I'm not being aggressive - I'm Italian
11-June-2007
permalink comments (1)European meetings can be interesting in terms of culture
The endless round of pre-summer meetings goes on. All last week I was in Pontypridd where I organised a meeting of the Leonardo da Vinci b-learning project. The project is pretty good - it is well focused in aiming to produce an on-line handbook and examples of practice for designing and implemented blended learning programmes.
Liek mots European Commission funded projects it involves parters form different organisations in Europe - in this case including partners from Estonia, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria and Wales. The real challenge of these meetings is to establish common understandings and meanings - not easy when most participants are communicating in a second or third language.
And of course discussions can get heated at times. So it was on Friday with a particularly loud exchange between our Italian and Estonian parters. After the exchange the Italian partner explained "I'm niot being aggressive, I'm Italian". I love it.
Liek mots European Commission funded projects it involves parters form different organisations in Europe - in this case including partners from Estonia, Italy, Austria, Bulgaria and Wales. The real challenge of these meetings is to establish common understandings and meanings - not easy when most participants are communicating in a second or third language.
And of course discussions can get heated at times. So it was on Friday with a particularly loud exchange between our Italian and Estonian parters. After the exchange the Italian partner explained "I'm niot being aggressive, I'm Italian". I love it.
Graham Attwell; 11-June-2007 18:48:42;
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1 Replies (comments)
1 Interculturality
You've got the point!
That's exactly the point of mixing different nationality partners. It is a specific and priority topic for EU that of building an "European Identity" through the exchange and mixing of different cultures. But after 10 years in EU funded transnational meetings I am 100% convinced that this is the greatest way to reach creative new ideas in any field, and notably in the field of education. Education is not a pure science and is intimately linked to cultural backgrounds, so the chance to compare different solutions to the education challenges at a EU level, is a great opportunity for anyone doing our job.
Jan Lai, 17-June-2007 16:19:14
