JOIN UBC CLASSES !

The meeting of the UBC Commission on Education took place in Kärdla, Estonia on 20-22 April 2001.

In the meeting were in focus news and information about the UBC classes with emphasis on joint school projects of member Cities.

A representative of the Commission on Environment in Turku, Mr Niko Remes shared his experiences on the organisation and implementation of the environmental projects.

The secretariat of the Commission on Education has worked for a very short time therefore good advice was welcome.

It was participants from Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Sweden and Estonia in the meeting, together 14 people.

The ideas of the UBC classes

One school (on the high school level) from every City can participate in this project.

Goal

Every participating school sets his own goals according to the curriculum, but there are some basic skills what will be developed taking part in this project:

• working with texts,
• working independently,
• working in groups,
• international cooperation between groups,
• political and cultural skills,
• language skills,
• using technology (Internet).

Contents

Democracy, EU, Multicultural region, Environmental problems, Security, Sustainable development, Economical prospects of the Baltic region, Future developments of the region.

Way of working

Every school will complete one group of interested students (UBC class) and the supervisor. It will be the project team.

Team takes 1-2 projects per one year. Every project has a home page, so everyone can see what is going one, what are the problems and results, to make proposals or to express his opinion.

Every year ends with summer school( s) in one (or more) of the participating cities, so the participants can meet each other and to discuss the problems. And have some lectures or seminars on actual subjects.

At the moment

There are two participating schools - Rodengymnasium from Norrtälje and Kärdla Secondary School. We have had some meetings where we have discussed the project ideas. On of them was the meeting of students.

In the meeting it was people from UBC cities, who thought that it could be groups of students in their cities interested on UBC classes.

Discussion

Chair of the meeting was Vice-Chairman of the Commission on Education, Mr Ivo Eesmaa. Mr Eesmaa presented the idea of the UBC classes. After the representation it was an interesting discussion about this idea. Participates from Sweden were of the opinion, that there are existing many similar possibilities for students already. The participates from Baltic states told that the students in their cities have no possibilities today to do something like the idea of UBC classes. So, for concluding we can say that the meeting was interesting and it were people interested from the idea of UBC classes. I hope we will go on with the idea and it will inspire the students to do together interested projects!