Cleaning beaches - Report from Adeje

On Thursday 24th October the students of 3º ESO of the Colegio Costa Adeje went to the beach “El Puertito de Adeje” with the purpose of cleaning it and becoming aware of the necessity of keeping the coasts in good condition. El Puertito is a little beach located in Costa Adeje, ten minutes away from the city centre. It offers its visitors peace and quiet since it is not very well-known.

In the beginning they listened carefully to a speech given by Sergio Pastor, their Biology teacher. He spoke about the rubbish which is usually found on beaches, where it comes from, how long it takes to disappear and how it affects the sea environment.Then the students spent some time picking up the rubbish they found on the beach, which mostly consisted of cans, tins, bottles, plastic bags, cigarette butts and construction materials like iron sticks.Finally the students also had the opportunity to relax and enjoy the rest of the time swimming and lying down under the sun.

Interview with Wolfgang Werner

Tuesday 22th April we got the new date for our meeting with Wolfgang Werner.

Mr. Werner is one of the most successful event managers in Austria. He started his career running performances with local artist in 1985, improved the business and today he’s the director /chief manager of one of the most successful opera festivals in Austria. We had the opportunity to meet him in his office and had the pleasure to get a lot of interesting information about the touristic scene around the opera festival. We learned, that the impact of the festival was a quantum lib in the development of the region. It’s a fact that the economic situation in the region St. Margarethen / Rust is intensively connected with the opera festival. Tourism plays a very important role in this area. Statistic tells us that more than 15% of the tourist come from foreign countries. Restaurants, hotels (and private accommodations like B&B) have the most profit from the opera festival.

Kathi and Mr. Werner in discussion From left to right: Laura Hartmann, Denise Lechner, Mr. Wolfgang Werner and Kathi Mayer

The interview was run by Kathi Mayer (questions and leading the interview), Laura Hartmann (notes) and Denise Lechner (video).

General Meeting in Seville

The coordinaters of the project had a very successful meeting in Seville. The main objectives of this meeting were:

• Coordinationg next years work


• planning joint activities


• planning and concretizing mobility activities

There is a seria of pictures in out picture album of the project.

Thanks to Carlos for organisation and the care for us all, Arturo for hosting us at his school (and the excellent guided tour through town & the excursion to Doñana/Sanlucár) and all others that made possible this meeting!

Painting of Illustration

We started to work with the pupils from lower classes at school.

There are a lot of activities running at the Bundesgymnasium Babenbergerring. Besides the data collecting for the special touristic themes there are several groups painting illustrations for the project. Our colleague Susanne APPELT is working with the pupils from the 1st to 4th form (10 to 14 years old). They get their instructions in English language (as they run CLIL in arts). We want to offer these drawings and paintings for free use for illustration of paper or electronic work. As next step a presentation is planned to present selected pieces of the art work. Harald Makl is planning and carrying out an exhibition at a corridor of our school. We will try to publish this in our local newspapers.

Photo workshop at BG Babenbergerring

We started with the first stage of a series of workshops. The theme was "structures" and we tried to get closer to the functionality of our cameras. The objective was to take pictures from different points of view to experience use depth of focus and different light effects. To get personal experience we took pictures of Easter eggs – that sounds easier than it is. The second challenge was to experience with corrugated board. Here we could combine different challenges and techniques. Another point was the use of cameras with a high technical level – up to SLR.

The next step is to gain experience and produce new pictures. We want to form an exhibition from the follow up work.
The collection with the pictures prepared for the exhibition is published at PicAsa.

The next workshops will deal with the theme of “documentation” followed by “composition”

Jura Neikena Dikli Elementary school’s Comenius project’s group in Vidzemes University college.

On Monday, February 25^th, Comenius group of the Jura Neikena Dikli Elementary school visited Vidzemes University college and listened Vidzemes University college’s associate professor Juri Smalinski presenting Eco tourism in a very interesting way.
He informed us about Eco tourism in Dikli, in Latvia and all over the world, as Asia, Africa, America, Australia and Oceania.

He started with definition of ecotourism. We discussed how people in Latvia and everywhere in the world comprehend ecotourism . Ecotourism – it is green thinking and using natural products - an idea born in Costa Rica.
Ecotourism is responsible traveling along a nature locality .Ecotourism doesn’t leave negative influence to nature and improve native people welfare, stimulate environment’s protection.
Our pupils took very active part in discussion, special Aksel and Aigar. It was important for me.
We discussed about Ecotourism Union of Latvia., which is founded in July 2000 and what is its tasks. Then we discussed about ecotourism in Dikli and surroundings of Dikli.
The professor told us about ecotourism experience in Brazilia, too.

At the end of presentation professor put accent to ecotourism as long life tourism Ecotourism has a negative aspects , too. It endangers local people interests, culture . It degrades environment and social life of local people.
This presentation was very important for our project’s group and we are very grateful to professor Juri Smalinski.
After presentation we visited Valmieras museum. We watched and improved Mathematics’ games.

Interview with Christoph Sigmund

Friday afternoon Mr. Christoph Sigmund, the general manager of the Arena Nova, was available for an interview. A four students group, headed by Evelyn Seidler, met him in his office. Sophie Gruber cared for the documentation and was responsible for pictures, Viktoria Wersonig videoed the complete interview using two cameras, Georg Piribauer was responsible for the notes and Evelyn asked Mr. Sigmund about his job, qualification, tourism aspects of an important event center and – last but not least – about future jobs for young people.

Mr. Sigmund answered patiently the questions, he presented a very open-minded approach to our project and we got all the information we were interested in.

The following private discussion with Mr. Sigmund demonstrated an interesting life of a great personality. Thank you, Mr. Sigmund, for the chance to talk with you and for your precious time you spent us!

Video: Evelyn Seidler talking with Mr. Sigmund about education and qualification for jobs.