PROGRAMME
This meeting was held on 15 - 19 October 2018. The town of Cockermouth is situated close to the Lake District (when you are in the Cockermouth School building, you can see the mountains and the tourist resort Keswick is just a few miles away and easily accessible by coach).
However, our common programme started in the city of Newcastle in the Centre for Life (https://www.life.org.uk/life-science-centre) on Monday 15/10. All the participating students from all five countries (England, Spain, Italy, Romania, the Czech Rep.) were divided into two basic teams - the first of them took part in practical workshops in a lab in the morning ( observing their own samples of DNA and then exploring the structure of the eye), the second team explored various exhibitions that the Centre offers such as Brain challenge or Robots. In the afternoon the two groups exchanged.
The second day' s programme was already in the Cockermouth School. The very first thing was that the students were given homework. They were shown the Firefly programme ( www.firefly.cockermouth school.org ) and explained what they had to study for Thursday when they were to take part in la laboratory experiments. It was a practical example of flipped learning. However, for most of the programme of the day a few visiting experts from Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Facility were responsible. After a short presentation of theirs where they introduced their institution and their activities, the students were explained a problem they had to solve. This time they worked in six mixed teams at six workstations. The task was to discuss, draw a design and then to create a tower that would be 1 meter tall, not more than 30 x 30 cm at base and that would stand three tests: be able to hold 3 kg weight on its top, survive "an earthquake test" and be allow them to lift down a cup full of water without touching the cup by hand. It was quite a challenging task and some teams did better than the others. However, they all learned a lot not only about constructions but also about team work. In the end of the competition the winners were declared and the English students from the two best mixed teams will tale part in an excursion to the nuclear power stations.
The third day was an outdoor excursion and you can find information about it in a separate post.
On the fourth day we experienced an all morning flipped activity. The students had been given an access to the Firefly teaching / learning platform ( an on-line learning tool which is similar to Moodle but advanced and with more functions) and they worked in mixed teams of 4-5 on a series of physics tasks, namely measuring the specific heat capacity of iron and an experiment on the transformation of the elastic energy into dynamic energy ( each team had to video their experiment, add all the necessary calculations plus commentaries and show the video to the others). So as to test the students' knowledge of theory in the field of energies, a Kahoot quiz was also played and the winners declared.
Friday was the fifth and last day of the mobility. In the morning all the visiting students and the English students working on PIN project gathered in the school and presented their project activities carried out between the previous and this meeting. The English students presented their further observation of the wildlife in their school nature pool, mostly the life circle of frogs. The Spanish team had a few presentations and short films about a) the Sierra Nevada mountains and the school excursion there and b) their new observations of wildlife in their small school pond including the measurements of its water. The Italian students' presentation was about the wild Urban plants found in the city of Torino, with the close look at three of them - malva, dandelion and nettle. Then the mobility programme was over for the students but the teachers attended the whole- afternoon meeting where they discussed the activities and outcomes planned for the third year.
Programme by the English team
