A retrospective: 2nd Online Training Week of the project LoCALL

Between the 18th and 22nd of January 2021, an online training week took place, within the Erasmus+ LoCALL project – Locall Linguistic Landscapes for Global Language Education in the School Context. The training week consisted of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, using Google Classroom and other platforms and tools (Padlet, Perusall, zoom,…). Among the activities developed, the following stand out: (i) webinars, (ii) virtual visits to museums; (iii) presentation of linguistic landscapes in the Padlet (fig. 1); (iv) exchange of postcards about linguistic landscapes with secret friends (fig. 2), (v) group work to create games with the Project APP (in a testing phase) (fig. 3) and (vi) a final party, where a kahoot game was played. Some of the synchronous sessions (such as the opening session, the webinar or the visits to museums) have been recorded and are now available on the YouTube channel of the project: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqkIE9FpEQQRs9ESG7XfjA).

As a preliminary exploratory assessment, we can mention that the training week counted with the participation of 65 participants as “students”, from 20 different countries and with different profiles, ranging from university professors, master and doctoral students, to researchers or teachers from schools. Looking at the answers to the assessment questionnaire, which is still available to fill in online, you can already see that the participants provided very positive feedback to the different activities, also giving some suggestions that may be relevant for the organization of the next training week of the project, which will be organized by the Strasbourg team in the end of June 2021. The Training Week was coordinated by Ana Raquel Simões, with the help of the local project coordinator, Mónica Lourenço, and an enlarged team, to whom we thank for all the support: Alexandra das Neves; Bruna Batista; Helena Araújo e Sá; Francisco Silva; Maria José Loureiro; Raquel Carinhas; Rosa Faneca; Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer; Susana Senos and two master students, Rosalba Graterol and  Maria Beatriz Santos. There was also a group of tutors / trainers who accompanied the 7 working groups during the two group work sessions, to whom the team thanks for the availability and commitment: Alexandra das Neves; Ana Raquel Simões; Bruna Batista; Dionísia Laranjeiro; Helena Araújo e Sá; Francisco Silva; Lisa Brinkmann; Lúcia Pombo; Maria José Loureiro; Maria Siemushyna; Margarida Marques; Mónica Lourenço; Raquel Carinhas; Rosa Faneca; Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer; Susana Pinto and Susana Senos.

Ana Raquel Simões & Mónica Lourenço, January 29th 2021