with their pupils which provide a real context for intercultural dialogue and use of ICT. It included workshops on videoconferencing, film making and animation, and practice in using WiMi’s Moodle-based online learning community.

The conference was agreed by all to have been an overwhelming success. Among the accolades were these comments by two Irish teachers:

“I have really enjoyed sharing experiences with teachers from different countries. Now I know what Moodle is! It was an opening of minds, a coming together”.

“I think the face of digital learning was definitely humanised this week. I have learnt so much about different cultures and school systems and have made lots of new friends”.

We even managed to extend our network by including Finland as an additional new partner.

Our next conference entitled "Speaking your mind", focusing on the importance of multilingualism, took place in Murcia, Spain, from October 6-11, 2009. Here 78 participants attended along with 21 representatives of WiMi Crew, Associate Partner CILT Cymru (the Centre for Information on Language Teaching), and National Agencies. In addition to the workshops organised in Elblag, one was also offered specifically aimed at acquainting teachers of foreign languages with some of the activities available in Moodle. Our Finnish partner gave a presentation about the innovative use of mobile ‘phone technology in the city of Oulu. Once again the participants were very positive in their responses to our evaluation survey:

 

• “Programme content was varied, interesting and much more useful than other meetings previously attended”
• “Beautiful hotel, lovely food, fabulous weather, terrific Crew, gracious hosts- gracias!”
• “Excellent support by WiMi Crew – all members were very approachable at all times and full of information and humour!”

Celebration and Dissemination Conference

Our Celebration and Dissemination conference was held in Tirrenia, Tuscany, Italy from 10th to 15th May 2011. All information about this conference which attracted 120 participants are available on our Moodle site www.wideminds.eu/moodle.

I hope you enjoy reading our “Kaleidoscope” magazine and, if you would like to contribute, please send articles with photos separately as jpegs or other suitable format to our Polish partner, Marek Murdzia: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We look forward to reading your articles. Please note that we will be continuing to publish this magazine even though official funding for the network came to an end in September 2011 as we see it as an excellent way to disseminate your activities and our own.
Polly Seton, WiMi Co-ordinator