Before the meeting, I asked Tobias Berglund from Svedenskolan in Stockholm to be "Guestblogger". He accepted the invitation and here is his story about the visit in Aalborg.
Morten Aagaard
The small delegation from UP Svedenskolan in sweden arrived in Aalborg on Wednesday 12:th.
It was me (Tobias Berglund) teacher at Svedenskolan and Gun-Marie Wicksen our principal.
13/9 Visit at Egebakken
After a good nights sleep we were picked up at our hotel by Kenneth Westergaard from Egebakken.
Once at Egebakken we got to meet head of departement Søren Madsen and principal Mikael Sørensen . We all had a short presentation and then we were shown a ppp about the PDA project at Agernhuset, which were very interesting.
We got some good information about Egebakken as school and we had some reflections about the similarities and differences in swedish and danish schoolsystems.
The tour at Egebakken was very interesting and we saw that when it came to the TEACCH inspired pedagogical systems Egebakken had many similarities to Svedenskolan.
It was in all a good visit and we all agreed that even though the HANDS project does not go through we would all benefit from some kind of cooperation and exchangesystem between the schools. It is always fun and interesting to meet proffesionals that got bit by the “autism fly”, and even more when they also are as nice and bonzer as the staff at Egebakken.
Thank you all for a nice visit!
Then it was off too see Morten at AAU.
And so we meet again. Was a little bit of my thoughts when i once again met this enthuseing dane. We also met professor Miklos Gyori from ELTE University in Hungary.
We sat down in the HANDs office and had a nice meeting wit Morten and Miklos where we discussed HANDs in general.
Morten is showing Gun-Marie the basis of HANDS
Dinner at MadDonna
At Thursday night there where a few of us that enjoyed a good meal and had a really good time together. Although swedes and danes in history have been united under different kings, both danish and swedish ones we have a lot of differences in our culture. One of the biggest one is the relationship to alcoholic beverages, this is nothing that got to be a problem this night , but it was discussed as many other things. A real nice evening ... ( it was a bit tidy for a swede in denmark)
Mad means food in danish so the restaurants name had nothing to do wit a crazy woman
14/9 HANDs Partner meeting
And so the time had come to do what we actually came to do.
I can honestly say that i first was a bit nervous about this, me at this EU project thinggy!? With a lot of professionals in different areas, and we were supposed to talk about economics and budgets... well it was just to get there and “get the party started”
The meeting was very interesting and full of meanigfull discussions. It was obvious that we all came from different professional areas and saw things from different point of views but it seemed like we all were going in the same direction.
Present at the meeting was;
Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University
Morten Aagaard, project manager
Henrik Sand, Aau fond raising
Jesper Krab, Senario
Lars Moltsen, Wirtek
Carsten Nielsen, teacher Ullerød Skolen
Julia Jespersen, persuasive design Aau
Gun-Marie Wicksén, principal Svedenskolan
TobiasBerglund, teacher Svedenskolan
Kristian Wolling, teacher Egebakken
Søren Madsen, head of department Egebakken
Mich
ael Sørensen, principal Egebakken
Søren Madsen, head of department at Egebakken held a short welcoming and we all had a short introduction.
At first it was professor Peter Ohrstrom who was going to have the initial introduction to the HANDs project. Altho
ugh he was not there in person he did it anyway –by letting us see a movie where he did the presentation
PeterOhrstrom- the movie-
Then it was all ears toward whoever was standing in front of the slides!
It was much information and as written earlier we had some giving discussoions.
Here is a short “who said what” and “what was decided”
Objectives and the Proposal
Projectmanager Morten Aagaard
Morten talked about the importance to get the proposal to contain what we actually want to do, and also the importance in writing it in the right way
Heexplained about FP7 and that HANDS is a STREP; Specific Target Research Project. Further he explained what parts the proposal consist of, and how the evaluators scoreboard works. He pointed out the values and properties of HANDs , Persuasive technology, Open source, Usercentric design, the consideration of ethics, Interdisciplinary work with involvement of the proffessional practitioner.
He had some considerations concerning, collaboration between research and development., the role of ethics, and his role in the project.
... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)
Suggestions and questions about research methodology in HANDS
Ass.
Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University
Miklos gave us some understanding when it came to research and the importance in having a
standard testing system of the pupils that will be a part of the project.
He also talked about the need to have a control group, or else it will not be possible to have some way of evaluating once the procject is finished.
Miklos Gyori
... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)
WorkPackage, who do what, when?
Projectmanager Morten Aagaard
We got introduced to the meaning of what a “Workpackage” is and the workpackages of HANDS. We pointed out workpackage leaders and who was to participate in wich workpackage. Timeplans were shown, who is supposed to do what and when and how long it is supposed to take. Morten also showed a estimated amount of manmonths dedicated to every workpackage.
...at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)
Part a & Budget – an overwiev
Henrik Sand AAU Fund raising and HANDs coordinator
Well what can i say... Coordinator rules....
But... . participants can negotiate
Here it got to be a lot of economic galimatias wich i dont think is necessary to be written here, the core of the HANDS and what we are working with now is pretty much said in the text above.
... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal thru and get the tests started with my pupils
We , Gun-Marie and i finished our visit in Aalborg having a beer with Kristian and Carsten before we got a lift to the airport....
I did promise to keep it short .. but i just couldnt ...
Thank you all for a really nice visit hope to see you all again...
