Hi all
Finally we arrived in Vienna:) The Hofburg is amazing, majestic and very very big...... All of us here are very excited about this event finally taking place!
Teachers are setting up their stands and everyone is feeling the spirit of the ITF09. Have just been listening to the two keynotes that are on for today, and both were very good and very relevant. Franz has some very revolutionary ideas on education in the 21st century, but during the session today I got the feeling that his ideas hit exactly the right spot for most participants; the Danish journalist thought that the presentation by Franz Kühmayer was very interesting and spiked some interesting thoughts regarding learning in the 21st century, the Albanian team also felt very inspired by his speach on the necessity to change the way we teach out students - it is not enough to just introduce the computer to the classroom and keep using the same teaching methods, this will not bring about revolutionary change. Along with the introduction of computers in the classroom it is necessary to introduce new and innovative teaching methods in order to move our students forward. Franz Kühmayers punchline was; "Europe will never be able to compete on price, we need to be able to compete on knowlegde and quality".
The Climate Mystery was presented by Christian Fonnesbech, Creative Director of Congin. I spoke to quite a few representatives from different countries, and common to all was that they loved the video presentationand found it most interesting and very relevant. And Christian Fonnesbech ended his presentation on the Climate Mystery by asking the question; "will you join us in the project" - and if you do or want to learn more please write to this email;
climatemystery@congin.com
So now we are all looking forward to following the success of the Climate Mystery:)
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Just came back from the evening dinner, where all participants in the ITF09 (app. 250 people) went to a Heurigen, a typical Austrain restuarant where they serve local Austrian dishes accompanied by authentic Austrian Tiroler music. We had schnitzel, coleslaw a la Austria and Strudel for dessert.