October 2016 No. 13
Tabor Meeting From teambuilding to team work
Inside this issue: Teambuilding to team work
1
A trip to Prague
2
Budweiser Brewery tour
3
Festival of the Danube
4
Specimen lessons
5
National team presentations
6
Tabor Rally
7
Innovation Camp
8
All partners’ contribution All days impressions All activities described
In the course of the whole training event in Tábor participating students worked in international teams. They split up into six groups on Monday morning and started with short team-
building activities during which they introduced themselves and learnt some basic Czech words and phrases. The Tábor Rally was a main activity of Monday with tasks based on tourism. Each team made a leaflet inviting guests to town and a short video advising tourists visiting Tábor how to use public transport, where to eat and relax or what to see. The teams had to communicate a lot, distribute tasks and responsibility to reach the final output. On Thursday morning an Innovation Camp workshop was organized for all the teams. A real-life problem was prepared by the Tábor Information Centre and is also connected to a current challenge of Czech Tourism: “How to attract Chinese tourists to Tábor, what activities and services would appeal to
them”. And again right tasks were delegated to right people, some searched for information on the internet, some worked out on useful tips and ideas for the information centre or created a final layout of their report. All these common tasks helped team members get to know each other, made them communicate and collaborate together. Friday morning brought final presentations of team outputs when all participants got familiar with work of other teams. It was obvious that joint activities lead to both learning new knowledge and team communication. The winner of the Innovation Camp, the Red Team, was rewarded for their original solution of the given tasks. In conclusion, just a big thank you to all international teams for their work.
Alena Jandlová, the Czech team
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N E W S L E T T E R
A trip to Prague
„It was a fantastic experience and we recommend everyone to visit Prague”
On Wednesday morning we set off for a day study trip to Prague. The journey was longer than usual due to technical problems on the railway track. Nevertheless, we reached the capital at 9 o´clock. We remained in international teams and created 3 bigger groups, each with a guide. Our teachers formed another group with their guide. Everything was ready and we could start our tour of the historic centre with some tasks for us. Each time we won, we received an old grosch coin. Everything went smoothly except for the weather, which was rainy and pretty cold. Our team got a very nice guide who showed us beauties of Prague in approximately 4 hours. First we went to the Old Town Square and we saw the statue of Jan Hus. Then the group went by tram to Malostranská station where we heard history of Czech army pilots fighting in Britain in WWII. Here we played a first game (the task was to create a paper airplane which would reach the centre of a circle on the square, which was not at all easy). After that we went to St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle. It is a big Gothic church with coloured windows and nice architecture. It was built approximately 600 years ago. In front of the cathedral we received another task, we had to draw a scene
from the church gate as precisely as possible and the Red team won! Then we went down towards the Charles Bridge and looked for the signs of some houses in Nerudova Street, which was task No 3. Shortly the group reached the bridge. There we saw tens of statues and an island that is a romantic one called Kampa. After 10 minutes of walking through the town, we came to the astronomical clock which we found it very interesting because we could hear the clock strike at exactly 1 o´clock. At the end of the tour we had 3 hour free time to do things we wanted to do. Most of us went into the shopping centre which contains 200 shops.
It was a fantastic experience and we recommend everyone to visit Prague because is a very nice city that contains historical and beautiful places that all of us should see. The Red Team
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Budweiser Brewery tour On Thursday afternoon we visited Budweiser Brewery. We went on buses from Tábor. We departed at 2pm. After an hour we arrived in České Budějovice. In the brewery we divided in two groups and our excursion started. We started in visitor‘s centre. Our guide told us something about history of a brewery here. It was found in 1895. It brewed its first batch on 7th October 1895. The brewery directly followed the historical tradition of brewing in the town of České Budějovice dating back to the 13th century – therefore to the days of the town’s origination when it was granted the brewing right. By the end of 1896, the brewery’s overall production reached 51,100 hectolitres of beer. Since its founding, the brewery focused on making top-quality beer, which soon became a sought after export commodity. First we saw Artesian wells. The water for brewing is extracted here. Their 300metre depth allows a unique access to deep groundwater, which is of excellent composition, not requiring any further adjustment. Next stop was a brewing house. It is the pro-
duction centre in the brewery, also being called the heart of the brewery. Using high-quality water, assorted Moravian malt and the finest Saaz hops, valued for their quality all over the world, the basis for the production of beer is prepared here. Then we went to a bottling room where the beer is racked into returnable and nonreturnable bottles. Before racking, all bottles must go through an optoelectronic device to be inspected for its purity and integrity. The bottles are then filled in the filler under the pressure of carbon dioxide and subsequently closed. After that we saw lager cellar where the process of secondary fermentation and beer maturing takes place. The flavour and aroma of beer round off in the secondary fermentation lager tanks at lower temperatures (about 1 °C) with a moderate excess pressure. We could even taste the beer here. After the excursion we could buy some souvenirs and watch a short movie in a cinema. That was the end of our visit and we went back to Tábor. The Blue Team
“Using high-quality water, assorted Moravian malt and the finest Saaz hops, valued for their quality all over the world”
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Festival of the Danube region countries
„On Tuesday morning the Danube
On Tuesday morning the Danube Region countries presented their stands to the Czech students. The national teams had ten minutes to introduce their country’s customs, cities and schools. The Czech students listened to the other countries very carefully. They came to us in different groups. We met a lot of people that day. That was a great opportunity to show to the others our country´s traditions. Also we learned a lot about the countries of our partners. At the end, the national groups (Romania,
Region countries presented their stands to the Czech students“
Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia) showed us a typical dance of their country. The Green Team
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Specimen lessons on Tuesday Geography We started the lesson with Czech students and an Austrian teacher at 2 p.m. We did some exercises, answered some questions and after that we had to work in pairs (Hungarian, Czech). Students were playing a game. It was a little bit funny because one of the pair had to sit and be a writer and the other one was a runner and he had to run to the wall where was a short article about balanced life. The runner had to run back and repeat words from the article. The first pair who had an article on their sheet was the winner. Finally we had to evaluate the lesson if it was great or not, what we liked the most and explain why. Business game Czech teachers introduced a business game about price agreements among companies, which are called cartels. First we watched videos on a monopoly and an oligopoly, answered questions and after that created 4 teams which each represented a company willing to agree on prices in order to make a profit. Playing the game we found out that agreements don´t have a long life. Agriculture/ Biology The Slovak teacher started the lesson. The main topic of the lesson was about how to keep animals alive, healthy and how to care about them.
Teachers showed us a presentation about the agriculture in the whole world. Students had to write text, for example what they would do with a pumpkin farm. In the end articles had to be read out. Maths We had a Romanian teacher. She showed us a PowerPoint presentation with graphs and charts. She showed us how to read them and what we imagine when we see it. We did some tasks on the PowerPoint. Later we got a sheet with exercises and we worked online on a website with math problems. „Playing the game we found out that agreements don´t have a long life.“
Economics We talked about what happens if you lose your job and what you can do not to be unemployed. We also had to make groups of three people and discuss questions he gave us. Later we played a game on the website called Kahoot. The Orange Team
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N E W S L E T T E R
National team presentations on information centres When we arrived to school on Monday morning, we started to work on our first task. We needed to perform our presentations, which we had made at home before we arrived. The presentations were made by every country, about the information centres of each city.
„In the Slovenian presentation, there was a really interesting idea.“
Most of the teams made a presentation, which were full of pictures of the centres and the cities, main information like opening hours and what they can offer to citizens and tourists. In the Slovenian presentation was a really interesting idea, they have made a video about an interview with an employee of the information centre. They were talking about guided tours, which they make daily. Except this, there were questions about his work and experiences. There was another group, Austrians, who solve the task reall y well. They performed a dialogue, one of them were the employee and others wanted to get information about the ci t y. Th e y showed us
their city´s main page, where every tourist can find hotels, restaurants, cultural events really easily. After these presentations we got separated from national groups to international ones. The White Team
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Tabor rally On Monday morning, we went through Tabor. Our tasks were to take the most original photo, to take a photo in a shape of letter “s” and to make a video about local transport. We learned a lot of about Tabor history and we saw plenty of interesting sights. First we went to a bus stop and the train station. There we made a video about local transport. The girls from the Czech Republic explained us how the system for transport works in Tabor. We made videos about public transport, restaurants and cafés, nature and parks, architecture, water. Then we had to edit the videos and upload them on Youtube, where you can watch them. Then we went to town hall. The town hall is one of the most precious buildings in the style of the late Gothic in Bohemian towns. We took an original
can also buy it. We also visited Kotnov which is now an underground club, in the history it was used as a castle and war fortress. Then we continued our trip and visited the Jan Zizka Statue. Jan Zizka was a really good leader of wars. He was a symbol of Hussite era. He was missing one eye and when he lost the other eye he died. In the afternoon we created a leaflet and a video about this day. Three of us were editing a video and the boys made a leaflet. The Yellow Team
photo over there. All of us liked the Jordan lake. It´s really big and beautiful. They also showed us theatre in Tabor and chocolate museum where you can taste a lot of diffirent chocolates and you
„We learned a lot about Tabor history and we saw plenty of interesting sights”
Innovation Camp workshop One of our most interesting tasks in international groups was connected with an Innovation Camp workshop. The task was to find solutions how to attract Chinese tourists into the Czech Republic. First we searched information about their travelling habits and preferences. Then, we arranged main facts into a report, for example we also mentioned how many Chinese people came to the country in 2015 or their interests. We were looking for their opportunities to come here. Usually they fly with more then one connection, for example from Shanghai to Moscow, then from Mos-
With the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union
cow to Prague. We also described their behaviour, that they like to travel in bigger groups or that they like to take pictures of everything. They have many advantages too, when they are travelling in a group. We also made a list of our ideas how to raise their interest of the country. After that, on Friday morning we performed our work in front of the groups. It was really interesting to hear others about this topic and gave us lot of experience. The White Team
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