” Enhancing Cooperation and Partnership among ASPnet National Coordinators, Teachers and Students inside and outside Jordan, and assisting them in the development of Associated Learning Materials"

14^th – 16^th January 2008 Amman, Jordan

My name is Lena Awad and I participated in the above mentioned workshop in Jordan, Amman, from 14^th – 16^th January 2008. There were delegations from Denmark, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Jordan who took part in this event. Every delegation included a teacher, a UNESCO-coordinator and a student.

The workshop dealt with the cooperation between the ASP net schools and learning materials in Europe and Arabic countries. Another important point of this workshop was to connect the two cultures and possibly start partnerships between schools from different countries. Every delegation presented their own projects and the role of ASP net schools in their country. 

May I mention first of all that it somewhat seemed a pity that in most delegations only the teacher or the UNESCO coordinator presented the various projects in spite of the fact that the actual idea of this workshop was how to communicate UNESCO objectives to students. So the students should have been involved much more in the workshops and presentations in order to unfold their point of view in front of the adult participants. 

Nevertheless, I felt the workshop was really interesting for teachers, so they could learn about the different ways of teaching in other countries and cultures. For the students, however, it might have been more profitable to visit a school in Amman to see what daily life in school is like for Jordanian pupils. In this way, we could have got to know the culture and spirit of our host country more intensely and we could have talked to people of our own age about interesting themes for young people. It would have also been useful to start partnerships between schools because in the end it is the students that need to get on with each other.  

It is absolutely essential that the participating students spread the information the workshops dealt with at their home schools as any workshop is in vain unless its results are communicated and properly discussed afterwards. It would thus for example be an excellent idea to choose a spokesperson or a council to report about UNESCO affairs regularly. Otherwise projects like our workshop will be forgotten in next to no time and nobody will benefit from them apart from the actual participants. 

All in all it, I really felt it was a gift to meet all the people taking part in the workshop and to exchange opinions as well as visit a new country.