Center for Educational Initiatives

Tzvetan Tzvetanski (Chairman of the Board of Center for Educational Initiatives) has met the director of Bulgarian Youth Red Cross Atanas Tzvetanski and Radostina Getova, expert Social Activities. They discussed the future collaboration in order to include some of the Red Cross volunteers in the activities concerning RACCE. They also negotiated a seminar for 30 volunteers in the third week of February.

Training for teachers was organised and conducted by Center for Educational Initiatives on 12 Semtember 2012. In this seminar 20 teachers from 5 towns, including the capital city of Sofia, took part in lectures, discussions and games, while they used RACCE's educational products. Host of this event was National Polytechnic Museum in Sofia. All educational posters were shown to the teachers in the museum's lobby.

More pictires from this event you can see here:

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The first exhibition of the mobile banners were presented at the street festival "Sofia breathes." Besides the pleasure of the artistic expressions of the performers visitors could also appreciate the usefulness of the information provided by the educational program  of RACCE project to teachers, students and parents. How to prepare your class and how to prepare your family to meet the disaster and what steps to provide psychological support to children victims of the earthquake were the main themes of the exhibition.

Through residencies and conferences, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Northern Italy supports innovations that change the way we address complex global issues. Here, people of diverse expertise and backgrounds come together in a thought-provoking, creative, collegial environment that helps create change and have impact on a wide range of world issues.

Yesterday, on 30th of June the  the Center for Educational Initiatives presented the RACCE project at the National Polytechnic Museum. As we reported recently, the National Polytechnic Museum is a key partner of CEI in the project. The meeting was dedicated to the presentation of two European projects of the museum: "Easy - easy access to education - including for everyone" and "Max - maximum access of the public to museums." The program included a demonstration of computer communication system "European / museum / playground."

On June 23th, the first phase of the Moodle training seminars with teachers from the 91st German Language School Sofia was successfully conducted.

The proposed project is addressed to children aiming to palliate the emotional burden and help them cope in case of a serious natural hazard.

In each of the below steps we should consider both theoretical and practical parts.

On June 18, the Center for Educational Initiatives visited the town of Brezovo and successfully conducted the first phase of the training Moodle seminars

On June, 9-th Tzvetan Tzvetanski, chairman of Center for Educational Initiatives met Ekaterina Tsekova the director of National polytechnic museum of Sofia on the occasion of the establishment of a future collaboration concerning RACCE project .

On the 23-rd October the Final conference of PATCHWORLD project took place in Sofia. The event was hosted by Center for Educational Initiatives and Association “Roditeli” and was carried out in “Matti” Hall of the National palace of culture. The deputy-minister of the education Mrs. Milka Kodjabashieva honored the conference, representing the government’s efforts to introduce and help the development of the ICT in the educational sphere.
The project ended successfully, said Mr. Fabrizio Boldrini, Chairman of the leading organization for this project Centro di Studi e Formazione Villa Montesca (Italy). Mr. Boldrini also bestowed the prizes to the winners in the international stage of the cognitive game, which was essential part of the initiative.
The project’s aims were realized in Bulgaria by Center for Educational Initiatives and Association “Roditeli”.
The guests have visited Bachkovo monastery and the Old town of Plovdiv as a part of the conference.

The good practices in the educational sphere will become national policy. They will be presented on the website of the Ministry of education, youth and science, the deputy-minister Svetlana Lomeva said on the round table, organized by Center for educational initiatives, dedicated to the announcement of the Bulgarian results from the Bridging Insula Europae and EUCLIDES projects.

Source: http://www.minedu.government.bg/opencms/opencms/documents/frontpage/09-10-02_dobri_praktiki.html

On October 2nd, from 1:30 to 5 pm, Center for Educational Initiatives and DITT organize a National round table at “Rila” Hotel in Sofia, conference room “One+Two”. They will present results from the European educational projects Bridging Insula Europae and EUCLIDES. Teachers will use the opportunity to share good practices and experience from their work with web-based platforms for open and distance learning, their students’ progress in respective academic subjects and perspectives for future ICT application for educational purposes.

The final conference of the Bridging Insula Europae and EUCLIDES Projects,that took place in Malaga, Spain on September, 20th and 21st sent clearmessages to educational institutions, teachers, students and parents - learning through ICT can be both useful and fun!

Video dossier

left – cadres from the video presentation of students from private humanitarian School "Vassil Zlatarski" 

Experimental phase of the projects Bridging Insula Europae and EUCLIDES completed. Bulgarian side it was attended by about 250 students and 20 teachers of history, philosophy, geography, biology and ICT cities Brezovo, Gotse Delchev, Karlovo, Plovdiv, Polish Trambesh, Sofia and Shumen. Ideas of problem-based learning and constructivism, under the methodology of the project in conjunction with Moodle based learning platforms, enabling teachers and students to develop skills in team work and increase their competence in the use of WEB 2.0 tools. Each individual school teams develop products related civil or environmental education. There were dozens of presentations, concept maps and scenarios, spot checks, spots and video clips of current topics, filming interviews and journalistic investigations on hot topics, web sites. The results of the experimental phase were rated highly by experts from the Ministry of Directorate General Policies in Education and the Information and ICT in education ", which expressed willingness to contribute to the promotion of best European practices in the Bulgarian school.

A meeting between NGOs, governmental experts and professors from theUniversity of Sofia took place on June, 9th 2009 in the building of theMinistry of Education and Science. CEI, “Roditeli” Association and DITT presented the educational platforms of the projects LETHE, Patch World, BridgingInsula Europae and EUCLIDES. The Ministry’s experts expressed theirheightened interest and appreciation of our work. For more that one hour all participants discussed the possibilities for adequate use of the projects’ products and results in our Bulgarian educational reality.

CEI awarded students from 104 SOU, Sofia who took part in the experimental phase of the LETHE project with honorary diplomas.
This happened during their last work meeting with experts, that took place on June 2nd 2009.

The fourth working meeting of PATCH-WORLD project was held in Malta on 25th of May. The project is co-funded by the European Commission, in the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme.
The goal of the meeting was to discuss the results of the project testing phase carried out in the participating partner countries and to define the rules of the final quiz contest which will end the game as well as the testing phase of the project.

The Quiz contains questions from the following categories: Sports, Music, Time machine, Health, Sciences, People and Places.

Each country presented the results of the National level of the game and the problematic moments for the families involved. At the International level of the game 18 families will be competing - 2 families from each country (Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Finland, Turkey, Malta, Germany and The Netherlands). The final 4 winners in the game will receive attractive awards - weekend in Florence, PC, handy cam and I-Pod.

Participants for Bulgaria in the final Quiz are Vladimir Raichev and Presian Genkov. They will compete with the families from Italy and Malta. We wish them LUCK!

The final project conference will be held in Turkey.

If you want to check your knowledge of EU history, culture and literature or your rights and obligations as an European citizen, you need to play the “Insula Game”, designed by members of the Insula Europae Youth Clubs for their fellow-students.

During our project meeting on April 11th 2009, the game was presented by the Youth Club at “Hristo Smirnenski” SOU in Bresovo in the presence of students from Sofia, Roman and Polski Trambesh. The competition has begun, the ranking list is open! The contestant with the highest score by May 09th will be awarded a book.

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The experimental phase of the PATCHWORLD project began on March 14th at the Bulgarian-Korean Internet center in Sofia. With help from the experts of Roditeli Association (Marieta Radulova) and CEI (Petar Tsvetkov and Tzvetan Tzvetanski) parents and children walked for the first time trough the different levels of the platform, became acquainted with the different tasks, which each family as a team will have to fulfill during the period 01.04.2009 - 26.04.2009. The first four teams will continue in the international competition in May 2009, where they will meet their opponent from Italy, Finland, Germany, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Turkey.

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For about two hours a group of 6th graders from 104 OU Zahari Stoyanov slipped into pirates’ roles and searched for a hidden treasure. Their emotions were their guide trough this virtual adventure. Based on Emotional Intelligence the game showed them how to recognize, manage and foremost how to isolate their emotions during the decision-taking process.