Before the workshop a visit to the city of Mostar took place. There we met one of the representatives of the EU administration, visited schools in the East and West and had the opportunity to get an idea of the current situation and the future challenges.
Some of the goals of this visit were:
The main goal of the workshop was to show the participants that it is possible by modern technology to send, receive or request letters, news, opinions, business texts and other documents from countries being far away and within a very small period of time.
The psychological effect of this "openness to the world" was also intended, because during the years of the war many inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia had suffered from the fact that they could not receive messages from the rest of the world nor communicate with other people in the world, although in some parts of the country some computer networks for this goal were already developing (e.g. CARNet, ZAMIR, Peacenet).
For making this workshop in Neum possible, a certain number of PCs with the necessary programs for e-mail and WWW access had to be available at the spot. Also a connection with an Internet provider had to be available.
The organisation of these things was made possible by the
internet itself. After Christmas I found the home-page of
CARNet (Croatian Academic Research Network) on
WWW (http://www.carnet.hr),
which is maintained by the
universities of Zagreb and Split. As on every page the
webmaster is mentioned, it was very easy to contact
Damir Mrkonjic over the net. He made the whole
organisation for us in Bosnia. During the Christmas holidays
until the end of the year everything was organised. He
looked for the telephone number of the telecommunications
company in Zagreb. I then sent them a fax asking for the
installation of a connection from the hotel to the
university in Split for the time of the workshop, with
access to the Internet. He also sent me the addresses of
computer dealers in Split. I sent them faxes asking for
sponsoring us with some PCs. ENEL (which is a company in
Split) put 10 PCs completely free at our disposal. Only
the transport from Split across the Croation border to
Neum in Bosnia and back had to be paid.
The directors of the Croatian Academic Research Network,
Mrs Jasenka Gojsic und Mr Predrag Pale agreed to
all these steps of organisation.
During the workshop in the hotel "Sunce" in Neum, the available PC's were connected in a LAN in order to give every computer access to the Internet. From every computer we could send e-mail and could access the WWW. So we really had an ideal situation.
Moreover, Damir Mrkonjic and his colleague Lada Males helped us during the workshop as well with the technical matters as with the communication, by giving technical hints and tips and by translating between English and Croatian.
Without them the workshop NEVER would have taken place.
Through the WWW it is possible to have information at your disposal, which anybody can access and which can be used for teaching topical subjects because it is based on current data. This information can be read on-line, can be saved for later off-line reading or other purposes. It can also be printed or revised or integrated into other documents. Of course it can be sent in text form via e-mail all over the world as well.
I feel that the last form mentioned will be very important for our partners in Bosnia-Herzogovina. It will take some more time before they will be financially capable of acquiring up-to-date teaching material for their topics. After getting hooked up to the net they immediately will be able to receive materials according to their needs, which does not mean that other ways of materials will not be needed any more. This way of getting materials is a good possibility for bridging the present shortage. In my opinion, this way often should be preferred to the traditional ones.
Teachers from Mostar, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Split took part
in the workshop. The invited teachers from eastern Mostar
did not come. They had some objections concerning their
personal safety and preferred not to leave their part of
the city.
The teachers of Tuzla started travelling in the direction
of Neum, but did not get there. On their way they were
halted and sent back.
Most of the teachers had only heard of computers or had
only seen them from a certain distance. Only two had
practical experience. One of those, a teacher from Split,
also had a very good knowledge of the internet because
in his school thea had full internet access.
But most of them had not even written a text on a computer
or had worked with other programs.
A lot of effort was necessary to get across the first hurdles.
The participants had to cope with a lot of psychological
barriers and only after some encouragement given by the
organisers they started typing their first lines.
The first messages were sent between the people in the room. This showed to be a positive step. The participants hesitated heavily for reading the messages which came from outside (a week before, I launched a call for welcome messages on the internet). Also problems with the language played a role. The messages came from Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Spain and other countries. Finally all of them were replied.
The next step was to get some experience with the WWW. We started from the CARNet (Croation Academic an Research Network) homepage and then went into all those URLs the paticipants wanted to go into. Very quickly all of them got the impression that this internet service is very rewarding and they found that the resources are very important and suitable to be used at their schools.
Ali Beiser already collected some PCs which have to be transported to Bosnia / Herzegovina. The EU administration already told us to give us practical support. Damir Mrkonjic collected all those application forms of the schools taking part to provide the internet accounts in Zagreb or Split.
Flying back from Dubrovnik to Frankfurt we thought of how to continue this initiative. The seminar in Neum can only be regarded as being a first step into that direction.
We decided that the next step should take place in Mostar.
There all those teachers or some others should be taught to make use of the internet services having been subject during our seminar in Neum. But then the whole training should last for at least 3 days to have some more time to discuss some pedagogical elements as well e.g. "how to set up a project", "what is a project" or "where can I find some partners".
The whole seminar in Neum was an event which was very impressive to all of us. We learnt a lot in a very personal way because we got a lot of impressions of how teachers have to cope with their difficult situations at school and in their everyday lives.
For us, the organisers, everything was most rewarding. We think that we and all those other teachers from Germany who took part in the seminar and organised the other workshops such as "Theatre at school", "Ways to make schools open", "Difficult students" should go to Bosnia / Herzegovina for a second time as soon as possible to go on working in that direction and we all really like to do so.
Peter Obermeier
e-mail:
peter.obermeier@po.hb.shuttle.de